Please show me where I've argued that London are a success. Don't worry - I'll wait.



See my post earlier in the thread. Wakefield not being in Super League doesn't stop kids in Wakefield playing amateur rugby league. The opportunity to live and play professional sport in cities like New York, on the other hand, is an opportunity that I think any young person would be more than inspired by.

You pointed out that it had taken a generation before London delivered SL quality players. Sorry if I misread this as you saying it was paying dividends after 20+ year = a success.

Maybe it won't if that did happen, but in my experience when I played my junior RL, I only went because my dad took me up initially to see if I enjoyed it but i knew deep down he was desperate for me to love the game(Trinity) like he did, I remember before I played he wanted to take me to a game at Belle Vue, but i was 6, watching anything was almost impossible at that age. So many of my mates dads were just the same as mine, so luckily we all ended up playing together.. He also only really pushed me to go & keep going , rather than push me towards junior football or Sandal RU, because he supported Trinity and had played the game himself and wanted the same for me, as his dad had pushed him in the 50's and his dad before . I bet loads of Pro RL players would tell a similar story if asked how they started playing.

IMO Not much has changed in the past 30 years as far as how a kid generally finds himself playing RL rather than RU or Football, it's almost as if RL is hardwired into our DNA and we're doing the same as our parents did in one way or another. All my mates that are Trinity fans, nearly all of them once their kids hit 6--8 have taken them down to Stanley, Eastmoor, Crigglestone etc to see if they enjoy it - same as friends in Leeds or Cas, so many take their kids to Community clubs. The kids that end up loving it & play week in week out and develop a passion for the game, just about all want to play for Trinity, plus their favorite player's either Tom Johnstone or Dave Fifita. For some reason it's so different to football even at that age, where usually they want to play for Liverpool or Man City nowadays & god knows who their favorite players are.

IMO Take away the City/Town club and gradually fewer & fewer parents will be interested in taking their kids to play, there won't be that same passion and aspirations that got many a dad off the sofa to take them, plus if the worst did happen, a whole generation of RL fans and parents are suddenly going to resent the hell out of RL. Of course some will always go because it's a good sport and they want their kids doing something, playing a team game etc; but if any of that becomes remotely true, how badly would the junior game be hit, in whichever area it happens to be.


Then again I could be completely wrong and you can make a different argument & we should chance it, and things may improve slightly.

THANK YOU. I know how keen you are for this to work, but for me I think that fundamentally using £Millions to form professional overseas clubs with no substance that then replace English clubs as professional entities who have (1) player development and (2) Paying TV audiences will destroy SL. Money can do good things but also bad things.

1. The only "proof" of the success of TWP's media marketing is a TV contract. Mr. Perez said they cannot get one without at least 5 NA clubs in Superleague. As I have said our next SKY deal is set to be lower and will be for a 10 club English game. How can you fit 5 NA clubs into that - could you deal fully and directly with this point?

2. It took London about 20 years before the likes of Clubb and LMS appeared but even 40 years on they only offer a handful of SL players with Clubb and LMS heading for the end of their careers, but that's not the point. They were playing Rugby League in London long before Fulham came along (SARL), but they aren't playing RL at all in Canada and TWP have abandoned any player development - please aknowledge this??

3. No we are not basing eligibility on profitability mate - we are just NOT doing that - eligibility is based on being an English club, capable of developing players, and attracting subscribers to SKY sports, with enough financial backing that when combined with a share of the TV deal they can manage to put out a team of a decent enough standard to compete in Superleague. Could you acknowledge this?

Could you deal with my points and not offer totally different points that aren't relevant? Mr. Perez himself said success was TV deals and player development??? Let's stick to Mr. Perez's rules as regards "success"?

RU and other sports, like American football, seem to manage to get people playing in new areas. Why do you think RL shouldn’t be able to?

You're absolutely right that this is, at the moment, how many people get into the game. It's how I got into the game.

But we can't ignore some alarming trends. Attendances are largely trending downwards, media presence is trending downwards, the games relevance amongst the public is trending downwards and participation is trending downwards. By simply relying on enthusuastic dads, we're going to continue that trend because those trends show that, generation by generation, we're not replacing the supporters and players that we lose.

There are a host of reasons why that is happening and if you were to write them a list in order of priority, expansion clubs would be way, way down that list.

