Absolutely correct, the biggest thing I notice from engaging with RL people compared to Football, Rugby Union, Cricket etc is the fact they appear to think the sport they are involved with is 'the greatest game of all' when it really isn't.

It is a decent watch and can at times be very exciting but the numbers speak for themselves. We have had a few premier league footballers tweet about it during TV games because a few thousand people don't mind watching it on a Friday night if there is no football on. Lets not pretend having celebs involved in promoting it will bring in new fans. It won't. In the same way I do not buy a bra just because I saw Kim Kardashian wearing it. I have no interest and no requirement for one in my life, despite what some nasty people say.

The way to 'grow the game' is from within. Junior participation is on the fall massively but if money and energy was channeled down into that area then you keep numbers up. Kids cannot attend games without an adult, so like it or not if junior player wants to go to a game his old man is going to take him and pay to get in. The same way I am not the biggest fan of Spiderman but I am going to Avengers Live this Sunday because my son wants to go. I am going to watch Championship football next week because my daughter has got into it in a big way and she wants to go to a live game.

Trying to get a web designer from Shoreditch to suddenly go to a game because Ricky Gervais got paid £200,000 to say RL is the best game ever would be like putting your money in a toilet.

I'm with you up to this bit. Growing the game from within is one way to do it, but I'm not sure it's the best way. By focusing on within, the game is naturally limiting its reach and appeal to the same well it's currently tapping.

Web designers in Shoreditch aren't not attending RL games because they're web designers in Shoreditch. They're not buying RL for a myriad of reasons but the bigger two (in my view) are that, firstly, the game doesn't offer the experience that they want and that secondly, for large parts of the year, RL is quite difficult to "buy". We hold one big event in the capital every year, occasionally hold a second, the only place the RL is reguarly played in is more than an hour away from many parts of Central London, the game mostly exists behind a TV pay-wall and merchandising is, in general, crap.

London is a competitive leisure market. There are hundreds of events going on every weekend. Some of those are very expensive, some of them are free. The Challenge Cup and RL as a whole is competing with those events. You can dismiss people going to those events as "not interested" or "not typical RL fans", but relying on "typical RL fans" is why the CC Final is where it is today. The "typical RL fan" isn't really a thing any more in the same way that "typical working class people" aren't a thing any more.

The solution to this starts by the game actually understanding where the next generation of fans are coming from and the audiences that the game wants to attract. When you do that, you can start to understand what they want and how you can both meet and exceed those expectations in the experience we provide - not just on the field, but off it as well. That's the difference between advertising and marketing.

Some fans are going to come "from within", but that only gets you so far. The game can't keep relying on generations of dads to keep dragging their reluctant kids along.

That's a great idea, and if the 1895 cup final featured Bradford, Widnes, or Leigh for example, there might be 20,000+ in attendance.

Sydney is a rl city..... Yet the AFL sydney swans draw more than any NRL side in town. NRL crowds are pittyful in terms of the supposed massive game it is, but what they do very well in aussie is sell events.... ORIGIN and the GF are must see events and that's what the RFL need to do with the CCF....... make it a must see event.

What a ridiculous assertion. Did you know that there are only two (2) AFL clubs in Sydney, but nine (9) rugby league clubs in Sydney? So the allegation that the AFL Sydney Swans draw more than any NRL club, even if true, still proves nothing. The total attendance at nine NRL home games far exceeds the total attendance at the two AFL home games. That is the relevant comparison. You surely knew that, even though you live in New Zealand.

1. I did know that
2. I also knew that as a proud shire boy, you'd bite








3. Greater Western Sydney drew bigger crowds in 2019 than Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks


4. The AFL drew 7.5 million fan to games last season compared to 3.175 million to the NRL, but being a chippy shire boy, you already knew that

I don't disagree with anything you say, it's all very very thoughtful stuff.

But I think we [i"adapted to the market"[/i by creating the Grand Final - iconic stadium, massive crowd and atmosphere and you don't have to travel over 200 miles and then navigate yourself through London where we've all probably been many times before (unlike years ago) all for 80 minutes. I cannot think of any pre-match entertainment that could get me going there unless perhaps Elvis isn't dead and he does his comeback show before the match, or more unlikely the Gallagher brothers do a one off Oasis gig.

