Quote mikej="mikej"50% of people who watch rugby on Sky live in the South............. So what, it is estimated that nearly 90% of people who watch programmes on nudism wear clothes.
It is impossible to say what proportion of this viewing statistic is "out of curiosity" or "well i like sport and there is nothing else on". The only reliable measure of how popular something is, is are there people making an effort to go out and pay to watch it live.'"
Why do we inherently talk our sport down, whilst also dubbing it the 'greatest game of all'? What is wrong with any of those categories? TV money makes far more than gates ever will and the ultimate gauge of that is viewing figures.
Amateur rugby league is thriving in London and without wishing to upset anyone on here, it probably puts Warrington as a founding member of the northern union to shame. Across the south of England the game is spreading and it is important to remember that until relatively recently any amateur union player who dabbled at amateur RL was banned for life. Still today, many councils and schools refuse to allow League sides to use their pitches. We are starting to see some great players come through, compare that to Melbourne who gave a debut to the first home grown player in their clubs history just last year.
Nobody is denying that London Broncos are a nonsense at the moment. But when properly run there us huge potential. After everything over the last 18 months their atrendances are still better than most in the championship and not a million miles from what M62 clubs have seen at times. The RLWC showed a huge appetite for the sport across the country. The non traditional venues were packed with people who admire the sport but had never been to watch. The problem for me is that the Broncos are now widely seen as a failure and people like to watch winners, in any sport.