Best decision union ever made was to built HQ in London

The RFL cocked up the on the road games last time they attempted them.

As an exiled Wiganer living in Hartlepool at the time I was looking forward to going to watch Gateshead's home match vs Wigan. Gateshead had what was potentially their highest profile match of the year moved to Edinburgh as part of the on the road series. Absolute stupidity!

People in non-traditional RL areas are going to want to go to "events".

An ordinary regular season game taken on the road isn't an event. An international game is.

they obviously failed today with quins only managing the 80k for a club game - broncos would be over the moon with a crowd a 10th of that

Saracens will hold a weekly round game at Wembley in a few weeks with 60 + K present. Failure hmmm

These are events, not the grind of a weekly competition. Bit like saying well the CC gets 60k+ so RL must be really popular in London.

Every game is an event. We seem to have forgotten that but it is.

RL's big problem, and how we have managed to invent the worst league structure in professional sport, is that we try and find a silver bullet for everything, especially crowds. So we have and are trying to sell the entire season instead of just trying to sell the games. Which is dumb because it is a hell of a lot easier to sell one game than an entire season of them.

So what we should be doing is selling one event, then the next one, then the next one and the next one and the next and do that for the 30+ games a club plays per year

Except every game isn't an event. It's only an event if you make it one. To make it one you need to spend some money but also you need an underlying interest and, crucially, a market of people willing to attend that event who don't normally see those teams play.

We don't have that in RL. The only RL team that even comes close to that is Wigan, due to their past. But even with significant publicity Wigan v (for instance) Saints isn't going to get much more than it would at Wigan. Because any extra people you pick up in London is going to be affected by regular fans who don't make the trip down to London.
The reason it works in Union is that there is an underlying, low level interest in Union and a willingness to attend big events at big stadiums. Plus it's a (relatively) local club involved, so you get both the regular and irregular "fans" turning up.

The only way we can get a big crowd in London is for a final or international, because the regular fans will travel for it and the irregular fans can relate to it.

The only game, in my opinion, that might do ok (approx 20k+) is Wigan v Saints or Leeds.
But that's about what you'd get anyway at Wigan and probably less than what you'd get if you put the same amount of publicity into it as you'd have to do in London.

We just don't have the clubs to generate interest in London.

Spot on, the other thing to note is that Union does well promoting these events at Xmas time, a time of year when people act a bit odd! A combination of nostalgia, boredom or just wanting to do something different makes people go to sporting events, walks in the country, visit their local pub for the first time since last Xmas etc. You cant create that same atmosphere at any other time of year.

I bet thousands of the crowd at Twickers yesterday have no intention of seeing another game all season, the World Cup wi probably be the next rugby ground they enter. I'm not knocking Union for that, other sports have the same thing, as would RL of we still played this time of year.

Every game is an event. Its not only by definition an event, its reason for being is to be an event. Its only RL that seeks to underplay it . We have a huge market for the game. We do next to nothing to tap into it.

But in a way I agree, that we need to make people relate to it. I disagree that we cant, we can, and we need to.

Our desperation to make 'every game mean something' means that the game (as in the event) itself means nothing. We will have an entire competition next year where winning is entirely secondary to qualifying for another competition. Why care about who wins Leigh v Hunslet its all about getting promoted. Why care about Hull KR v Wakefield, its all about staying in the 8.

That is the big thing we are missing, finishing in the 8 isn't the event. Its the 23 games leading to that point which are 23 different events with different histories and narratives. That's what we should be selling, there is over a century of history in some games, Leeds v Wakefield matters not because it will make a 1/23rd contribution to where Leeds finish but because Leeds v Wakefield is already part of a huge picture, a huge narrative of clubs that have played hundreds of times.

and there are small, little things we can do to make that easier. Why don't we have a replay of the GF to kick off every season? Have it on a stand alone weekend and play it somewhere bigger. Doesn't need to be 60k, but surely we could sell 40k tickets for that? Wheres the heritage round? We have traditional easter fixtures but how much do we do to actually sell those out?


The game has spent a ton of time, and no doubt money promoting the new era, explaining how the structure works and trying to sell it to people, how much is being sent telling people who is playing in the first round? why should you care? and where you can buy tickets?

My daughter and her boyfriend were at Twickenham the other day. She is a Chelsea fan as well as an occasional bronco attendee....she did say that shed be embarrassed to take her boyfriend to a broncos game after that......quins got more than we did in nearly 3 seasons for 1 game.......
I've been saying it since I joined here......if you don't market it you may as well not bother.......

I do like the idea of taking big SL matches on the road. We need to be ambitious and I think it is refreshing to see that there is still some ambition within SL. Even if it's slightly misdirected in the piece above.

I quite like the idea of having the GF in London. I think that would be interesting. Although moving from Old Trafford would be a massive gamble. Just imagine if Ben Flower threw that punch in the capital. Mayhem.

of course the majority of the fans won't turn up regularly but the point is they have made the effort and given themselves a potential 70k new fans. they'll convert a fraction of these into regulars but its still a job well done

I wonder how much Quins & saracens spend on marketing these games. Seem to adverts all over the place for the games when I was down there.

Grand final in London won't work because teams only qualify a week before and that is too short notice for fans to arrange travel and hotels.

As for on the road I'd rather the Magic Weekend kept moving around, the Olympic Stadium and Liverpool being two possible venues.