Fantastic

The RFL have got the 'Rugby League of the Extraordinary' adverts running this weekend on ITV, at half-time during the FA Cup games. I thought the viral ad from afew months ago was brilliant.

Both positive steps in the right direction.

That's a good advert. IMO the RL fans from other sports/'celebrities' are a bit underused in getting it promoted/respected, so the Wiggins link is a good move. There are quite a few others out there, but for some reason it still seems to be this 'best kept secret in British sport' attitude when you hear anyone talking about it. Man Utd always seem to have several players who are fans and are amongst the most famous people on the planet, yet the most we seem to get is the odd tweet, a Clare Balding comment during Challenge Cup coverage, or whats-her-chops on SL Show (the latter two being largely redundant as they are overwhelmingly preaching to the converted).

I think that what is needed is to try and get people talking in a positive light about RL on non-RL specific sports programming if possible, or even just snippets of famous faces talking about RL in the ad breaks of coverage of their own sports. That's going to be the best way of reaching people who don't already watch the sport, and hopefully get them curious and willing to give it a go. It's clear that plenty of people within sport have an interest in most sports in general and RL in particular in some cases, and fans similarly tend to follow multiple sports, so the game needs to exploit this and tap into followers of other sports and get RL on their list of favourite sports.