This has been the #1 and in many cases only marketing strategy used by many clubs since the start of SL. I refer to it as the Kevin Costner strategy...."if you build it they (sic) will come".....as the averages at many clubs with 125 years behind them show, sticking posts in the ground and announcing KO times isn't a viable strategy......

Leeds Carnegie (3rd in RFU Championship) struggle to get more than 2,000. Bath are in the Premiership, and have been for a long while. Fax (and Fev etc.) would clearly get bigger crowds if they were in SL. It's not equitable to suggest that teams need to have SL level crowds before they get there.

Fax have a new board in place for 2018, and do engage with the local community. They don't have a big-money backer though. They also tried (and failed with) some marketing ideas using the extra funding received from their first visit to the middle 8's. The new board do seem to have their "sensible" heads on, which does mean spending within available income.

Marketing etc. is great if it works, and generates more income than it uses, but becomes a bit of a money-pit if it doesn't come off.

8 Seasons of SL for Halifax.....seasons averages/capacity v SL averages v =#FF0000Bath Averages/capacity
5,298/9832 6,571 =#FF0000 ?
5,330/9832 6,997 =#FF00007,282 8,200 capacity
5.668/9832 7,280 =#FF00007,400 8,200 capacity
4,483/9832 6,638 =#FF00006,973 8,200 capacity
5,882/9832 7,901 =#FF00007,664 8,200 capacity
4,911/9832 7,526 =#FF00008,048 8,200 capacity
4,152/9832 7,677 =#FF00008.047 8,200 capacity
2,977/9832 8,514 =#FF00009,706 9,800 capacity


It's non-negotiable. If you don't market, you won't increase crowds....being clever isn't the same as spending loads.
[urlhttps://www.hrsb.ca/[/url
Give every one of these schools 100 tickets to sell for 15 quid a pop.......let the school keep a fiver from each sale to go towards stuff they need.....10,000 tickets to sell....if 10% do it, then you've sold 1,000 tickets at a tenner a head and it's cost you the admin fee......nothing else. The PR of Fax giving 5k to local schools would be handy too.....
....it's not brain science or rocket surgery......it's just hard work liaising with 100 schools sports departments, meeting, greeting...etc.

Giving free tickets to schools is something that has been going on for as long as I can remember by at least the 2 closest clubs to me. The major flaw in getting schools to sell them for £15 is that walk up admission last season for juniors, certainly at Fev, was a third of that!

Where in any of what I posted did I say 'give tickets to schools for free'? I said get the school & the kids to sell them.
Also, I am not suggesting we sell the little mites the tickets, but that they are encouraged to go and sell a book of 10 to their dads and their dads mates and in doing so, raise £50 for the school.

I've been to Fax but only as far as the Shay and back, so I don't know it that well, but lets pich a school at random.

North Halifax Grammar School....1,000 pupils between the ages of 11-18.
Call Mr Fisher and ask if he's be interested in a scheme by which his school has the chance to receive a cheque for £50,000 to go towards anything they need...maybe towards [urlhttps://give.joinos.com/north-halifax-grammar-school/product-design[/url
If the head master is inclined to agree, then each pupil is allocated 10 tickets to sell to their immediate family, friends etc. If 100% are sold, then the club has just shifted 10,000 tickets and the school picks up £50k.

Each ticket sold by the way is actually a receipt for a ticket with a few questions on it...like name, age, email or actual address and mobile number which is handed in at the box office in return for the ticket......you then call/write to these people, ask them if they enjoyed their match day and ask them if they'd like to come back........

The whole thing is scale-able and can be reused....... and I can testify that it works!

Exploiting and using young children to do your work for you....lovely moral idea. Maybe ask them to clean the toilets post match and they get into the next game for free.

Bath also play in the top tier & have done for decades. Have a history of trophy wins, and are regularly around the play offs. And don't have a well supported football team in the town (Bath City get what 300?).

