tada!

The Giants got screwed royally because their strategy of getting fans in was ironically damaged by their success and SKY.

The Giants pitched everything into getting kids and family's to games based on SUNDAY afternoon KOs.

Face painting, balloons, activities outside the ground.

It was paying dividends and crowd started rising.

We were developing a very large fan base of kids and women coming to the games. I would actually say that I felt that we had a higher proportion of women and kids than any other SL team.

But when we started winning and Sky started messing fixtures around we ended up with far too many games on evenings, Fridays Saturdays and Thursdays.

At every one of these games ONE THIRD of Season ticket holders did not attend.

Last season the club did a consultation on moving games to Friday nights but fans voted against it.

We had a marketing strategy that put all our eggs in one basket.

The basket broke

We now need a new strategy based on our games being on an evening and need to be appealing to a different demographic.

Pissed up teenagers and 20 year olds who want to come out on an evening.

Five years ago we went as a group of 20 families and kids. Now it is down to 8.

I don't get a season ticket because it is not worthwhile as I cannot make evening games regularly.

Weekday afternoons or bust for me

As a sport we need to get attendances up - there is massive difference in demographic between soccer fans and almost every other sizable sport. Soccer is dominated by young/middle aged single guys who will sacrifice everything to attend soccer games. RL/RU's audience is more family orientated with very different priorities. You have to make attending the sport value for money if you want to attract bigger crowds. Also we have been in troubled financial times where jobs and salary increases have been scarce especially in the north.

Some may think the sport is worth more but the laws of supply and demand suggest otherwise. Leeds the biggest club in Yorkshire have only managed to sell 8,500 season tickets and that includes kids, despite offering interest free credit and a near 25% discount. Do those who think its too cheap think increasing the prices would sell more tickets?

Also it is easier to attract sponsors if their brand/company is going to accessed by more people. Again for those who want to put prices up and the inevitable drop in attendances will that attract more or less sponsorship monies?

People need a reason to spend more - what is the reason? it certainly isn't quality on the field, nor is it more star players, nor is it better facilities so what are you charging more for?

I think there's also a massive lack of appreciation that RL sn't just competing with other sports, but other leisure activities as a whole.

The "Leeds should be getting 20k every week" thing gets thrown around a lot. After all, in a city of nigh-on one million, getting 20,000 of them to Headingley sounds easy.

But Leeds is one of the most competitive night-time economies in the country. Anyone who has walked around the city centre will know how much the leisure market has grown in Leeds in the last 2-3 years, despite the wider issues in the economy. Those expensive new bars, the flashy restaurants, the late night shops and the fancy new cinema that charges £13.75 a ticket are all vying for what limited leisure cash is swilling around.

Throw into the mix that Leeds has a much more transient population than most of RL land (for starters, there are around 200,000 students in and around LS6, most of whom has no sporting allegiance to Leeds whatsoever) and it becomes a lot more difficult.

Which comes back to the "who's job is it anyway" point. Every club has its own unique challenges when it comes to marketing their club, so the onus is on them to address them. Leeds have their own strengths and challenges, which are completely different to those at the other 11 Super League clubs.

I think the game needs higher visibility just as much as increased attendances.

We don't have enough high profile events to get people and keep them.

We have the GF and we have the CC final and the magic weekend but they are events mainly for RL fans.

We have very little in terms of grabbing attention. Very little that grabs people. We need more big games, more big names, more big events.

We truly are an accountants game, we sell our tickets because they're cheap, fans defend the SC because it's means we are being thrifty, they look at a players bang for their buck and not their superhuman athleticism, they defend the WCC venues because they were unambitious and safe and the clubs will make a small amount.

We need to focus less on what we are doing to help small struggling clubs keep going and remember that our game has some outstanding athletes and get them playing outstanding RL in a world class environment in front of thousands.

We spend far too long patting ourselves on the back because we have put on a small fight between two journeymen at a leisure centre in Hull and not lost everything instead of putting on the heavyweight title fight on the Vegas strip.

RL can only overcome it's issues by backing itself. By going big. By investing and by being the biggest and best Rugby comp in 5 he northern hemisphere with the biggest and best players, in front of the biggest and best crowds.

At the moment we are managing managing a decline and just hoping everything sorts itself out.

Thanks for the heads-up there, bramleyrhino. That makes sense. Still depressing, though, as you say.

The only time I've been to Huddersfield was to see England.

I agree to a large extent Smokey but I think we still need to be relatively cautious in the way we do things. We can't afford to lose money on things. The sport in this country is effectively still recovering from the disastrous 2000 World Cup.

Having said that I agree we need to think bigger on many things, especially internationals (I'm hoping and praying the England v NZ series includes at least 1 game in London and not just Wigan, Huddersfield & Hull), we also need to be smart about things too though.

C'mon the 2000 world cup was 15 years ago. According to the accountant the 2013 WC made more than the 2000 WC lost. We have just had what they tell us is a huge tv deal. We are launching a new structure

if now isn't the time to invest in our game, when is?

I don't care how many credible bidders for Super League there aren't or whether they do or don't strike fear into SKYs executives.

I will not be contributing towards the £200k a week wages of some Prima Donna, over privileged, pampered, cheating, poof baller.

Yeah it was 15 years ago. But it took long enough just to get the RFL's finances back on a decent footing which meant proper investment in the sport didn't happen for several years after it. We're still suffering from those years of effectively having no development money available.
Despite a good World Cup we're still only talking about a few million pounds which doesn't stretch very far. It's a start, but that's all it is. We need several successful World Cups in a row to make much impact in terms of finances.

So what money we have has to be wisely spent. As I said I'm not against us thinking big, but we need to be smart with it and not waste the hard-earned small pots of money we have.

Spot the homophobe.

Nigel's suits don't come off the peg....