Why do Leeds have such poor away support? For a big city team they should be able to double their away following as well as generating 20,000 plus crowds at every home game. Are the marketing team not doing their jobs?

Whilst he appears to be fishing I will answer this properly.

Just talked about this on the VT. Too often the attendance thing is something thrown at the feet of the RFL and the same points are blamed.....league structure/meaningless games/playoff format/finishing position not important enough/quality of players.

But hardly ever have I heard anybody ask if the clubs themselves are doing enough to get backsides through the doors. It just seems nowadays the club tweet/put up on the website that the next home is against so and so this weekend, ticket cost £X amount, come turn up......it's all incredibly lazy by all clubs on the whole (Wigan tried harder for yesterday's game and it paid off) yet not a lot of finger pointing goes their way. I think the emergence and growth of social media has lead all clubs to become lazy in their marketing.

As for away support I think it's something that has happened across the board. IMO when I look at the away end at Headingley there doesn't seem to be the same amount turning up for most clubs as they were a few years ago. Considering 7 of Leeds' away games this year have been on Sky, if you go down that route of just staying at home to watch them then you've saved yourself a couple of hundred pounds there in ticket and travel money.

Because the regular season is seemingly irrelevant to the club

The finger definitely needs pointing at the clubs. I can't speak for everyone else, but Warringtons marketing is particularly poor. I never see anything around the town to promote matches, all I see is the twitter posts, which I could easily miss if they were posted at a time when I was busy. Clubs should do much more to market and promote the sport. I'm not sure why they don't really as it's them who would benefit.

If Leeds were to generate 20K plus crowds, it would only be at the expense of some other RL club. Aggregate attendances in RL have hardly altered during the past 50 years. The only difference is that since 1996, SL attendances account for a much higher percentage of the total at the expense of the rest of the game outside of the top echelon.

Let me illustrate with an example.

During SL's best ever attended season of 2012, the aggregate attendance throughout the game was as follows:

[u2012 season[/u
Super League= 1.95 million
Challenge Cup = 211k
Championship 1 & 2 = 191k
National Rail Cup = 39k
TOTAL = 2.4 million

[u1989/90 season[/u
Division 1 = 1.18 million
Division 2 = 516k
Challenge Cup = 286k
Regal Trophy = 190k
Premiership Trophy = 118k
Yorks Cup = 107k
Lancs Cup = 79k
TOTAL = 2.5 million

Were Leeds to average 20K instead of their current 15k (which is based upon a period of consistent success BTW), it would be at the expense of other local RL clubs not doing quite so well, and whose attendances would drop by a combined total of around 5k.

Rugby League doesn't really know how to expand beyond either it's geographical boundaries or, more importantly, it's core Irn Bru, Foxy Bingo, Payday loan and Poundshop demographic. RL clubs always expand at the expense of neighbouring clubs as the bandwagoner elements migrate accordingly.

Leeds did average 17.5 K in 2007 and kept over 17000 for about 3 seasons i thought at the time I don't think they can keep this figure long term.We had quite a few capacity games in that period The bulls fixture at that time was a guaranteed 22k.

[uLeeds home attendances 1994/95 to 2014[/u
94/95 - 187,440/15 = 12,516 =#FF0000*
95/96 - 115,945/10 = 11,594
1996 - 94,395/11 = 8,581
1997 - 121,078/11 = 11,007
1998 - 133,801/11 = 12,164
1999 - 202,232/15 = 13,482
2000 - 177,435/14 = 12,674
2001 - 180,330/14 = 12,881
2002 - 170,193/14 = 12,157
2003 - 179,884/14 = 12,849
2004 - 224,390/14 = 16,028
2005 - 238,619/14 = 17,012
2006 - 219,478/14 = 15,677
2007 - 228,259/13 = 17,558
2008 - 221,555/13 = 17,043
2009 - 205,058/13 = 15,774
2010 - 199,619/13 = 15,355
2011 - 196,192/13 = 15,092
2012 - 194,320/13 = 14,948
2013 - 197,556/13 = 15,197
2014 - 195,880/13 = 15,068

=#FF0000* Leeds actually pulled in an extra 94,370 fans at Headingley from cup games and a tour match against the touring Kangaroos in 1994/95 taking the aggregate for all competitions to 282,110 at an average of 12,266. A Challenge Cup game against Workington claimed an attendance of 15,452. A similar fixture would struggle to draw half that figure these days.

Not difficult to work out when all the bandwagoners jumped aboard. Not difficult to work out when a fair few buggered off too

Considering the worst league campaign since 1996, comparing this year with 96, kind of makes a mockery of your agenda.

Also the little example of comparing to 89/90, why not just stick to the league games. It is more meaningful, and gives a completely different result to the one you are trying to portray.

I'd stick to being an apologist for serial miscreants if I were you.

You're way out of your depth here.

Love it when William gets all Keyboard Warrior on people. You better do what he says Gotcha and stick to other subjects or t'old Willy will make you pay for disobeying his commands.

I know, it's quite sad really what he has become. Poor imitation of his old self. Has nothing these days

Anyone who posts this...

... and then proceeds to post the following appeal for the use of highly selective stats only...

... really is an agenda tool of the highest order (as well as being a complete tool with heaps of prior form).

- Leeds have the won the CC
- Sinfield has retired from Internationals
- the playoff format has changed next year to a reduced number
- Bradford and London dropping out of SL takes away two of the worst attendance drop culprits of the last few years.

That's 4 of his repeated targets gone/impacted, it's going to be a long old off season for old William to think of some new material.

