Firstly, I'd say they do earn more money than the RFL.....not because of them having a better game,but because of them having a much better management in place. An example of this would be the 6 England internationals played at Twickenham in 2013 that will attract a minimum of 480,000 fans paying on average ₤65 a ticket...₤31,200,000 in ticketed revenue alone.Their domestic competition has similar attendance figures to Superleague, smaller TV audience, but a ₤5,000,000 a year naming sponsor.

We can only pray that the RFL has at least learnt one thing from the IRB over the last few years and that is the importance of FTA coverage.........ITV offered less than Uncle Rupert last time for 2011/2015 rights, but the IRB took the hit for the benefit of the sport in general.....IMHO, whilst Sky has been vital to the creation of Superleague as it is now, it has also prevented true growth that could be achieved by FTA coverage.

I thought that this thread was about RL World Cup ticket sales. It isn't. It's been taken over by a couple of overgrown schoolboys who want to score points against one another. Grow up.

Actually,if you re-read the thread, you'll see that I wasn't the one who first mentioned the other code.....I am simply answering the questions put tome and debating their values
BOT
The ticket sales to date are a worry IMO......I am happy to post a retraction/apology on here if the RFL managed to get 300k to the 28 games, but from a professional standpoint, the "extension of the early bird" offer, together with the declaration of 40,000 unsold seats for the final is not good.

Pursuing a strategy of FTA, and absorbing the reduced income thusly is all fine and well, but when the RFL are releasing development officers due to reduced funding, the opportunity to exploit extra coverage and an uptake in interest is going to go unmet surely.

It's a double edged sword. Yes, getting a few bob extra from SKY for the broadcast rights is a good thing, but there is a massive difference between 200k viewers on PAY TV and over a million on FTA. Also, there is a lot of stuff competing for attention in November next year.....wendyball, the other lot as well as the RLWC 2013.......having games on the BBC would be more beneficial in the long term IMO.

My advice would be to wait for the desperate sales pitch offering massively discounted World Cup tickets throughout the months of October and November.

Always a worry that one , I really dont understand the way they work , what exactly does ' extending ' a cheap offer achieve ? , it gives out completely the wrong message

But they don’t earn that money by beating any benchmarks set by us, and we don’t earn money by beating benchmarks set by them.

We are two different games. We don’t exist only in relation to RU, they aren’t the right to our left. We don’t need to measure the success or failure of what we are doing in relation to them. The success or failure of our World Cup should be judged on its own merits. If it makes money, if people enjoy it. It is a success and we build on that. Our benchmark is the RLWC in 2008, not the RU WC in 2011 or 2015.

Believe me, I appreciate the quality of some of the work done at the IRB and RFU. For some reason, at some time, everyone in RL seems to have forgotten the game exists at a professional level to bring in money. This is why I can never understand why someone would be against the expansion of club world challenge, or when RL fans moan about the Magic Weekend, or play-offs or cost of tickets (Which if anything are too low).[ They seem to want a fully pro game but someone else to pay for it. And yes FTA is integral to us, as a game and I expect that we will see the BBC as primary broadcaster for the WC and I think an expanded World Club Challenge on FTA every year, would be the biggest boost possible for the game in this country. But the success or failure of that isn’t in relation to RU>

Why? What will that achieve for me?

I want the RLWC to be a success, I want to see it, I want to see it next time as well so I don’t mind contributing to the cost of it. I hope they do make money off my money, I hope it is put back in to the game. The cost of the tickets aren’t onerous they are pretty fair, Im happy to pay full price.

This is just boring now, people who come on these pages without a single positive thing to say about the game. It's not about people 'like me' not wanting to hear anything negative said about RL because yes we know it's not perfect, but this constant putting down of the sport without a positive balance is tedious.

When people say wait for discounted tickets are they wanting tickets for free? PNG v France is £10 for adults. That is very cheap already. Also if you can get to both games at Craven Park they offer buy one get one half price so PNG v France and PNG v Samoa is £15.
Absolute bargain! To go and watch any SL club costs more than that.

Agree with this, tickets are cheap enough. No need to reduce prices.

Ticket sales will be so so.
English fans do not support International Games that well, for a whole different set of reasons neither do Australian Fans.

Yeah, you're right, we should pack in trying to improve the sport and just give up now. I'll fetch the cyanide pills.

This is correct.

World Cup tickets will have to be offered up for sale again at discounted prices (or even given away) or stadia will be embarrassingly half-empty or more throughout the tournament.