Oh, and there's also International RU what 9 games a year. Most on BBC. So people might watch that, and decide to try the local teams to see players they've seen on TV.

They and Gloucester are also the biggest teams between the Avon & London (and there's only really Saracens in London know). Where as Halifax has roughly 10 or more clubs within 40 mins of them. And more than 10 football clubs. And football really is taking over the sporting universe lock stock and all.

The comparison between Bath and Halifax isn't the fairest one, but I think the argument that clubs aren't marketing themselves correctly, and that attendances should be higher across the board, is absolutely fair.

We can't just keep stamping our feet and complaining that football and union have an unfair advantage. It doesn't wash. Most people, when they're looking for something to do at the weekend, don't think about that.

What all clubs (and the league as a whole) really needs to do is look at what they can do differently, what they can do that nobody else is doing, and what they can do to create something that people are really going to enjoy that they can't get elsewhere. It's what us marketing s call the "value add" or, if you want an even more tossy-phrase, the "purple cow".

Bradford and Keighley did this. They created an event, they created a buzz, and they made it so that they were the places to be on a Friday night / Sunday afternoon.

I don't necessarily think that "Bullmania" or "Cougarmania" is the right way to go now - it's probably a bit dated - but look at how we've moved on since then. We have clubs who think that "marketing" is simply throwing around cheap tickets and undervaluing the sport. We don't create "events" around our high profile fixtures, never mind all of them (perhaps with the exception of Wigan's "Big One" promotion), we have cubs that massively overvalue 'away supporters' as an audience segment, and clubs that still don't understand how modern marketing tools such as social media and ecommerce work. I guarantee that there are clubs that haven't even started thinking about how they are going to protect their marketing strategy from the new data protection laws that come into force in May.

Should Halifax be getting bigger crowds? Yes, but so should anybody else. It isn't enough for Halifax to aspire to get the crowds of Huddersfield, because Huddersfield should be aspiring to get the crowds of St Helens.

The same applies to sponsorships. We aren't just competing with other sports for sponsorship, we're competing with every other advertising and marketing channel. So what do our clubs, and what does this sport, offer to sponsors that they either can't get elsewhere, or is much more expensive elsewhere? That's the line of thinking that the clubs need to take.

Agree with every word.



The sport is in a real rut at the moment from where it was 10 -15 years ago. It's not a coincidence that we had the simplest and best system with 5 team play-off and 1 up 1 down back then. The constant jigging of the system and ridiculous unregulated licensing really hurt the sport.

I believe some clubs have become lazy in marketing. We used to worry about our players not being recognised in the non-heartland areas. Now we worry about them being recgonised in the heartlands. Tom Johnstone is one of the most exciting up and coming players in the game. Yet if i printed a picture off and showed it around Wakefield, would 50% of the population recognise him? (Not picking on Wakey, they're one of the best run clubs at the moment. Only using them as an example as they have one of the brightest talents in the game. The game as a whole is at fault)

The sport is crying out for a Peter Deakin who masterminded BullMania (which as you say is outdated now) but some stuff can still be used. Just trying to market an individual player would be a start. For example, as a young fan growing up in that era, i remember the Bulls putting a young 21 year old kid called Robbie Paul at the front of everything they did. Not your traditional on-field leader like a Jimmy Lowes, Graeme Bradley, Brian Mcdermott etc. But Robbie, who every time he got the ball, people got off their seats. Electric pace, one of the best steps n the league. They made him captain (even though he wasn't necessarily the leader of the team on the field) They did away with the traditional no 7 shirt for scrum half and gave him the number 1 shirt. Why? because number was the bets, 1st place etc. Robbie was the face of the Bulls. As someone who grew up in that era, every kid at school and my local team wanted to be Robbie Paul and most people in Bradford knew who he was even if you didn't follow RL as he was all over Bradford in the local paper etc. I believe the sport and clubs can do the same with the likes of George Williams, Tom Johnstone, etc.

