Given the oft-stated opinion that the UK SL quality player pool isn't big enough to expand to a 14 club SL, how is it intended to populate the North American teams, in the 'short' term, (say 20 years) until they develop their own talent?

To be fair those Latte's are pretty good and the food in the cafe is lovely! One of the best things Leeds did was link up with Leeds Beckett. The students use the facilities during the week for lectures and staff use it for meetings etc. All of who pretty much buy something there. Good facility management is that! Unfortunately I graduated 2 years ago and I miss those Thursday's at the stadium

Sports fans love to follow their team home and away - they want their weekly fix of live sports action. Like it or not, the typical UK RL fan isn't a wealthy individual, and additional travel costs are an important factor when deciding whether to go to a game or not. International travel would make this far worse, although a lot of fans do build in a trip to France into their annual holiday plans.

Expansion to other parts of the UK hasn't been historically been successful at attracting local folk to attend games there. It's easy to say that it's down to inadequate marketing, but all businesses by necessity have a cap on their marketing budget and there's a limit to what can be done. Plus, if the locals aren't interested, then they're never going to become regular attendees. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but not make it drink, and even if you could make it drink, you can't make it like it.

If we shift emphasis to TV too much, the danger is that crowd figures could start to tumble. If a good selection of games are on TV, then why would anyone without an existing allegiance to a team spend the time and money to go to a live game, other than maybe out of curiosity or just for a change very occasionally. Due to the likes of Sky, sports followers in the UK have become channel-hoppers. Fewer people (other than fans of one of the teams involved) sit down and watch an 80/90 minute game end-to-end. If it's a one-sided or boring affair, they'll flick to other channels and watch a bit of golf, RU, darts, snooker, etc. and they'll likely do the same when the adverts come on at half-time. They may, or may not, return to watch the 2nd half depending on what else they find to watch.

I'll agree that all clubs need to do to market themselves better, both within and potentially outside their postcode area, but I think you'll find that most clubs are trying to do this. With a limited budget, it's always going to be very difficult though. This is where the likes of Toronto, and probably New York if that happens, have the advantage of large slugs of money from their owners for marketing purposes.

TV deals are important, but could be counter-productive if overdone. Success in RL has generally been with the help of rich individual investors, and how we attract more of them to the game is perhaps the golden nugget that we need to find?

Spot on,well said Sparky. Mind you,you'll just get the usual (It has to be my way) Mr Bramleyapple marketing man, saying otherwise.

They're called opinions Cokey. People are as entitled to one as I am, and people are entitled to call mine out as I am theres. That's how discussion and debate works.

I've said it before that I'm more than happy for anyone who feels that the game can prosper into a commercially successful sport by focusing on the heartlands to explain how they would do that, and convince me why I'm wrong. I'm not stubborn enough to feel that I've got all of the right answers, and I'm willing to listen to and engage in any reasoned argument. Unfortunately, that's the point where [isome of[/i those people usually go scurrying off to their hidey hole and throw the insults around.

So come on Cokey; if my ideas to help the sport are grow, to attract, develop and retain talent, and to appeal to new audiences, TV broadcasters and sponsors are so wrong, what would you do differently to achieve all that?

Good post and it brings us back to the $64 million dollar question.
What do "we" actually want from the sport.

How many current fans want to see a "Super League" made up of 5 English clubs, 5 N .American clubs and 2 French clubs and what benefit will this "dream" league bring to the game of RL.
It's clear that professional RL in Canada and the US would be one hell of an achievement and should RL develop to a point where the game took hold in schools and colleges, that would be one hell of a success.
The follow on question would be, how could "we" make this happen ?

Right now, we are massaging Mr Perez ego, nothing more but there has to be a clear plan, not just a dream or wish list.

Getting back to the earlier question about some kind of international Super League.
IF N. America can be successful in creating 5 successful RL clubs, capable of competing in SL, their next move would be to have their own Super League and what happens then ?

