Warrington is only 15k, thanks for pretending your paying attention.

Did well to get 5k glorified training session

Of course there are people on RL Fans who won't have the RFL held responsible for anything ever, I notice they are somewhat quiet on this thread, of course it could always be the clubs fault ?

Indeed, it's just a pity that those being very well paid to run our sport are just not seeing what is right in front of them.
Brian Barwick was at the game and surely, he has to go back to HQ and ask what the F### is going on.

They (The RFL) are losing money and events (or non events like Wednesday are an indicator as to how the sport is doing and the bald truth is, not very well at all and there just appears to be a total malaise all over the game.

How the hell can we expect blue chip sponsors to want to invest in such a mickey mouse organisation.

It appears that those right at the top of the game are happy to take their wedge and deliver nothing in return, it's pathetic.

I'm guessing I'm one who falls into that bracket, so I'll bite.

I've never said that the RFL should be immune from blame or criticism, and I've never said that it is not without its faults. My issue is and always has been how the RFL is used as a lightning rod for problems with the game where the clubs have either a shared or greater level of culpability.

Yes, Wednesday was a shambles, but let's not pretend that this was in any way some sort of blue-ribboned event where the world's best were putting on a show. It was a glorified training session that was never going to attract the sort of audience that someone at BMW, Audi or Land Rover would be falling over themselves to get in front of.

The fundamental issues are that we have a poor product and that we're trying to sell it to the wrong people. Does the RFL have some reponsibility for that? Undoubtedly so, but that responsibility is shared with many other stakeholders. The RFL is not responsible for the marketing, the matchday experience, ticketing, merchandising and the player quality at the 12 Super League clubs - and they are all bigger factors in how successful this sport is than how Red Hall promotes a glorified warm-up game.

Yes, the likes of Barwick et al need to start paying for their seat, but we shouldn't let that hide the fact that there are many others who are not pulling their respective weights to a similar degree.

Sorry Bramley but, the responsibility for "selling" events like Wednesday DOES sit with the RFL and whichever partners they choose to market /sell the event (and paying whoever they do to organise the broadcast).

I think that Leigh did their job very well, staffed the bars, stewarding etc, etc.

Dont let The RFL off the hook as this gives them an excuse for next time.

Whether England are playing France, Australia, Shaw Cross Sharks doesn't matter.
I realise that they will throw a lower budget at marketing games against "lower" opposition but, this was a full international game and what they did (or didn't do) is just so bloody poor and, it's a symptom of how "good" they are.

Where have I said that I'm letting the RFL off the hook?

Don't fall into the trap of seeing Wednesday night as the result of a one-off failing. It's the result of a series of issues over the medium-long term that have resulted in this sport having a lower profile in the media, a declining audience, declining player pool, a declining commercial influence and a generally poorer product to sell. EVERY stakeholder in this sport carries responsibility for that. For two long the entire sport has been selling itself to fewer and fewer people, people who are only interested in buying tickets if there is a discount to be had, and it has been trying to sell what many percieve as an inferior product (both in terms of what we used to sell, and what other sports sell). Wednesday night is what happens when you try and do that for too long.

Can the RFL throw more at promoting England v France in Leigh? Absolutely, but there's also an return on investment to be had here. The product on offer clearly wasn't strong enough to attract the current RL-watching audience and if you're going to spend money on attracting a new audience, is England v France really the game you want to try and hook them with?

By all means judge the RFL on Wednesday night, but there is a much bigger picture to look at here.

There definitely is a bigger picture, although RL is in danger of not being in the picture at all.
I agree that everyone in the game carries some responsibility for the lack of profile.
However you suggest there was little interest from the current RL audience but, they need to know that there is a game on in the first place and I know 100's of RL fans and many of them didn't even know this fixture was taking place ??

Indeed, had it not been for the selection of the 2 lads from Wakefield, I may not have known either.

Having then found that it was taking place, I tried to register with ourRL and the system didnt work !!
The ticket line was only open till 5, but, there was no way of actually knowing this and then their own system crashed.

The bottom line is that NOBODY is banging the drum with the various media outlets, certain newspapers no longer cover the sport at all and even the BBC have us so far down the shaft that we lack exposure.

I dont know where Eric Perez has disappeared to but, he certainly managed to generate interest in RL in a country where the game had never featured and we are severely lacking somebody like that over here to whip up some interest and at least keep the game on the back pages of the papers and occasionally on TV.

And this is where we find some common ground. As much as the earlier posters had be down as a "the RFL are blameless and this is all the club's fault" type, there's a lot of culpability on the RFL.

If you're hanging your broadcast hopes on a mobile app, the app needs to be stress-tested long before the event - that's basic. Making it easy to buy tickets? Ditto.

Personally I did know about the game, and I've received enough marketing around it through email, social media ads and so on for me to make a decision not to bother with it.

But as we seem to agree, this is part of a long-term malaise that both the RFL and the clubs have to carry the can for. We have a declining audience, we try and sell to an audience that repeatedly shows an unwillingness to buy, and the perception of the product is poor.

This was a weakened England team vs a weak France team on a Wednesday night, held in a town that most people would probably struggle to point to on a map. I'd take some convincing to believe that such a proposition would appeal to more than 5-6k paying customers. The RFL needs to use its budget for this sort of thing strategically. There's no-little return to be gained fromt throwing excess resource on a game that holds little appeal to either the existing fan base or to new audiences - especially with a three-match series with NZ around the corner.

People commonly confuse advertising and marketing on this forum and when they talk about "marketing" they actually mean advertising. But all of the advertising in the world does not make a poor product worth buying - it just talks about that poor product to more people. England v France in Leigh on a Wednesday night is a poor product. The game needs to make itself more marketable, and that's the responsibility of everyone involved.

Something that has to be done is to have tickets for ALL RL events sold through the clubs, something that the other code is very successful at.
They allocate tickets right the way down the RU pyramid and those clubs that are successful in selling these tickets gain priority for the "important" games, hence there is a desire from the clubs to do their bit.
As an absolute minimum, all SL, Championship and League 1 clubs should be involved in getting their fans to buy tickets to Internationals, Cup Finals, Magic, Summer Bash etc, obviously keeping a certain number back for supporters of the actual finalists and this should go down through the RL pyramid, with some kind of "reward" for those clubs that are successful in selling tickets.

Reading Bramley and wrencat arguing. Is painful as to a large extent theyy are agreeing with each other.

There are some fundamental issiues that no one yet seems to be able to come to a conclusion yet.

I9t is like Brexit everyone is arguing but no one is saying what they want and what the consequences will be.

The fundamental issues which Need addressing are

1/. Who runs the game to clubs or the RFL at the minute they are in my view pulling in different directions

2//. Is the on field product good enough . my view is no.. A good game f RUs now better than your typical game of RL.
What needs to be done to make it better.

3/ does the game need. p and R or franchising

4/ do we need expansion or consolidation

5/ how can we. Make internationals more meaningful.

I Wouldn’t pay good money to watch England B Muller France B. ( I reckon we could pay PNG TO COME over and make more money

6/. How can we make England /GB more competitive against the top teams to improve the national profile of the team

7/ how can we address injuries and player burnout.

Once we sort. The above issues out we can argue about why fans did not attend and who is responsible for marketing

There was me thinking that discussing and acknowleding the views of other was the sign of good discussion. Duly noted, it won't happen again