Poor excuse to say Leeds having more fans would affect neighbouring clubs. As a City of 750,000 there are 735,000 of you not going to SL games. Take off the additional 35,000 or so you take to Finals that leaves 700,000 that don't go to games. You telling me all of them follow another RL team?

Your Club FB page has over 100,000 likes, you only need a quarter of those to show up.

Seeing as you're from Warrington, I'll make allowances for an average IQ which is significantly less than 100.

Super League has approximately 50,000 regular season-ticketed fans. It has around 10,000 to 15,000 floating supporters who pick and choose. That's a grand total of 65,000 fans who attend games, tops. That's the entire SL attendee market.

And you expect one club... Leeds in this instance... to increase the attendances of the whole game by themselves by an extra 5,000 or an 8% increase? Just like that - as Tommy Cooper used to say?

How do you feel about supporting a SL club who have failed miserably to average 10K this season, despite the benefit of a relatively new top class stadium which is fit for the purpose? No wonder licensing has failed with clubs like yours in the mix.

There are a great deal more people in the Leeds area that are fans of the sport , but they don't attend the Rhinos games . They follow the other local teams .


You were aware that there is more than one RL team in the City ?

I don't go to as many games as I used to for various reasons and I hardly used to miss home or away. Away games are a rareaty, and only go to about half the home games. The new format will make things worse next year I will probably save for after the spilt and only go to odd game in regular rounds.

I used to go to more away games, the structure or Leeds performances didn't make any difference on whether I went to away games or not.

The things that have stopped me going to more than 1 or 2 away games per season are money, work and travel time.

Money is a lot tighter than a few years ago as the price of everything else in life seemingly continues to rise. The cost of fuel is a big factor too.
I've less flexibility at work, I used to be able to leave early and work that time back in at a later date. Unfortunately lazy management practices rule the roost these days.
Combined with congested motorways and roads I just don't have time to get from work or from home to any away games other than the West Yorkshire teams.

I'm sure I'm not the only one where the cost & time factors have put them off from going either.

Those are very decent attendance figures for ANY UK professional rugby club of either code, not sure what the problem is really, its certainly not up to the Leeds club to try and improve the attendances at other grounds when they are clearly able to maintain attendances and make a profit from their own home games.

Judging by those figures, there's approximately 3k bandwagoners who jumped onboard 2004 onwards which just happened to coincide with what a lot of people recognised as the start of something exciting. Leeds Utd were also relegated in 2003/04.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the attendances should success start to elude them. Will they lose those extra 3k as quickly? Lucky for GH that Leeds Utd don't appear to be making a successful return anytime soon.

Some of those better seasons are bumped up by facing Bradford twice and also better figures for when we played London when they were more competitive.

The reasons those games are no longer what they were 10 years ago attendance-wise are solely down to those two clubs and no one else, especially Leeds.

The level of statistics ignorance of some people here is shocking.

From 2010 to 2013 I was a season ticket holder at Headingley. This season, due to a (thankfully reversed) work relocation I could no longer be so. Getting up to Headingley for an 8pm kickoff meant leaving home at 4pm at the latest. Away games on nights were simply not possible - no trains home meant a hotel somewhere.

My dad & brother are both similar - fans who are dedicated but live far & away and have jobs, making getting to games difficult. My grandfather used to be a ST holder from the 1950s up to 2005, but being disabled he can now only go when either my dad or brother take him.

For lots of people, no amount of dedication will make going to games on a regular basis possible because other factors make it difficult. That means that a very large pool of people is necessary to produce an uptick in attendances. What's likely to chance is that group going to 1-2 extra games a season or going from being entirely armchair fans to making the occasional game live.

So the question is not 'How many people does City X have' but 'how many people *capable of going to games* does it have?'.

The answers for many places will be different.

If you've got systemic deprivation then lots of people simply won't be able to afford a ticket no matter how much they might like to.

If you're in an ethnically diverse community large groups of people may simply not consider coming along because it's not a sport they identify with.

If it's a town with lots of young families then your chances of getting Friday night off to go to the match when the kids need picking up from school & looking after for a night is basically nil.

Clubs & the RFL need to look at how these specific barriers can be overcome - it's only then that we'll see a long-term upward trend in attendances. Things like concessionary prices for the unwaged, outreach programmes to south asian communities, kids RL programmes to bring them along with a club so that the job doesn't fall squarely onto Mum & dad, long-term payment plans for season tickets - all of these are the kind of things that if properly applied could see more people coming through the turnstile.

. All the Leeds Utd forums say even in their good times that's it's the out of Towners that keep their attendances up even in their European champions league days.On Waccoe they have a RL thread and all the fans who don't like Rhinos are from places like Cas ,Wakey etc.Wigan always post attendances similar to ours which is great ,but I think they have a large fan base coming from outside the borough.I myself am happy that the club have at tracked casuals and band wagoners there would really be something to scoff and be cynical about if the club in this era hadn't.

It's too simplistic to say bigger population = bigger crowds.

Being in a big city means competing in a big city leisure market. Leeds has one of the biggest night time economies in the UK, of which Leeds Rhinos is just one of thousands of businesses fighting for a piece of the pie. This isn't Castleford, where your Friday night entertainment options are the Tigers game of BigFellas nightclub, this is a massive city with huge competition for the leisure dollar, and competition is growing year on year. That's a problem that no other club has apart from London (and arguably Salford).

Leeds also has a much more transient population than most places in RL land. It has one of the biggest student populations in the country and it attracts people from all over the country - these people have much less affinity to Leeds than your born and bred Wiganer has to Wigan (and probably have their own sporting allegiances already).

Contrary to popular belief, marketing Leeds Rhinos is not an easy task - the club has challenges that very few RL clubs have.