The game in the UK would be decimated and nothing more than semi pro, with the exception of the 5 club lucky enough to make the cut but, what about the rest and where would the "big" clubs go IF the N. Americans want to do their own thing.

I think people have a slight misconception about what marketing is. It isn't, and never has been, about trying to make people like things that they don't like, or that they don't want to like. What it is about is developing a product, promoting that product, and making it easy for people to buy it.

At the moment, the sport just doesn't have a unique selling point any more. We used to claim that our USP was that we were a "family sport", when what we really meant by that was "we don't have a hooligan problem". But in 2018, how many sports have a hooligan problem? Even if you want to point to football, the sport has massively changed perceptions and cleaned up its act in that regard.

So what else do we mean by a "family sport"? That we're a "family day out?". If that's the case, do we honestly believe that places like Belle Vue, like The Jungle, like (until recently) Headingley offer what most families with leisure money to spend in 2018 consider to be a "family day out"? Does queuing in the car park at Salford scream "fun for all the family" when, literally across the road, you have a huge leisure complex full of restaurants, an aquarium, Lego Land and god knows how much else?

So what do we promote ourselves as? We can't claim to have the best talent, because we're losing much of it to other sports and leagues because we can't /won't pay them their worth. We don't have the quality of competition or that "edge of the seat thrill" to sell either - the average winning margin in Super League is higher than the Aviva Premiership, and the proportion of games won by one score or less is lower.

So there we have it. Step one of marketing - have a good product - and too many of the clubs have already failed. They're offering a product that is no better than what people can get elsewhere, they're voting for competition structures that they can't understand, and they're offering a fan / customer experience that is no better than any of the other million-and-one leisure pursuits that you can do with the family on a weekend.

I don't think it needs to be said that the clubs are crap at promotiong the product and telling people about it, and I've spoken before about clubs aren't making it easy for people to buy the product either.

As for TV, I don't think we should be seeing it as a threat. The sort of mentality you express there, whilst I understand where it comes from, makes me think of newspapers arguing that the internet will kill journalism. It doesn't, but it does require a new mindset.

Focusing on TV, or digital, or any other media is simply about getting people to engage in RL content. It doesn't really matter whether that is on the terraces on on the TV - the important point is that for that period of time, people are engaging with the sport through one medium or another. The more you can do that, the more interest you generate, and the more valuable our content becomes. You're right in that TV is more passive a medium, but it offers two big benefits - volume of audience, and it removes geographic barriers.

Look at how some US college football teams use social media to promote themselves - there's a lot that all sports (not just RL) can learn from that.

Don't mistake me.I know you have an opinion,that's fine,but it's become the same old monotonous post after post on marketing. I agreed with Sparky not you,and i have no intention of engaging with you as to why. That's all.

By denying p&r. Your denying them the opportunity to improve them selves. To give them a reason to improve.
Yes some clubs aren't ready/want SL. But to deny them the chance to improve or move forwards just seems wrong to me.

Toronto's stadium isn't all that (2 open stands along the side). And given the last 2 years you can't even play there the first 3 months of the season. But you aren't going to deny them. So why others on that bases.

Yes they should meet certain criterias. But I would focus more on the infrastructure rather than external. The financial rewards will come in SL.

Your right about trying to get a bigger pot.
But given what SL chairmen are trying to do with regards the Sky contract. And what Leneghan said about International RL. Aren't SL chairmen as guilty of not wanting to share the money? Or promote the game.
As Tommy Cruise said in that film, this franchise system will be all about the money. And what SL, the chairmen can get out of it. Nothing with promoting the sport, or moving it forwards in any way. And there's no proof that franchise's can do that. If they can great, but it seems to me that instead of incorporating it. We're relying on it.
And in my opinion this is what's damaging the game more.

Also,
If big clubs aren't relying on away support to a degree. Why have Leeds moved tonight's game and Cas to Elland Road. But not Widnes/Salford?