More pertinent reasons are factors like:
[list
- Demographic changes - the make up of our towns and cities is now very different.
- Societal changes - People move around more, they commute longer. They spend time and money on things that didn't even exist not that long ago.
- Parental concerns about player safety - do you think that the current narrative around head injuries is encouraging parents to take their kids to the local RL club?
- Poor facilities - the club I played at as a kid doesn't look to have had a penny spent on it in the last 30 years. I'm part of a group who play tag rugby and even now, it's hard to find decent floodlit facilities.
- Competition from other leisure activities.
- The declining profile of RL.
- Declining birth rates - people are having fewer kids, that means fewer players.
[/list:u

Getting rid of expansion clubs doesn't address any of those issues, but those are the issues that RL (and every sport) has to tackle. There are sports that are increasing participation levels whilst working in the exact same environment that RL is working in.

Given the way things are trending (and have been for a long time), the idea that heartland clubs should be protected because "dads take their kids to the local club" looks a weaker and weaker argument.

They are able to - the list of countries that play RL has grown, but they also play RU in these places and RU has a policy of surpressing RL where ever it can. We had success in Greece and Lebanon but RU has actively opposed it. In Canada all the kids play RU who have all the volunteers and coaches to facilitate this, and Argyle acknowledges he can't beat that so he just accepts it. In England yes American football took off in the 1980's but after the novelty wore off it declined badly.

You can get anyone playing anything mate but to produce adequate numbers of talented professional players you need a player base of thousands to select the elite hundreds to develop and find the couple of dozen professional quality players a year that produces and not only that you need the development officers, the organisers and the quality coaches and facilities and money to do these things. So it isn't about "getting people playing" it's about producing a very large and costly development system with qualified staff and facilities.

I'm keen for the game to succeed. I want to be able to watch the most talented players, in top-flight facilities, playing in a vibrant competition. I've never said that North America is the only answer, but it is a potential answer. I've heard lots of people shouting "focus on the heartlands", yet not one of those people shouting that seems to have an idea on how that gets the sport out of it's current rut.



The latest Super League resolution says that there can't be five overseas teams in a ten team league, so that's that concern directly addressed. (2.7 of the October resolution doc [url=https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03238540/filing-historyhere[/url). Nobody I have seen on the pro-expansion side of the debate is suggesting that could or should be the case (ignoring Jean)

I think it's right to acknowledge that TW have increased media profile. As I said earlier, I think that's its right to acknowledge that they have increased the reach of RL - it is being televised to audiences that it wasn't being televised to before. You have to chalk that up as a success to some degree.

Of course, the challenge is getting a paid TV deal. I don't necessarily agree with Perez that it needs "five or six clubs" due to the more fragmented nature of North American TV markets, but acknowledge he probably knows more about that than I do. Nobody has said that it is an easy challenge to overcome. But I'll maintain again that having a presence in North America opens doors that simply being along the M62 doesn't.

As for the Sky deal, that is going to reduce because, more than likely, we're going to let it. I've not seen any sign of what extra value we're offering Sky to justify a higher TV deal, given that it is well known how both the media and advertising landscapes are changing. If the whole justification for a bigger Sky deal is "we just want more", then we deserve everything we get (or not, in this case).



To say that they have "abandoned" player development is also a little sensationalist. They have "abandoned" an idea to convert gridiron players to RL, but ideas get abandoned across business and sport all the time. Some work, some don't - this one didn't, but does that mean that club should forever be tainted by it?

But I do see the club engaging with local clubs, both RL and RU (remember that the class divide across the sports isn't a thing in Canada like it is here). There is a hell of a lot of content being put out by TW about the community work they are doing. Is some of that window-dressing and PR? Possibly. But it's still a lot more than many heartlands clubs seem to be doing. The proof will be in the pudding but as I said earlier, that pudding still needs 15-20 years in the oven.

As for London, it's important to recognise the challenges that they and other non-heartland clubs have. RL is not as ingrained in the culture of those areas so it's harder to pull them from other sports to RL, and the cost of living in the SE makes RL a less lucrative career option. That doesn't mean we should give up. The cutting of development officers in the South East was absolutely criminal.



Why does it need to revolve purely on a Sky deal? Why can't we have a central pool where funding from different broadcasters all feeds into it? Why can't the competition try to structure itself in a way that can open doors in other markets?

Why does eligibility have to be based on being an English club? For starters, this is (and always has been) the European Super League. We now have a North American club involved and so far, there has been more said about that club than all of the 10 English clubs put together. That North American club is also reaching audiences and demographics that our other 10 clubs are finding much harder to reach.