I think the RFL have tied to do something by giving the ambassador contracts to Johnny Lomax etc. But i haven't seen a single media glimpse of Lomax.

Unfortunately with Ralph Rimmer looking like he could replace Wood (who's expertise media handling included stating how a Bradford fan hadn't been to a game in a decade, had now purchased a season ticket for the first time, due to the RFL getting new owners after we had been liquidated







) As someone who had a Christmas from hell wondering about the future of their tam 12 months a go, i can't tell you how angry that comment made me. Talk about insulting the intelligence of fans!

There are risks with building marketing around the players themselves, but Bradford certainly made it work. Even things like the player nicknames, whilst cheesy and something that non-Bradford fans would cringe at, worked to get people excited. People didn't go to see Lesley Vainakolo, they went to see "The Volcano". We just don't have that now.

Of course, the problem comes when you don't have the most marketable players (because they leave, or their talents wane) and you need to find that next hook - that'ts what Bradford didn't do.

I think the sponsorship thing is key as well and if you look at what we offer to sponsors, we're lightyears behind.

Big companies aren't satisfied with paying for a handful of pitchside hoardings that start looking tatty by the middle of the season. They want full pitch length interactive digital hoardings with animated messages - something that we offer at a whopping three clubs. They want on-pitch branding - something that we can't offer at a lot of our grounds because football clubs won't let us (we've only just started super-imposing logos). They want more interaction with fans and players, they want new ideas, they want big events where their brand gets media exposure and perhaps most importantly, they want tangible ways to measure the impact. Can we honestly say that, as a sport, we offer that?

We dont have the players anymore to build the marketing around them

Regards

King james

Of course we do - every club has at least one player who will have a sufficiently interesting and engaging story, on-field persona and showreel to use for marketing purposes; and the sport has sufficient celebrity fans to provide some impetus. What's lacking is the expertise, imagination and resource to actually do it properly and consistently. We got close with the Extraordinary Rugby thing, but that fizzled out.

Did that even last a year. Agreed great idea, but as is always the case with the RFL, they didn't stick with it and carry it on. Frustrating.

Another factor for RU clubs such as Bath, Leicester, Northampton, Worcester, Exeter etc is that they draw support from their counties/regions. I live in North Warwickshire, about 23 miles from Leicester and folk around here support Leicester Tigers (not many tbf, most are Villa or Blues fans) as do people in Rutland at the other end of the county. In Super League, only the two Hull clubs and Catalans could justifiably identify themselves as teams representing their regions. All the other SL clubs are hamstrung by their proximity to each other.

The Extraordinary Rugby was a good concept but it had many points of failure. One of those was that it exposed one of the key risks of placing the emphasis on the players themselves and the ability of the players.

The campaign was launched for the 2012 play-offs but in the first week of the play-offs, the winning margins were 40 points, 22 points, 22 points and 36 points. That's not what the extraordinary campaign was about. The extraordinary campaign was about the finest athletes competing in an intense arena, yet nobody could argue that Catalans or Huddersfield shipping 46 points, or Wakefield shipping 42 points, was really selling that message.

Put the emphasis of your marketing on what you can control. You can, in the main, control the matchday experience. You can't control the quality of the match, or the performance of the players themselves.

There were other issues that still, in fairness, exist today. There was little integration between the RFL marketing and the clubs for example - it seemed like the RFL handed over all of this branding, and left the clubs to it. In fairness, the clubs should be left to do their own marketing, but unfortunately an assumption was made that the clubs were competent in that regard.

Yet more incisive, well informed comment from the pseudo king.
Each club has at least 2 or 3 "star" players, usually the ones that feature on the club's own advertising.
Players like Tomkins, Moon, Murdoch Masila, James Roby, Gale etc, etc
They may not be the same "draw" as Thurston or Cronk but, they can all be used to draw peoples attention to our fine sport.

