Quote ="Donnyman"1. Well, with respect you started off with the idea that improving the crowds was [i"fairly easy"[/i and ended with [i"is this going to be easy No"[/i. I'll excuse the inconsistency! I think that if some clubs like Warrington have implemented the right marketing techniques and achieved results with it then Elstone should be cracking the whip and making all clubs share and implement best practice shouldn't he??. Why has this not happened do you think???'"
OK, I'll clarify. There is stuff that is easy and cheap to do. The stuff that the football club I mentioned did was neither difficult nor expensive to implement and every club should have the capabilities to do it. The stuff that is more difficult is the wider "repositioning of the sport" stuff, but you don't need that for the first part to work.
As to why other clubs aren't doing this, you'd have to ask them but I have my theories. I think the biggest issues are short-term thinking and a "tokenism" to a marketing effort (clubs seeing it as a cost, rather than an investment). The example I cited from the football club was the result fo a 5+ year plan - I think if you walked into an RL boardroom talking about 5+ or even 3+ year plans, you'd be laughed out of the room. The obsession is about how many turnstyle clicks you can get this Sunday, not about how you can deliver longer-term growth across the board. I think that's partly why we have this obsession with away fans - they represent easy turnstyle clicks today, but not longer-term growth tomorrow.
As for Elstone, it's not his job to "crack the whip" at each club. The reason Elstone is in position in the first place is because the clubs said that they could do a better job at marketing themselves and SL than the RFL. Elstone's job is not to "babysit" clubs that all employ their own marketing, media and PR staff, and certainly not ones that made very loud noises about how they could do this so much better without the RFL.
Quote 3. Well with respect telling me to take the poll results with "[iA pinch of salt[/i" isn't an answer, and dismisses the views of Hull based fans. The fact is if any club is going to lose out in a transatlantic league set up it will be HKR as you can't have two clubs in Hull and no SL club in Castleford or Wakefield. That the good people of Hull would massively prefer their derby to the presence of TWP is a given just as Leeds fans would prefer Castleford to remain in Superleague and not have to watch TWP instead. 2018 Leeds.v.Castleford 23,246......Leeds.v.Toronto 11,565.........proves the point...'"
I think it's fair to point out that an online poll in the HDM is not, by any measure, a scientific way to measure fan support for expansion. That sort of poll is invariably weighted towards a certain result because of the target audience. Using it to argue with me that "80% of RL fans don't want expansion" is not, with respect, particuarly strong evidence on fan sentiment around expansion. "The good people of Hull" may have that view, but this sport is (or should be) about so much more than "the good people of Hull". Are the views of "the good people of Toronto" less valid than those from Hull?
I maintain that the real picture is probably much more balanced. Is that split influenced by club loyalties? Almost certainly, and no side of the argument has the monopoly on being right. That said, how much research has been done into non-RL fans to see which list of fixtures would appeal to them more? They are, after all, the sort of people we should also be trying to appeal to and convert.
I've got no qualms saying that local derbies have some value to the sport, but that's not an excuse to constrain a professional sport to a bus-pass boundary. As a Leeds fan, I'll be able to see three of the teams you mention at our at our first game of the season and I'm a hell of a lot more excited to see Sonny Bill Williams than I am to see Danny Richardson or Bureta Faraimo. SBW is one of the reasons I'll be flying back into the country to get to that game.
And let's not cherry-pick certain games that had a specific marketing push behind them. Leeds' more recent games against Castleford have pulled in crowds of 12,295 of 13,286 - comparable to that Toronto figure. I suspect that the Toronto game you mention was more profitable than the Castleford game at Elland Road.
Quote 4. I don't think we can create some sort of 20/20 with Rugby league nor some sort of "9 darter", '"
We already have "Instagram moments", but the sport doesn't capitalise on them. I remember seeing Rangi Chase's flick-pass for Salford and thinking that it that was a televised game, it would have gone around the world. Instead, we had just one gantry angle to see it from. We have Tommy Makinson's flying finishes, Anthony Gelling's mentalness - all things that the sport can and should be exploiting to reach a new audience.
There were cricket purists that said T20 cricket would never work, but it has been a massive commercial success. The ECB quickly worked out that there were enough people who don't want the lengthy, attritional, tactical battle that is Test cricket - they just want to see the stars whacking it about. I think RL can and should tap into that.
Darts can never 'guarantee' a 9-darter, but the way it cleverly engineers the anticipation of one works - it gets crowds going and keeps viewers looking at their screens. RL needs to find ways to replicate that excitement at a time when, in many games, two forward packs are struggling to get on top of each other.
Quote but I agree that we can set up a nines tournament and maybe have one each in Yorkshire and Lancashire instead of loop fixtures. But would the attendances be any substitute for the loss of six superleague loop games attendances? I think not??'"
I think this goes back to my point about short-term thinking. Asking "would a Nines replace the income from loop fixtures?" is asking the wrong question. We know that fans are bored of loop fixtures, we know that they aren't appealing to new audiences and we know that they're devaluing the product. Simply being hooked on the short-term income is not a good enough reason to keep them. It needs a willingness to take a longer-term approach.
What a Nines (or any other concept you care for) can do is open up doors to new audiences. Play it in London or a big city with a young population, give the superstars space to shine and push it to those new demographics that don't necessarily want to see two supplement-fueled forward-packs wrestling for 80 minutes, but could be attracted to the tricks and flicks that go viral on YouTube. In other words, sell it to the T20 audience, not the Test Match audience.
That might not pay-off in year one, but it needs that long-term thinking and long-term approach. Simply obsessing about next Sunday's turnstyle clicks might keep the accountant off your back for another week, but it's a sure-fire way to keep the sport on its current trajectory.