As for the day out element boy did I enjoy Magic in Edingburgh and Cardiff, and even a trip to the Etihad, plus Newcastle was a great idea. The Magic weekend is three matches and a day of partying with mates or family. That package beats the cup final which as an event is probably now a distant third best to the Grand Final and Magic.

Sure we can re-brand and make changes - and your post certainly prompts us all to do this, the only problem I have is I cannot think of anything they can do with the Cup final at Wembley that would get me to go there, and for me the way the game has gone with the Grand Final and Magic Weekend is to actually shoot themselves in the foot as regards wembley, but that wound was well worth suffering as we have two bigger and better events instead.

We used to sell Wembley out because (GB.v.Aussie tests apart) it was the only big day of the year. For me ( and I have tried so hard to think of something which your asking us to do) but no matter what you do with it for me, it will remain third rate to Magic and Old Trafford. We keep it as it's one of the few RL events that gets on terrestrial TV and therefore it advertises the sport to a large national audience - something we neeed when we are usually tucked away behind the paywall!!

I think the point about "too many events" is a very fair one, but this is where RL has essentially cannibalised itself because every event, whether its the Grand Final, Magic, Summer Bash, loop fixtures or the CC Final is being aimed at and is trying to appeal to the same, diminishing pool of people.

Not one of those events is really making a concerted effort to appeal to that new generation or new demographic. The people who "just want the 80 minutes" will always be there and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going to get your event to stand out to those non-typical RL fans, you need to offer something different and relevant - especially in such a crowded leisure market as London.

Your a very astute gentleman and nobody can argue sensibly with your analysis, all too often the stock tedious answer to improving paying attendances is "marketing, we need more marketing". The only problem with that is if you spend £10,000 more on the marketing and sell £5,000 worth of tickets more than you would have sold it's creates a negative result, you end up £5,000 out of pocket. Clearly making the event more attractive to potential paying attendees is the solution.

That stock tedious answer "Marketing" is to me insulting to the marketing managers of the Superleague clubs, it's not as if they haven't found solutions at some points. Keighleys cougarmania followed by Bullmania worked for a significant time, but all the extra razzamatazz without the extra Rugby league content eventually became boring. Having said that my ticket to the big season opener covers the content of two Superleague games, the debut of a Canadian side (yes I know but it will look good to people on a billboard) and the debut of one of Rugby's greatest. All in a wonderful new stadium with great facilities. It will be interesting to see if it sells out, but even if it does we must remember Mr. Argyle will be standing the major revenue loss of a 9,000 home crowd??? (Have I got this right?)

It is clearly a very difficult thing to do to make an event more attractive without increasing the costs/losses of staging it and thus reducing the profits??

I think the biggest mistake people make in that scenario is that they accuse "marketing" with "advertising". The say things like "I was in <insert name of city hosting RL event> and I didn't see any posters". That's not a failure of marketing - it's a failure of advertising.

Advertising is the big that shouts about what you've got. Marketing is the bit that works out whether you're shouting about the right thing, and determines how you adapt it to make it something that people want to (and can) buy. Marketing is the thing that Apple uses to convice people that they need a new phone that they never realised they needed. Advertising is the thing they use to tell them when to start camping outside the shop.

So in many cases, the point of failure is in the marketing. Not because the game isn't telling people about RL, but because it isn't understanding who it's telling and what they actually want. Many RL events are not very marketable products for a wide spectrum of people - they just don't appeal to people outside the core base and that's why events like Magic and Bash cannibalise the CC Final.

That's what I mean when I say that RL cannot 'advertise' its way out the problems it has got itself into. It can't fix this issue by just yelling "TGG" at people and making out that the people who can't see that are the ones that are wrong. You can't force people to like RL, but you can adapt it to make it something that more people will like.

If that makes the cost of doing business more expensive, then that's the modern reality that we're in.