What we are more lacking of are the people clever enough to actually market the game.

Christ, if they can attract 1000's to watch overweight blokes drink and throw darts at a small target, there should be hope for RL

Nowt like RL fans with half empty pots. We have a great sport, made for TV. We need more TV cash as the product weighs far more than the price paid, we must constantly talk our sport up, get rid of the fools commentating on sky and ensure any media interviewee uses the power words used in RU - exciting, powerful, ultimate, unbelievable, success, impact, must see etc

Does it though? I mean, really? From what I see, the viewing figures are falling, the crowds are falling, and the sport doesn't appeal to audiences that advertisers want to reach. On what basis do we believe we're being underpaid by Sky in that context?

The whole "talk the sport up" thing really isn't enough (although, that's what most people are arguing that is what clubs should be doing). It's like Brexiters arguing that the UK will be fine if only we "talk the country up!", despite a whatever evidence to the contrary.

Club games still draw greater audiences than RU, hence too little is paid. If you constantly tell a positive story at every opportunity you create a positive perception - unlike like the remoaners constantly creating doom

Quote ="maurice"Club games still draw greater audiences than RU, hence too little is paid. '" The stats don't necessarily offer a fair comparison given that BT Sport's audience base is 1.5m vs Sky's 8m-ish. What is clear though is that the Aviva Premiership's TV audience is growing. Quote Average Live TV match audiences on BT Sport are up 13% up on last season and 5% up on our highest ever season (2014-15); 4.41 million have watched live Aviva Premiership Rugby this season on BT Sport; Read more at https://www.premiershiprugby.com/news/b ... tkzcdfe.99'" But if we're comparing RU, we need to compare the quality of audience. Advertisers want to reach RU audiences, which makes the rights to that sport more valuable. It's not unreasonable to conclude that if we want more from Sky, we have to offer more to them. We're offering smaller audiences than we once were, audiences that advertisers have little interest in paying much to reach, and the product on screen is arguably declining (due to our best talent playing in another competition). Sky aren't just going to write a bigger cheque just because we ask them to, and I don't see a lot of interest from other broadcasters. It's possible to tell a positive story whilst still acknowleding some harsh realities - that's an important component of any debate and is anything but "remoaning" .

Quote ="maurice"Club games still draw greater audiences than RU, hence too little is paid. '" The stats don't necessarily offer a fair comparison given that BT Sport's audience base is 1.5m vs Sky's 8m-ish. What is clear though is that the Aviva Premiership's TV audience is growing. Quote Average Live TV match audiences on BT Sport are up 13% up on last season and 5% up on our highest ever season (2014-15); 4.41 million have watched live Aviva Premiership Rugby this season on BT Sport; Read more at https://www.premiershiprugby.com/news/b ... tkzcdfe.99'" But if we're comparing RU, we need to compare the quality of audience. Advertisers want to reach RU audiences, which makes the rights to that sport more valuable. It's not unreasonable to conclude that if we want more from Sky, we have to offer more to them. We're offering smaller audiences than we once were, audiences that advertisers have little interest in paying much to reach, and the product on screen is arguably declining (due to our best talent playing in another competition). Sky aren't just going to write a bigger cheque just because we ask them to, and I don't see a lot of interest from other broadcasters. It's possible to tell a positive story whilst still acknowleding some harsh realities - that's an important component of any debate and is anything but "remoaning" .

wonder if sky sports will change their intro for the games this year from the 'men of steel' robots they have that come on every time, been on for years that! surely its time for something new?!

Randomly picked weekend on BARB September 11-17 2017

121k Friday- 119K and 54k Saturday and 149 Sunday Aviva Premiership on BT sports 1&2

46k Thursday, Friday 42k Saturday 24k Superleague on SKY Arena

Union now gets comparable viewing figures if not greater......so we actually do pretty well fiscally for what we deliver.

