You are confusing the populations of precise legally defined districts of London, and the district of Everton, with their broader geographic fan bases. Chelsea and Tottenham are famous areas of London which attract supporters from broader highly populated areas of southern and northern London respectively. Moreover many of these clubs' fans are located outside London, even outside of the UK!

Leigh's primary and basic legal relationship is with the Borough of Wigan, not the city of Manchester. Do you really think that residents of Leigh consider themselves part of the Manchester metropolitan area? Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal etc. are a part of the London metropolitan area.

Leigh is a very insular small town and suburban enclave which is unlikely to have many fans located even in nearby areas of Wigan Borough such as Astley, Tyldesley, and Atherton, let alone the legally separate town of Bolton which is outside the Borough of Wigan.

Do you think that Leigh has a single international fan club? Manchester United has many as does Liverpool and several of the various London football clubs.

Done it before and failed.. Next..

Really, when?

What the hell are you talking about?

Quote JEAN CAPDOUZE="JEAN CAPDOUZE"What the hell are you talking about?'" https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/th ... on-part-5/

Quote JEAN CAPDOUZE="JEAN CAPDOUZE"What the hell are you talking about?'" https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/th ... on-part-5/

This metropolitan area of Arsenal is where exactly?

Oh and lets not forget PSG..

The reason Tottenham and Chelsea draw fans from other areas of London is because they are football teams, not rugby league teams, which you clearly know as you point out their international fans. Do you think any SL team has international fans (not including ex-pats).

If there was a Chelsea or Everton rugby league club they would likely have no fans from outside there districts

The point is that you cant say that a particular club can never grow its size because of its area, if rugby league was the biggest sport in England and Leigh were one of the better clubs, they would attract plenty of fans from Manchester as well as all the towns you mentioned and you know it.

You’ve obviously never been on the m6 south bound a couple of hours before the likes of Wigan, Saints or Warrington play. It’s full of fans in their club strips coming to watch their teams

Regards

King James

I might be wrong but I am sure I heard that a French tv channel would be willing to pay a significant sum if SL could guarantee them a derby match between Toulouse and Catalan, and if this is the case then I would be okay with Toulouse being artificially promoted. If not then they can just go through the normal route of either the middle 8s or 1 up 1 down or whatever.

As for superbowl awareness, I noticed that Match of the Day constantly promotes the NFL highlights show and mentioned the superbowl yesterday.
Don't know why SL couldnt have put in some clause in their tv contract with the BBC that on the first SL weekend of the year Lineker had to say 'oh by the way, SL started this weekend and you can catch all the highlights at X time'.

If they've been on the M6 southbound for a couple of hours they must have a lot of fans north of Carlisle.

Other than a few adverts on 5 live, I'd heard nothing about the opening of SL. You never hear anything promoting the SL show.
And it's very rare that you get commentary on radio on anything other than the extra channels on digital (unless like me you can get radio leeds), and even then there's very little promotion of what games they're doing (i work alot of nights so radio commentary is all I can get).

And this is what I mean.
It's the start of the SL & Championship season. Everybody should have been out banging the drum, promoting the season and sport. Getting on radio, TV etc getting RL on people's minds.
But we weren't, just relying on the people who follow the sport.

Yes new clubs in other countries may help, but until we promote it properly I don't think it would make any difference. And if we don't have p&r, then clubs just drift along with no incentives for them, or crowds to want to come.