Quote ="PopTart"The unfortunate part of all this is how good the coverage, sponsorship and income is.
I admit to being jealous of rugby union for that.
If I was running RL, rather than get upset about it, I'd copy as much of the coverage as possible.'"
In the mid 20th century, two soft drink giants were pitted head to head with their leading brands - Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
For years, sales of Coke had out stripped Pepsi no matter what PepsiCo tried in terms of sales and marketing.
Then, one day, someone at Pepsi stumbled across something very interesting, something that should have (logically) forever changed the fortunes of Pepsi sales and the ultimate result of an Coke vs Pepsi battle. It turns out that, in a blindfolded taste test, the vast majority of people picked Pepsi as the cola they preferred against Coke. Thus the Pepsi taste challenge was born.
In the early 90s, Virgin cola tried the same marketing ploy, convinced that quality of taste would be an overriding factor in what cola people chose to drink.
Now, when was the last time you chose pepsi over coke?
Essentially, us feeling vindicated in the fact that we have a more entertaining game, one that a completely unbiased newcomer would prefer to union, serves only to make us feel better. The end product is the tip of the iceberg, the other 90% Union has League licked.
IMO League has to make headway in breaking down barriers between the two codes (player like SB and SBW starring in the WC will surely help). The majority of species at these world cup games are not club supporting species like we have. Whilst they exist, club RU is only at a scale to RL. RU however have the [ioccasionals[/i, the hundreds of thousands of people, mostly affiliated to an amateur RU club, who will enjoy the odd day out to watch an International game, no matter the quality of the actually rugby.
Amateur RU clubs have 3, 4 even 5 teams. This is because you can go on playing RU and having fun into your 40s, 50s, you'll even find the odd 60 year old doing it. That simply cannot be replicated in RL because of the physicality and pace of it,in fact you'll find plenty of ex rugby league players playing RU.
These guys are all potential rugby league fans. We need to break down the barriers, the idea that its one code or the other, the idea that because you play one, you can't enjoy the other. The RU, from their position of strength will try and convince the public other wise, but that's what we have to fight against to engage the wider public.