If we're basing eligibility on ability to produce players, then we can make a case that an awful lot of heartland clubs aren't pulling their weight. If we're holding TW to that standard, we have to hold everyone to it. We have clubs that have produced barely a handful of England internationals in the last two decades - should we be casting them aside as well?



Firstly, Mr Perez is no longer involved with TW so to hold them to metrics that a former employee suggested is nonsense. I don't expect my former employers to be still using my ideas, and I wouldn't work in a job where I was expected to follow the ideas of my predecessor.

I don't think I am coming back with different points. I've addressed each one, acknowledging the pros and cons. I'm not entirely sure what more you're looking for. Do I think TW are a success? In some areas yes and in some areas no. Do I think NA comes with risks? Yes. Do I think those risks are worth considering given the potential reward? Yes - at least they offer a reward that's greater than persisting with the approach that has got the game into this mess. Do I think that NA is the only possible answer? No, but it's currently the best answer we have.

I'm not looking for anything but an honest debate that is based more on how things are rather than how we may personally want them to be. Your post is quite excellent in terms of an honest and direct reply, regardless of my disagreements with some of your points. I must say I disagree with you less than I did yesterday.

In general (whether these points are yours or not) I can never agree with the idea that "away fans are a bonus" and that a club has to somehow survive without taking away fans into account. I have a business based in a small town in West Yorkshire, and I do not turn away customers who may be in Lancashire. Where people who walk through a turnstyle come from is irrelevant a paying customer is a paying customer and I would not be asking stewards outside the ground to turn away fans who can't provide proof of address.

I can crunch numbers and I can maybe crunch the attendance levels for Leeds.v.Bradford or Castleford, Hull.v.HKR, or Castleford.v.Wakefield or Leeds and then project what the Superleague average attendances for English clubs will be in a transatlantic league without Cas, Fartown, Trinity and Rovers. Last year the SL average was 8,200 which is way down on the best SL year of 9,833. Our clubs attendances will go well below the 8,200 average should several teams purporting to be North American turn up here, customers are important. Customers here don't want Hull.v.Ottawa, they want Hull.v.Hull.K.R. Apparently they did a poll in Hull about the overseas clubs and about 80% of fans were against it!

I can never agree that clubs like Wakefield, Castleford (in their crumbling stadia) and Huddersfield (in their empty stadia) are expendable because they don't produce the players the bigger clubs do. I can look up the origins of players and Hull has a poor record in recent decades, and Leeds produce hardly any players from North Leeds, but like it or not the west riding clubs south of Leeds are a very important area indeed for player development and have developed players in good numbers. To withdraw SL status for these three clubs and shut down their foundations and academies will only shrink what is a shrinking pool of players already. It's no good telling us that in 20 years the first Canadian pro RL player will come along - we will be dead by then if we go Transatlantic.

To quote Eamon McManus "Toronto is a team of English and antipodeans owned by an Australian in Canada" my final point is how is it ever possible those who run Superleague will stand by and allow the league to go Transatlantic. they fought tooth and nail not to allow TWP into SL and promoted the idea of Toulouse instead, but were tied by an agreement with the RFL. Next time they will not be tied in this way.

The club owners and the fans do not want a transatlantic League. How then can it happen my friend?

I think it's important to stress that nobody is talking about "turning away fans away", as your analogy suggests. I do however maintain that this obsession with "away fans" plays an excessive role in the decision making and discourse around how to take the game forward. I don't think away fans are a good excuse for poor crowds, nor do I think Thursday nights are. We've got clubs who are used to the "bumper pay day" of certain clubs coming to town, and that leads to poor decision making like loop fixtures - clubs simply believe that the easiest way to survive is to play each other more,and it's damaging the product.

You might not turn away customers from further afield but I suspect that the customers you have from the local area are worth more to your business in the long term. I suspect they're more loyal, less likely to be swayed by other suppliers. That's generally how it works and it's the same in sport - a local fan is worth far, far more over their life than an away fan. That's my entire point in this - away fans have value, but nowhere near as much as a local and the emphasis should be on that, not away fans.

I disagree that clubs can't grow. What the sport has done for a long time now is look at downward trends in crowds, TV figures and profile, and ignored them. We're not adapting what offering to appeal to new audiences, instead relying on the same pool of people and the same, outdated promotional tactics. You cite Huddersfield as an example - a club that has persistently undervalued and undersold the sport with cheap ticket deals and, when it doesn't work they make it cheaper still. There's so much more they could be doing, and that applies to every club.

