Given some rather poor attendances, you can't say they have really embraced this world cup up North. It's not as though the prices are particularly high (I can pay £100 a pop to sit in Fulham's new stand). Maybe keeping most of it up there wasnt the best of ideas. Not seem much on TV audiences other that 1.8m max for England's 1st game which isn't great.

Sure I read somewhere Dutton was saying there won't be much profit from the event which if true is shocking but perhaps it might get through to some people just where in the pecking order RL is.

Sub 100,000 (97) for the 14 games xcluding England thus far. Makes you wonder where the 60,000 weekly SL/Championship fans have been?
Ticketing has been a problem, as has the overall marketing. You get the impression that once the BBC took the rights, the organizers thought their work was done.
But a world cup averaging 6,600 excluding the hosts isn't good by any comparisons.

So just under 19k at the 32k capacity Bramell Lane. Not a good look on TV. They are I believe someway behind England Women's Euro attendence figures, which probably sums it up.

To be fair, across many sports down here crowds have been decidedly average post covid.
A conversation I had with a contractor about next years women's FIFA WC here was terrifying. The idea of getting 30 or 40,000 fans to a game is a real worry when you see how the Women's Union has gone. Same with the T-20 across the pond....sports will have to work much harder over the next few years. Shows the value in what I've been preaching for 20+ years....attract fans, treat them well and they get in the habit of coming back. Ignore that simple principle and end up with fewer than 300 members and sub 1k gates looking like Warrington reserves

There's no profit becausem after the hosting rights have been paid to the International RL, the tournament is running on a cost-basis. And we're playing this thing in the midst of a major economic situation. Those are the only things I'll defend Dutton on.

Meanwhile...the website is a joke, buying tickets is ludicrously difficult (you can't even pick a bloody seat!), prices are too high when you consider you're playing most of the games in the same handful of towns and therefore asking the same people to fork out for each game, and the placement of fixtures is insane (Tonga v Cooks at Boro?). All of that falls at Dutton's feet. He's not done a good job at all.

I know the Broncos move to Wimbledon happened a bit late, but I think a group game at Plough Lane may have drawn a decent crowd

It might well have done, especially if it involved NZ or AUS. Sadly with all games bar 2 up North it looks like the RFL have given up on the capital and the South.

Not sure what can be done for the South, but regarding the capital; Colchester, Winchester, London...... Leigh! You heard it here first!!

Wasn't the location of the games down to the "Northern Powerhouse" thing? Wasn't funding reliant on staging the games up there? (These are genuine questions: I'm not 100%)

The pricing strategy for the tickets looks like it was a mistake. Playing multiple games at the same venue definitely was.

Come on, Bongser, you know full well Leigh it isn't going to be the capital any time soon.
Given your username, I thought you'd know in advance; it's going to be Tyldesley.

Correck (sic), Benny. Bongs also no longer has a railway station but The Bridgewater Canal (The Cut) "flows" through Leigh - and very close to LSV. It's gonna happen!

Correct. The hosting rights are essentially "anything that is left after the bills are paid goes to development"....so if cities bid to host games and TV companies paid for rights etc, all that money, less operating costs are the fee.



As often is the case, when times get tough, Rugby League fans think they are the only ones feeling the pinch...try and buy a ticket to England v the All Blacks at Twickenham later this month...even the £3k hospitality is all gone. QATAR will not be deemed "too expensive" and neither will a Tuesday Champions League match for the thousands of soccer fans from the UK who regularly make mid week trips, but ask someone from Hull to go to Leigh to pay £25 to watch top class international players and it becomes a "cost of living" excercise.

And the Norther voters swallowed it, Hook, Line and Sinker, delivering the show of a government who fresh from mishandling a pandemic causing hundreds of thousands of deaths now want to give tax breaks to the super rich at the start of a recession.
Still. At least Corbyn didn't get in. That would have been a disaster

Politics? I'm not sure that should be discussed on this forum (even though I'm inclined to agree with you, for once )

For a start, I'm not sure how we can blame David Hughes for any of it...