My posts may be monotonous to you, put at least there is some attempt at making a contribution to the discussion and to put forward ideas. Your contribution to any sort of debate seems to be to nothing more than clapping along to posts that say something that you like, and to insult those you don't. That, of course, is your prerogative, but it doesn't really make for a good discussion.

But if you don't want to engage with me that's fine. I'll keep taking to the grown-ups in here and I won't hold it against you.

Take it from someone who lived not more than 30 yrds from Griffin Park Brentford that you wouldn't have known the Broncos were there apart from a bit of match-day congestion. Once we got hold of the then marketing man (Rabbits warren's son Chris) and arranged for the club to get us some flyers printed, we got a bunch of volunteers to door drop the area......Griffin Park is the only ground the London Broncos left with more fans than they arrived with.
Marketing isn't always about an instant return, but it is key and the fact that the owner of the club refuses to spend any money on "his hobby" is 100% te reason why the club now plays in a lower tier and at a wedding venue! London had 5,000 at one stage......that's more than one or 2 heartland clubs managed in SL.....
Londoners will attend RL if you invite them.........but the debate about who's job it is to send the invites has set back the sport decades in the national psyche.

Moving games to Elland Road comes at significant cost to the Rhinos. Firstly, there is the cost of hiring the venue, and there is the loss of ancillary revenue from concession rents and wet sales.

The decision to move to Elland Road isn't about "away fans", but about what the club can sell to the people of Leeds. In the coming months the club is going to have a lot more premium seats and corporate areas to sell at Headingley, and the Elland Road game was the start of that sales push.

In the last two weeks I have driven past a digital billboard every day with Danny McGuire and Stevie Ward on it. The selling point for last night was all about the return of a local hero. The selling point for the Castleford game is a local derby, and a Grand Final grudge match. We don't have that 'story' for games against Widnes.

The club feels that it can sell those stories well enough to be able to take the gamble of taking on the costs that Elland Road comes with. It has nothing to do with away fans. (Judging by how much of the South Stand was open last night, you're looking at a generous estimate of around 2k Hull fans last night).

That if true is why the super league need hull kr for its fans

The Hull KR following last night was no more remarkable than most other clubs that Leeds will play this season. Hull KR have their merits as a Super League club, but there is no "need" for any club on the basis of how many of their fans will travel to an away game.

Last season the turnstyles at Headingley clicked just short of 250,000 times (249,671 to be precise). If Leeds were to repeat that figure again, 2,000 Hull KR fans would represent less than 1% of those tickets sold.

As I said earlier, selling lattes to students is probably more important to the club than selling tickets to away fans.

Having been at the game last night, I would say while it was hard to gauge how many there was around me, that you are roughly correct. Which considering that it was a thurs night, with the game on TV and dIre weather. Isn't bad. Add in the extras (ie drink,food,programmes etc). Would have meant if it had been at Headingley Leeds would have made a tidy profit.

Like I've said. Your right it shouldn't be all about away support.
But having away support there makes the whole experience of going to a game better.
You wouldn't have wouldn't have wanted that game to be Catalans for example were on TV all there would have been was an end of empty seats. Which hardly promotes the sport to a casual guy who turns on it on to have a look and thinks, well if people who supposedly love the sport can't be bothered going why should I? (The game was poor enough to put them off ).

This whole topic seems to have been changed from looking at the pro's and Cons into anfocusing on 1 aspect. In my opinion while the away support thing is one aspect. There are more important cons, like if Toronto continue to not be able to play at home for the first 3 months how's that benefit SL. What happens to the French Elite division if 2 sides are in SL. Why are not looking at this country to promote the sport first. Would the American sides if successful leave to start there own league. And what happens to SL if they do. Why aren't we willing to incorporate them into an existing structure, rather than just rely on them and change everything for them.

And why are SL chairmen not looking to improve the sport and funding into the sport. But on a pure money grab.