As for what fans and clubs want, I think it's fair to say that SOME clubs don't want Toronto and SOME fans don't want expansion, but some do and are more positive to it. What is clear is that the sport is very divided on this issue.

There is no right or wrong answer to it but my personal view is that, if the sport is going to address those downward trends, thinking that the clubs and structures that got the sport into this mess can get it out of the mess is the height of fantasy. I look at other sports and how they have adapted to the modern realities of professional sport (overcoming the same realities facing RL), and they've left RL for dust in so many ways. We don't solve those problems with protectionism, parochialism and a lack of imagination. I appreciate people will disagree with that, but I've seen a lot of mentions of "focus on the heartlands" but very little substance sits behind that statement..

your right very similar experience to me being taken to games never really understating the rules but enjoying the excitement in a full crowd, got to be around 14 and I used to go on my own with my mates,
what do remember was at Crofton high school around 1973 on wards we had a teacher that looked after us and taught us the game, he had also organised and brought in a RL official who used our team in a photo shoot to produce a booklet and poster to market the game, so like you say it is hard wired into you at an early age.
The poster got displayed at the back of the north stand for youngsters to read, My copy which we all ended up chewed by my dog



also remember playing Eastmoor high school who had only just changed from playing RU to RL and we wiped the floor with them as they kept kicking the ball to us, no idea of the game rules.

Take all that away and your lost the foundation

Thanks for such a well thought out interesting post, points of respectful disagreement are as follows.

1. Don't we have to "Play each other more" to meet the demands of a. club income targets and b. SKY TV schedules running from late February to early October. The simple solution could be a 14 club League, they could have perhaps retained London and and brought Mr. Beaumont's Leigh in with TWP. Do you advocate this or are you looking at New York and Ottawa?? Whichever way to do this where do we get the 60 players required??

2. You say [i"there;s so much more clubs can do"[/i but you don't say exactly what they can do and how this would work. Some of the bigger clubs actually have very smart marketing departments, Mr. Hetherington certainly heads one at Leeds. What is it that Mr. Hetherington and his staff are not doing that would (a) bring the new fans in?? and that (b) could be copied by such as Wakefield and Castleford??

3. I understand a Wakefield fan is worth around 14 admission prices into Belle Vue a year and a Salford fan worth one, but this ducks the issue. I am talking about the thousands of away fans from Castleford, Huddersfield, Hull.K.R. Salford and Bradford who would buy tickets to go to Belle vue once or maybe twice a season. Let me estimate that at 10,000 fans at an income for the club of £20 - income lost = £200,000 if these clubs didn't visit and instead North American clubs came without fans.

4. Let me suggest that IF north American clubs came into SL to replace M62 clubs home support would be lost as well. If Hull average 10,000 home fans and as per their poll 8,000 of them are not impressed by the idea of losing Cas, Wakey, Huddersfield, Salford and epecially HKR and not seeing Bradford ever again but instead having to watch the SAME players only wearing North American shirts a good number of them would fall off watching the game.

You say some fans want the traditional game and some want the transatlantic game. It appears on that first ever poll 80% want the traditional game? I fear a large part of that of those very real 8,000 Hull fans who want to keep the game along the M62 would be most upset and many would walk. Your bottom line is to [i"adapt to the modern realities of professional sport"[/i but again you do not say what this adaptation would involve? We cannot move forward on a slogan? What is the business plan??

We only have to do that if you subscribe to a zero-growth mentality. The argument for loop fixtures only stands to scrutiny if you genuinely believe that every club has maximised its potential in terms of how much revenue if can generate from matchday and non matchday sources. I don't think they have.

I personally don't think a 14 team league is the right approach. I don't think the talent pool is there to create an intensity of competition. I would rather a 12 team competition, with Magic Weekend, and space carved into the league calendar for rest periods for the players, possible representative events and, personally, I think we should explore a Nines event to try and appeal to new audiences.



I wouldn't personally say Leeds are that good, but they're better than most in RL. The work they've done on matchday experience is definitely a step in the right direction.

As for what clubs can do, there's an awful lot in my view that needs to change both at club and governing body level, but the clubs have to grasp the nettle.

I was at a conference earlier this year where the marketing director at a Premier League football club was taking about the challenges that they faced and how they solved them. Now, before anyone sees the phrase "Premier League football club" and starts rolling their eyes and saying RL can't do that sort of thing, there were two things about what he said that were very striking:

1. The problems they faced were very similar to the problems facing RL. They had an ageing fan base, they had a fan base concentrated in one of the poorer parts of the UK. They had an ageing stadium, empty seats and they had a culture in the marketing team that they couldn't achieve regular sell-outs. They also had an under-achieving team and were the 'second' sporting team in their particular area. All issues that many RL clubs face.

