6,888 fans turned up yesterday to watch arguably there most important game for years.
6,888.

I think it's a fine balance of expansion whilst not throwing away tradition. Expansion needs to be exactly that, expanding the comp not just the geography. What I mean is that introducing eg. Toronto will be good but to do that we shouldn't collapse leigh which is what we seem to do.

TV is critical but to appeal to tv we need to fill stadiums as well. Why would tv be interested in a product fans can't be bothered to attend.

No easy answer

That's an interesting point.
However, I would suggest that TV is mainly interested in itself and not actually interested in what it may be showing, other than having something to air for "x" hours per day/week.
Since the onset of SL, we have gone from playing fixtures on Sundays, to having them on Thursday, FRiday, Saturday and Sunday, which has rock all to do with anyone wanting full stadia, it's purely down to Sky wanting to maximise the number of hours that it can fill the screen in the corner of your room.
We have effectively made it harder for actual fans to watch games in order to give Sky more games to broadcast, which necessarily, reduces the quality of the "product" on view.

Great for the armchair viewer but not great for the actual fans and the chopping and changing of fixtures, just to suit the broadcaster has a negative effect on attendances and ultimately means that the "true" fans struggle to make it to every game.

My club had every on of it's Super 8 fixtures changed, all at relatively short notice.
Some of these were because our game was on Sky and others had to be moved due to the ripple effect of other games being chosen.

Please tell me how this can help ANY club improve it's attendance's.

I struggle to see the issues with the current structure - it's one with a lot of competitive games, and plenty of showpiece events that can attract audiences and TV coverage.

I definitely see an issue with changing the structure every few years. It makes the sport look amateurish. It annoys people within the game to an extent that it both stagnates growth and actively turns people away from the game.

Licensing, one up-one down P&R, and the current structure have all been tried. They all have their positives and negatives. We should just disagree and commit to what we have, and instead focus on growing the sport's audience - that doesn't happen without marketing effort. If the RFL hired a decent marketing director and put in place a long-term plan that would be a good start, at the moment I suspect they have no idea on what type of audience they want, let alone how they attract them to our game.

Whatever system we have it'll attract complaints.
An obvious example is that any system that churns out a few dead rubbers gets criticisized for that, but introduce more jeopardy and soon enough somebody will be along to complain about coaches being under too much pressure to take a chance on young players.

The thing is to accept and acknowledge that every choice is a sacrifice, and then stick with your choices understanding what they entail. We've now pretty much exhausted the main options and seen their advantages and disadvantages - from yo-yo clubs, to 'clear, indepently assessed crit... hang on a minute, Bradford are in trouble!'

It would help if we had a better system for policy making. The RFL attract a lot of flak, but they have to put everything of importance to a vote of the club owners who have disparate preferences - so if we do ever manage a coherent plan, it'll be more luck than vision.

TV isn't the saviour of anything other than the bank balances of pro sportsmen.

The problem with the marketing is that it isn't just the RFL's problem to fix. The bulk of the marketing actually has to come from the clubs - and that in my view is where the key point of failure is. The clubs are the primary point of consumption, and the building of any audiences comes at that key point.

The RFL's "consumer" marketing isn't that bad - not perfect, but not anywhere near as bad as some will make out. The problem is with how the game is marketed commercially, but this is where the RFL are hamstrung by the clubs.

The RFL can only approach prospective sponsors and sell the audiences that are provided to them by the clubs, but when the clubs aren't growing their audiences or reaching new audiences, not attracting enough "ABC1" audiences (despite there being plenty of them on the doorstep of RL land), and grossly under-selling the sport with poor marketing initiatives and poorly executed cheap ticket offers, there is relatively little they can do.

If I were the RFL, I'd be spelling out an ABM strategy to each and every club. Tell the clubs that "in three years time, we want the Super League to be generating £x million in sponsorship, we want the competition to be sponsored by y and we expect clubs to generate annual ticket sales revenue of £z million" - and then give the marketing directors at each club an opportunity to present their marketing strategy to attract the audiences that will help them to achieve that.

The RFL needs to be more ruthless with the clubs who are underperforming but without the framework of licencing, there's not an awful lot they can do with those that don't perform.

Well smart pants, we are doomed to the championship now, so good luck with your theories, and blame some F@@@@R else.

The main problem with franchising was that it was based on exclusion, not inclusion. Teams at risk struggled with investment because it was seen as a three-year deal that could be taken away if the seats were the wrong colour, or whatever. It should have been once you're in, you're in, subject to remaining solvent.

When a team wants to join, merely present a business case. Subject to player quality (expand the salary cap and overseas quota), the league can cope with a fourteen team league, as it currently has a 30 game season. You would then have a 26 game season, to allow space for play-offs.

The only questions to resolve are:
1. how to expand
2. how to keep it exciting at the bottom when the top is sorted

In terms of expansion, a conference league could be adopted. East and West. Play each team in your own conference home and away, and home or away from the other. Top four from each go into the play-offs, similar to the old style but points determing position.

As it expands, go to three. Top two from each, with two wild cards (ie, the two best of the rest).

One of the conference leagues could quite easily be an overseas conference.

14 team Super League, no relegation, Toulouse and Toronto in.

Why do we need to keep the teams at the bottom playing for something. Don't like this whole idea that every team needs something to play for through the whole year.

All sporting competitions has teams who end middle of the road. No idea why super league has to be different.

But the ones that people turn up in numbers to watch don't. Middle of the road in the Premiership is different to being out of the top 8 running half way through the season. £25 becomes a lot to pay for a match that isn't much more than a friendly.

No, but you have done.

Really? Prey tell....

Or continue making a show of yourself. Either one is fine with me.