^^^^^^^^^^
THIS

The figure of 10,000 average fans per game (that I keep repeating) is where the clubs need to be heading for.......at an average of £15 per ticket and £15 residual spend (beer/pies/merch) then the clubs will generate £3,900,000 in income before sponsorship (shirt/player/matchday). Then you have SkyTV putting in another £1,300,000....so your clubs are looking at a turnover of between £5,500,000 and maybe £8,000,000.....all on real income with no need for a "sugar daddy".....this is a sustainable sport, with room to grow.

All clubs with aspirations of being in SL come 2015 should be made to produce a quantifiable business plan,independently audited, as to how they will attempt to get to 10,000 fans and how long they think it will take them. None of this "it's a new stadium, fans will flock to us" or "we'll double the price of our ST's after a year or two cheapies" or my favourite..."we'llsign a few star names and the fans will flock in".....but proper, budgeted and realistic business plans.
The game can't rely on Sugar daddies.....HKA have lost theirs, London lose theirs soon and a few others are complaining....the game needs paying spectators or it will eventually revert back to a semi-pro comp with one or 2 full time teams.....
We know about Crusaders, Wakey and Bradford, together with Salfords near miss, but what the did London say to the Licencing guys last time out? We're on 3,380 average but will try to get it down to under 2k by next time around



Before anyone says "but you need a winning team"......you don't. What you need is a winning MARKETING team!

I'm sure Ian Lenegan was clueless until he attended one of the RFL's seminars.

If people aren't turning up to your seminars, maybe they're no good, or simply uninspiring.

You can market all you like, but if the underlying product just isn't interesting to enough people there's only so far you can go. For example, Sky televise netball. Millions have played it. A bit of marketing and it would attract 1000s right?

In the case of RL, we also suffer from it just not being 'interesting enough'. We who DO go think it is, obviously, but we can bang on to each other about how much we love going, but all we're doing then is preaching to the choir. We need to be honest and accept that for a variety of reasons, there are a lot of people, who, confronted with a ton of marketing for say London, will say, "what's the point? There's no star players, they mostly lose, and the games don't matter because they can't even go down. I like a bit of Rugby League, but there's a lot of other stuff to do on a weekend." We can get as frustrated as we like with that attitude ( and don't accuse me of having it, I drive 120 miles round trip to support my team ) but frustration acheives nothing. Realism does.

As you say, London's attendances have dropped. Ask those who've stopped going, why? Not enough marketing? Doubt it.

Don't get me wrong. You're right, there's NOT enough marketing, and when there is, it tends to be unfocused and generally poor. But even a complete transformation in marketing won't be nearly enough without structural change.

It does here and in Aussie.....and I should know, I market it





I get up at 3am to listen to Northern commentary of Londons away games.....I only started watching the team in 2002 so only witnessed 2 play-off games (losses) before moving here in 2009.....but attended games before then regardless of how they were.

I filled AWAY coaches (75 seats to WALES, 50 seater to Wakey) in 2009....the club ran FREE buses in 2006 and 2007 and couldn't fill any of them...why did people pay me in 2009? BECAUSE I MARKETED THEM....

We are all aware of Bradford's relatively recent problems but take a look back to when they first started playing in Superleague.

Opposing fans laughed at the music played, pitch announcements, mascots screaming around on beach buggies etc. But it worked: people came to see, especially families. They paid their entrance money, bought food, merchandise & lottery tickets, joined in with all the "fun" and contributing greatly to Bradford's coffers. And all this in a stadium that was hardly "state of the art".

What Bradford did do in the early days was to work hard at getting good news nearer the front of the newspapers than the back. Non-sports fans tend not to read anything on pages beyond the classified ads, so making sure news was printed at the front of the paper was paramount in attracting 'new' fans.

Print media is of course on the way out but the concept is still the same: get good news closer to the front than the back

Ian Lenegan doesnt think so. Nor Gary Hetherington. Nor McManus or Moran. These people regularly do turn up. Then again they arent strangely obsessed with Nigel Wood and his suits.

IT pains me to say this but I do agree with you we need to get rugby league talked about

Peter Deakin should have been snapped up by the RFL as their head of marketing at that time, to roll his vision and ideas out across the whole sport and not just one club. I think he was the one person within the game who could have achieved the necessary growth in the sport's profile and made SL a much bigger animal.

Great, more of that please. But it's not enough on its own to overcome the structural problems of a league with 8 teams in the playoffs and no relegation.

Apologies for repeating some of the points listed already.
Is this an idea that may have been established at HQ since the days of Lewis? if so are his previous plaudits misplaced?
Or is it that the ideas have come since his time ended from people who simply waited for him to go.
Have Barwick and the board simply felt that the existing system is unsatisfactory or needed to show they can be better? Is barwick too soon to the Greatest Game
I would like to see a list of those officials who put their name to these new ideas!
Who has been consulted or is the recent publicity part of the consultation process?
I assume clubs have already been consulted and if so who have been involved.
Just a comment - with very few exceptions the bottom four/top four two division suggestion would seem unworkable because of differing standards/funding/players.

When will the fans be consulted? We pay the bills after all!!!! If I dont like the outcomes SKY will be sacked and Premier sports will be purchased. I dont know if others will feel the same

What will be televised in future? I want to see at least the variety of teams that superleague has currently although perhaps the 12 teams proposed could work again.

I can see the support of championship clubs being gained because of P&R and I am sympathetic to some form of P&R. However, I support the increase in standards that has shown improvements in grounds - I dont want to settle for less!

Finally, I know the point has been made already, but I worry about overspending by a number of 2nd tier clubs leading to failure at promotion time and inevitable financial results.

Just read the last few pages of this thread and there are some brilliant posts which absolutely hit the nail on the head. The RFL actually does a pretty good promoting their end of the deal. I am forever bombarded with leaflets, letters, brochures etc in the post as well as emails. The other day I had a phone call from a bloke at Red Hall talking about offers for the Exiles game and World Cup.

Considering Warrington are owned by a promoter their marketing is dire and doesn't stretch beyond a poster stuck outside the ticket window for the next home game. No doubt it is the same at many other clubs. Contrast to Wigan and Leeds who really push the club. It is no coincidence that they are the two best supported sides in SL.

A club doesn't have to be winning every week, nor does every game have to feel like a final and be decided by a drop goal for us to get bums on seats. There are clubs in the soccer Premiership who have achieved absolutely nothing in my life time, yet still attract big crowds. I think a few club boards need to take a look at themselves and ask what they can do, rather than sit back and expect the RFL to run the show for them.