See it as moaning, see it how you want. The facts are its an indication of where the sport is.

No details of the sponsorship have been released. Maybe it involves each fan being given a lucky pen and nothing else.

The sport isnt "wanted" by the better brands- accept it. Just Jeremy Kyles sponsor!! Thats the audience Foxy Bingo have decided to target as a brand. Toothless goons and rugby league.....are you starting to see where we are going with this

Great to have another sponsor on board, most people have heard of foxy bingo even if it is through jeremy kyle!!

they are part of BWIN who sponsor ac milan, or used to.

might expand who knows.

just need a sponsor for the super league now, would not of been great if foxy were the main sponsor! but they arent so its all good. we need all we can get in the current climate

www.sportspromedia.com/news/rfl_ ... rtnership/

www.sportspromedia.com/news/rfl_ ... rtnership/

If it bothers you so much, bugger off. Did you think the sport would just suddenly go from low key sponsors to high note sponsors in one year? You cannot realistically be pleased, so you might as well just give up and stop spoiling it for the rest of us.

Don't be so melodramatic, people have been saying this since 1895 yet here we all are. Amateur rugby league is played in all but one county, the sport is the second most watched on SKY, with circa 50% of viewers being from outside of the M62 corridor. Despite the state of the economy, in the past 12 months there has been investment in Salford, Bradford, Featherstone and potentially Kingston Rovers.

There is of course much to be done, and I think the RLWC will provide a great chance to increase awareness. Prior to that big cockney sports day, who gave a hoot about horse dancing and fat Russian women throwing s poles? Yet the nation was gripped. However the same people who are disgusted at this latest investment in RL, are desperately hoping for the World Cup to be a complete failure so that they can sit behind their keyboard and lecture us all about how the sport should be run, despite having absolutely no experience or knowledge of how to run a sport. Pathetic.

Presumably the person who wrote "[effing] joke at the bottom of that article came across it via this link, please could he explain what he means by that?

Excellent post Ganson. More or less what I was busy composing.

I think everyone is aware of the distance we have to make up to match the sponsorship power of some other sports.

After the Stobart 'deal' , I think the quantity rather than quality option is wise , Drinks , gambling , carpet cleaning , nasal spray -whatever, aslong as the end result is cash coming in , yes we'd all like a multi million deal with a communications network or a ' blue chip ' insurance company. but we are where we are.

After the Stobbart deal, anyone with some cash in their pocket would be a step in the right direction.
There were lots of clever people saying just how good the Stobbart deal was but, did it really increase the games profile in the much coverted non-RL areas ?

Lets look at this from a completely different angle.

Does anyone really think that Foxy Bingo wanted to be associated with the undesirable elements of Jeremy Kyle?

Well it doesn't look like this undesirable element stopped Foxy Bingo from sponsoring Jeremy Kyle so I doubt it'll stop them from sponsoring rugby league despite our sport having it's own undesirable elements which are all for show on this very thread with the snobs loathing having to associate with the new official Bingo partners of rugby league.

Left wing snobs despise the Jeremy Kyle show because the host constantly uses human bear baiting to snare the guests on the show. Right wing snobs loath the show because it features guests from disadvantage backgrounds. I'm not a big fan of The Jeremy Kyle Show myself but behind the scenes there's this bloke called Graham Stanier who dishes out after care to anyone who's starred on this program.

Whilst Jeremy Kyle is evil (yes I'm a bit of a left wing snob who doesn't agree with his hard line authority over issues), Graham Stanier could easily be nominated for a Pride of Britain award and knighted for his care behind the scenes. It's just such a shame that guests have to go through Jeremy Kyle to get to Graham Stanier but if you have no other choices in turning you life around then this path is the only option for some and it works!

To round things up I've seen that Man of Steel Sam Tomkins regularly lets his follows know on twitter that he watches Jeremy Kyle. Maybe that's why Foxy Bingo got involved with our sport?

Doesn't foxy sponser the whole of itv daytime tv and not just jez Kyle anyways?

It shows why the sport is the omnishambles that it is. The problem is not people whinging that it's not good enough, the problem is most league fans are more than happy to embrace abject mediocrity, as seen throughout the thread, they're happy to be viewed as Jeremy Kyle-esque, because a lot of them are!

People with expectations of growth see these sponsorship deals as a reminder of the pathetic spread and supporter base that English League boasts, the insular, backwater nature of the game. The darts, bingo, amber leaf and chunky soup demographic that the flat cap wearers embody.

Members on this forum see it as money is money, people have heard of Foxy Bingo therefore hooray. It's no wonder the game is on its knees, most are complacent.

And now they(flat-cappers) have a new trick, they blame a minority of fans who aren't happy with the game as the reason for poor sponsorship. They say, 'Ah, by complaining about crap sponsors you're the reason for crap sponsors', as if they makes sense. As if critical voices in other sports don't exist, and to the same degree, and even higher. Doesn't seem to stop any other sport. But a few fans on the RLFANS message board are enough to cripple the sponsorship opportunities for Super League, we're told!

It's just a sad state of affairs and it will continue to be so until people stop undervaluing the game by excusing the crap we're served up

It will be very difficult to convince the dogmatic flat cappers on here that the RFL need to work a damn sight harder to raise the profile of the sport.
The marketing and commercial model coming out of Red Hall is atrocious, once again they fail to get a sponsor to give the game some stature and worth.
No doubt the RFL will hype it up, like the Stobart deal was going to benefit the game by 2 million quid.
I suggest the flat cappers on here look at the long list of partners associated with union against the list of partners associated with league. This is not suggesting we compete on equal terms with Union we can't, but the gap is an ever widening one. Which tells me the RFL are not doing there job in selling our sport.
The RFL has imploded on itself become more region based thats why we have our "expansion showcase weekend" in.....er Manchester.
I agree with the poster above me the game is UNDERVALUED massively, the RFL know that but probably don;t have the right people in Red Hall to do anything about it.

Judging by some of the views expressed on this thread, there's little wonder that some people are happy for RL to remain a regional sport, played and spectated largely in the M62 corridor and with it's roots very firmly in working class communities; if expansion means welcoming some of the boorish, sneering tosspots who crawl out of the woodwork periodically to bleat about flat caps, whippets and northern mining towns, it's not surprising that some folk think the game might be better off without them.

"The RFL don't have the right people in place."
"The RFL aren't doing enough to expand the game."
"The RFL aren't doing enough to pull in top sponsors."

Yadda yadda yadda.

Apparently the brainiacs complaining about the deals on here think that the way to do these things is to stop accepting money from anyone and everyone until the right deal comes along, and at the same time hire the top administrators in their field, as well as expand the game on loads of areas in order to get these sponsorship deals.

Easily done, obviously. No flaws at all in this plan.

Oh, and whilst this doesn't happen, they're going to b*tch and moan about it not happening as that will increase the probability of it happening.

Ingenious!