Rfl need to look at staging the competition in a smaller venue so it does not look so stupid on television,there is no way i would sit and watch 4 games of rugby straight after each other,once my team has played i would most likely go and find the nearest pub,a ground like Bolton (Reebok) or DW stadium would be perfect but the hotel situation could be a problem !!!!

not at my school owd cock! I was in the same form as william hague at wath grammar school 72-79!

my wife however, was indeed a student of said sheeite hole!

go on then! Name and shame - who's your bro and sister in law??

Total attendance over 2 days in a national capital of a country that has no pro RL = over 50,000
Revenue generated for the game = ticketsales (?£half a million or more) plus tv money (?tens of thousands)
Media coverage = all weekend on Sky, most of the weekend on 5live, fair amount in the national newspapers

Not a failure by any stretch. We are the only sport that does anything like this at its highest level... Twickenham's 7s is the closest elsewhere... imagine soccer trying to get the fans from all its Premier League clubs to hang out in one arena? Lol. The event does an awful lot to promote RL as a family sport, and as an innovative and attractive sport. Empty seats don't reflect badly precisely because there are so many games in a short space of time (same as Twickenham's sevens, in fact...).

Capitals (Edinburgh, Cardiff) have the hotel capacity to cope with Magic Weekend... not all that many other places do. Early season is too risky with the weather. Late May would compete with the footie playoffs for airtime.

The event is great, and successful, which isn't to say it couldn't be better and bigger, but let's get some sense of perspective rather than just knocking our sport for doing something different. It makes money, raises profile, projects the right image, and the people who go (almost 4 times the average for a single SL game) enjoy it. I don't see it as a development event for the host city per se, but much more a showcase which more than pays for itself and brings the values and skills of our game to a wider (media) audience.