On this I’d agree with you,the clubs in super league have no one to blame now bar themselves for all matters it seems to me.

So it’s up to the gang of twelve now,

Really? Trinity fans blame non-heartland Clubs for Trinity being skint, that really is a new one on me .
As far as fans complaining about the lack of Catalans fans through the gates because it creates a crap atmosphere compared to the rest of the games, well I've heard that from every set of fans, there's a Hull KR fan and a Cas fan even on this thread. I think all fans except that Catalans don't bring anyone and get on with things, it just doesn't create the most attractive fixture to look forward in the calendar for some fans. Personally, I care less as long as we get the win tbh.

Away fans do create a better atmosphere , which in turn makes any team sporting contest a more attractive event

People can point out how different it is in other sports in other parts of the world , but in our sport in our country it is a factor

Personally I'd be going out of my way to attract as many away fans as possible

Perhaps we have too much choice. American school/university sports can have 20 or 30 thousand home supporters and no away supporters simply because travel is impossible and there are few other outlets in widely spread communities.

I spend some time in France and as a result get a lot of French adverts. It was interesting to see that the French Top 14 Rugby Union teams have been selling most tickets for 8 Euros over the holidays when they have little competition from football which closes down for a mid winter break. As a result Lyon RU were able to fill Gerlan which they took over when the football team moved into a new SOTA stadium. It is almost a perfect storm with a well funded team playing in an improved stadium at a time when there is little competition. Of course we are happy to play in ancient stadia in front of a few thousand.

NO , we aren't HAPPY , but without the type of income other sports have via broadcasting , we struggle to emulate them

If you believe it is easy , them tell us hw to do it

Forget this idea that marketing and promoting a sport needs massive budgets or the right school tie, because it doesn't. At it's heart, it's pretty damn simple:
Step 1 - Identify and segment the audiences that you want to target.
Step 2 - Find out everything you can about those audiences.
Step 3 - Create something that those audiences want to buy (contrary to popular belief, this isn't about trying to get people to buy something that they don't want to).
Step 4 - Tell those audiences about it and make it easy for them to buy it.
Step 5 - Keep them coming.

Unfortunately, most clubs seem to struggle with step one, which is the easiest bit, never mind steps 2-5. I honestly believe that if you asked the 12 Super League clubs which audiences they were targeting, at least half wouldn't have a clue.

I know people think I bang on about this sort of thing, but it really isn't that difficult or expensive to do at the sort of scale we're talking about here. When you have club chairmen on record as saying that his club struggles to sell hospitality, yet doesn't even have a page on his own club website about their hospitality products, it's an insight into the level of competence or effort that we're dealing with here.

The RFL has made a big thing about tapping into "the event market" and how modern sports fans expect things like fan parks, yet our idea of a "fan park" is having that prick from Rugby AM shouting at people from the back of a trailor. That's not appealing to anyone who currently does buy into the sport, let alone people who we're trying to attract from outside our bubble.

It just seems that, instead of even attempting to do something proactive and effective, too many clubs are simply relying on dads and grandads to drag along the next generation of fans. That's not sustainable and if we weren't talking about sporting clubs, we'd probably be in agreement that any business that relies on that for their next generation of customers deserves to die.

Good morning grumpy. I did not say that it was easy. Also any fool can see the disparity between our case and the example given. A perfect wave is a rare event and we missed one when we went to summer rugby and money was avaliable. As for us today we need a plan. It would help if we had a clear vision starting with simple ideas like having a functioning reserve set up or equivalent and binding improved standards for stadia. Remember that the modern NRL came out of a bloody civil war based around new media. The winners caused wholesale change but were backed up by a comprehensive media empire which allowed the changes to work. That boat has sailed but there will be new opportunities. Your answer would seem to be more of what is failing us now.
I am not suggesting that I can say what will work but I can say what is not working. We have falling gates and a lower media profile. Every time I log in to this site I get adverts for Rugby Union. Where are the ads for The World Club Challenge? Where do we show that we have any idea how modern media works. Our BBC page does not change for days at a time so eventually we get relegated our of the list of banner headline sports for mobile media and our profile goes down again. Amongst all of the teams in SL we cannot centralize information to produce a daily changing story that promotes the game, especially when transfers deals are being done, rather than leaving it to the elves at the BBC. Over the last two weeks the BBC has carried four rugby league stories, they were Scott Moore, Price, Drinkwater and contract extensions at Wigan. We should be bombarding the public with information. None of this is expensive or innovative but it seems beyond us.

We have two clubs out of the 12 that you could say play in "decepit" stadia, yet crowds and profile are falling across the board. Wigan had their first sub-10k crowd for many years last season, and Huddersfield still have to give their season tickets away for peanuts.

Bootham Crescent is hardly Wembley, yet York seem to have had little trouble generating interest in what they are doing at a managable scale.

A new venue certainly helps, but it's an excuse that only goes so far.

We're hardly talking football wealthy are we? RL wealthy is actually local businessmen, large corporations with a local presence or a sponsor looking for somewhere to entertain his/her mates and clients on a weekend - I did it myself at Wakey for a couple of years, and I am not Roman Abramovich.

And as an aside - despite the eccentricity of Belle Vue, the hospitality bit is well run, very well equipped, and always rammed - so it is certainly possible. What the club does struggle with however, is paying fans through the gates - and that is most likely negatively impacted by the state of the ground, together with a number of years of mediocre results.

That said, I'm broadly with BR on this - most clubs run their PR & Marketing like amateur hour; they could and should do a much better job, rather than blame the RFL for all their woes. Where we differ, is that I think the RFL could do a much more by way of providing campaigns, expertise and materials that clubs could use for their own purposes.

I'll repeat the question you omitted to answer: what, in practical terms, can those two clubs do? Broaden it to other clubs if you wish and use York as an example by all means. I know nothing of marketing techniques, so a post containing solutions as well as the underpinning theory would be of interest.

I was thinking in terms of run-of-the-mill supporters rather than corporate. I referred to decrepit grounds merely because your results & Cas's have actually been more than respectable recently so I'd assumed - maybe wrongly - that the grounds were a factor in limiting crowds. I'm in agreement with both yourself & Bramley on your take on the clubs' responsibilities and while the RFL could probably do more it would take the inevitable kicking were it perceived to be marketing one club more favourably than a near neighbour.

I've said before that I don't think the RFL should market clubs - it should market the game and the competition in an identifiable, consistent way, and provide clubs with the material and training to jump on the back of that and do their own marketing in consistently branded way; a bit like they did with the Extraordinary Rugby campaign, which I maintain was good and played to the strengths of the sport - the freakishly tough athletes who play it. They could also do more in terms of supporting individual players to become celebrities - and exploit the high profile supporters of the game - including many football players and pundits who operate on their own bloody broadcast partner.

Local marketing is very much a club responsibility - and whilst some clubs are obviously good at it, some are just dreadful; a bit of central funding for the purpose, together with a professional network to share successes and upskill those lower achieving clubs, would work wonders. But it needs some coordination from the centre - which seems unlikely.