Rotarua is a small town with about 70,000 people....32,000 blokes.....not exactly a League Hotbed. Wellington managed to get a decent crowd through marketing and networking with the clubs in the region.......Rotarua was never going to be a good crowd........NZRL should have maybe played the game on the south Island...or back at Wellington.....I reckon another 20k would have been possible at the cake tin.......and the Junior Kiwis comeback would have been worth the ticket price on its own!!!!

Week 1- England v PNG, NZ v Australia
Week 2- Australia v England, NZ v PNG
Week 3- NZ v England, Australia v PNG

Hindsights a wonderful thing

Certainly is and I've got bucketloads


That was the fixture list I wanted before the 4 Nations started.
You know a thing or two about marketing (that's the rumour anyroad), how can rugby league continually make such a monumental balls up of such a straight forward thing?

Isn't that the lineup we had at the Four Nations last year (with France taking PNG's place, obviously)? I seem to remember the Aussies -v- Kiwis game as being the first one (and probably the best one to be honest). Those two should go head to head straight away because they are most likely to be the teams in the final. Who on earth is going to watch the same game twice in a week? Not me, that's for sure! I can't see the paying public in Australia doing so either.

It hasn't got much to do with marketing (though that is deficient), as marketing is just a symptom of the two problems.

The two issues are (1) misinformation and (2) lack of exposure.

Almost every problem in rugby league comes back to those two things...

Without wanting to attract abuse from certain quarters, there is an organisation based in Dublin that the International League board could do with keeping an eye on. Since I started watching League I have always wondered how a game that is so much better remains the poor relation on the international and English stage.....and I always come back to the 1 thing that stands out about League......it seems almost afraid to market itself.
I am not saying that millions need to be spent, but simple tactics, planned well in advance and executed on time can raise the awareness levels for the game....simple fixture planning (as with yours), allocated marketing budgets and setting up channels of communication that cost nothing.
The Kiwis v England game used "contra" marketing with the local paper, radio stations and regional free sheets.......prizes, tickets, shirts etc were used. TV was funded centrally and was pretty much SKY heavy in that they pushed the games on their own channels.....
Local clubs who play in the WRFL competition were used as routes to market and there were various "bus-trips" from some of these clubs which attempted to stop at every pub on route to the game

......the result of a load of hard work was a crowd 25% up on the last League test played at the cake tin...
Rotarua was a big error in the planning of this tournament....it was never going to sell well....and the double header at Eden Park was/is a gamble......it is a pig of a stadium to get to and now it's a dead rubber it will be at least 5k down on what it could have been........
The positive from this years tournament has to be the Wellington crowd........it was nearly double the Australian gate for the Parra game and it showed that League has a place in the area........with only a free ticket Lions game, all blacks v South africa and finals soccer attracting bigger crowds to the stadium this year....

Misinformation and exposure.

eh?

Not you.

Just what our problems come back to...including yours at Quins.

As many will tell you on the Quins Boards, I have banged on about this for nearly 10 years now.......and even after meetings with both the club and the RFL the club failed to do anything of any substance......as much as people can blame media bias as a root cause to the lack of coverage/exposure, you really have to put in the effort and sadly, Harlequins Rugby League and the London Broncos failed miserably to do anything about this.
For many years I worked in Sales and Marketing which has now morphed into just Marketing.......I have heard every excuse in the book from sales guys who miss targets, but David Hughes recent plea to the RFL is up there with the best.......fact is, the club has been badly managed from top to toe...nobody has ever been accountable for the terrible crowds and I can only hope that the RFL, as part of their "assistance" to Quins RL take 100% control of the marketing of the club.

With regard to uk League in General........the RFL have turned the game into a profitable entity.......the next step is to kick on and get more fans through the doors......there should be a central marketing team in place and every club should be made contribute equally to it's finance. This team should be responsible for working with the clubs individually and as a group to raise the profile of the game......I would suggest that poncy marketing degree students who have worked in cushy jobs are not suitable for a role in this team.....but hard and heavy hitters who would be paid on performance.
11.500 is about the average for SL games over a season.......15,000 should be the target IMO...25% increase over 3 years.

As for the Media.......f()ck'em. there are enough amateur clubs and players, existing fans and local people who have simply stopped going to games ALONG THE M62 to fill every ground for every game.......word of mouth, friend get friend, commission to amateur clubs for ticket sales etc......mobilise what you have before you start handing over money to "the smoke and mirrors brigade". If everybody who goes to a game brought 1 person with them...........you'd have an average gate of over 23,000 per game.....only premiership wendyball would be bigger in the UK........and the 3rs in the media would soon be sitting up and begging. IMO that is.

Aren't those two things directly related to marketing though?