I agree about using the "positive" words though.......

I found them mundane the first season. Bring back two tribes!!

Around 15 years ago (when Fax were in SL), we went on holiday down to Devon. Fax were playing Widnes and the game was on Sky. I spent part of the day before the game visiting a few pubs to see if any were going to have the game on their TV. None were planning to, but I found one that agreed to put the match on for us. Me and my lad turned up, and after a bit of faffing about with the remote, we watched the game (which wasn't the best and Fax lost). No-one else in the pub was remotely interested, other than a passing glance at the lunatic in the corner wearing a strange blue and white shirt.

The thing about RU is that it's played at lots of schools across the breadth of the UK, and kids get exposed to the sport (quite often whether they like it or not) en masse. RL is played at far fewer schools (with the vast majority probably being close to the M62 corridor?), and hence has far less exposure as a sport to our youngsters. Even in the "heartlands" I suspect that RU playing schools far outnumber those with RL teams.

I agree that most clubs could do better from a marketing perspective, but if the game is truly going to expand and attract better sponsorship and TV deals, then surely it's at the grass roots level that this needs to be addressed. The problem with this is that it's a long-term strategy that would only reap dividends many years down the line.

What I've noticed is that it's getting far harder (especially for lower league clubs like Fax) to attract younger supporters to come along to games, despite all the visits from players to local schools etc. Fax have an active community programme ([urlhttps://www.halifaxrlfc.co.uk/community[/url) and our latest recruit (Dan Fleming) has been taken on with part of his job to be active in this.

We need a shake up, and we need to make the game more exciting. In my view this needs to include P&R, but equally we need some changes that reward skillful play that wows spectators and makes them want to come and watch games. I've watched the game for nigh on 40 years, and am happy to embrace a titanic struggle between two teams culminating in a 4-3 win (Halifax vs Hull, Challenge Cup semi replay in 1988 after a 0-0 draw 4 days earlier), but sadly the general populace need more excitement than that!

Btw, in the 4-3 win, it was so foggy at Elland Road that I didn't even have the pleasure of seeing the winning try being at the far end of the ground.

:389oobzc

1. If Fax v Bath is a bad comparison, then let's go with Leeds v Leicester. Leeds has [url:389oobzctwice the population and is up against a Championship football side whilst Leicester has a premiership winning soccer team in town. Both clubs are seen as successful and over the 22 years we've been discussing, they've won a similar number of trophies. Both are arguably the biggest clubs in their respective codes.

Leeds had 15 home games across SL and the 8's last season and were seen by 224,250 fans. Leicester was 251,894 over 11 games. Since 1997 Leeds have increased their average by 47%, Leicester by 78%........as a game we need to discover how they are achieving this and then copy it!

2. As for internationals each year. They have 5 games on FTA split between ITV and the BBC and their domestic competition continues throughout this international window. Then there are maybe 3 off season tor matches and 4 end of year matches all shown on SKY TV......
Feb 26th 2017 saw 82,000 at Twickenham to watch England v Italy whilst 2 hours earlier Bristol hosted Bath (16,25icon_cool.gif and Gloucester were away to Wasps (15,691)....there International presence is important but their clubs still manage to attract crowds regardless of being in competition. Imagine if England RL were Playing NZ this year and we had a full itinerary of SL games on the same weekend........it would be a fiasco.

3. As for soccer.....it will always be #1, but for every person who attends or tunes in, there are 20 who don't and THEY ARE OUR TARGET MARKET.

Failed sales people or marketeers (and Adam Pearson) are brilliant at making excuses for falure or blaming someone else. What we need to do is to identify what it is that is stopping us from being more popular and stop doing it.

Maurice posted on here about the use of positive phrases....and he is spot on. Spectacular, amazing, genius, brilliant, superb, outstanding, excellent.....all these phrases should be used and we should ditch the "dour northern accented" commentary and add some glitz to our presentations.....