2. The solutions to a these issues were not particuarly difficult, and certainly not expensive, to implement.

They did a lot of analysis of their supporter base - looking carefully at the data behind who they are, their supporting habits, what they bought and what they didn't buy, and they changed the mentality that a 'supporter' was only worthwhile to them if they bought a season ticket. They now know more about their fans than they ever did, they know when and where they are likely to 'drop off', they cater their offering to each and every supporter and they make it easy for people who don't or can't go to the games to buy into the club. The only "expense" behind this was some time spent with their CRM system.

They addressed the ageing fan base issue through little more than community marketing and matchday experience. They made the players accessible to young fans and they ran community events - stuff that all RL clubs do to some extent. But they also improved the matchday experience for younger fans - made it more kid friendly, gave every new junior season ticket holder a "debut season" gift pack and held events where they could play on the pitch after the last game of the season - all fairly easy and cheap stuff to do, but something that means the world to those kids.

They've gone from having just one sell-out game a year to having an 11,000+ season ticket waiting list within the space of five years, and they now have the youngest average season ticket holder age in the PL.

Clearly, there are various other factors at play, but even if RL clubs could get the 'cheap stuff', like the stuff mentioned above, right then they and the game would be in a much better position. The problems RL faces in the modern sports market aren't particuarly unique - it's just the way in which the sport tries to fix them.

I look at and here regular complaints from people in the media and from sponsors about the treatment they get from RL clubs, and it's no suprise that we are where we are. Brian Carney spoke on a podcast last year about how difficult Sky find it to get clubs to grant access to players - his accusation was that some clubs were all nicey nicey with Sky until the cheque cleared, and then they practically ignored them. This is our main media partner, and we're treating them like this? That has to stop.



That again, only assumes that you cannot replace some of those missing away fans with locals. Read [url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/behind-scenes-look-warrington-wolves-20971324this insight into Warrington's marketing approach[/url, because they believe that they can replace those away fans with locals. They don't use away fans as an excuse and I think that's the right approach.



There's no evidence to suggest that this would play out as you describe. There is, however, evidence that fans are bored of seeing the same fixtures time and time again. Without checking the stats, haven't Toronto provided the biggest crowd of the season at most UK grounds they've played at?



If I'm thinking about the same polls, these are online polls by LRL and/or the Hull Daily Mail, right? If so, take those with a pinch of salt. Online polls are almost always self-selecting (I'd say HKR fans are probably going to feel more threatended by expansion clubs, so of course they'll vote disproportionately for anti-expansion options), easily manipulated and far too simplistic to provide a true picture of public opinion. I've only got my own anecdotal evidence but, when you come out of the echo chamber of various groups, I'd say the pro/anti expansion debate is more evenly split.

The modern realities of sport is that we have to find new generations of supporters, we have to attract new sponsors and we have to increase our profile to do that.

It means improving matchday experience. People expect more from their £25-30 ticket than just "a game and go home". Yes, you and I might just want that, but we're the dying breed on this one. Look at how other sports put on an event, put on a show, put on an experience, and RL just looks, well, dated in comparison.

It means making it easy for people to buy this sport. Particuarly with a sport that has such poor geographic reach, RL has to work out how to appeal to people beyond the M62. Supporters can be supporters without buying a ticket to the game, and the game can turn those people into a revenue stream, but it's incredibly poor at it.

When it comes to appealing to new, younger audiences, RL really has struggled to understand how social media in particular has changed the game. We can't just keep relying on dads dragging their kids to the ground - we need to focus on how to engage those people. For me, that means making this sport somewhere where the stars can shine. The biff and barge has limited appeal and the game needs to adapt to give the superstars the opportunity to create those moments that go viral on social media. Cricket has done this with Twenty20, darts puts huge emphasis on the "9 darter" because those moments get shared again and again.

Is any of this going to be easy? No, it's not supposed to be easy. But it's the reality we're now in.

Completely agree with everything you've said there bramleyrhino. I was at business ambassadors meeting beginning of this year and GH was on about the overall match experience from stepping through the barriers to after the game when the stadium closes. This needs addressing at all Super League clubs and look at how Leeds operate because I've been to a few stadiums season just gone and its lacking and you wonder why crowd numbers are down.

I have spoken to number of people asking me what are your thoughts on Toronto. Look at the NFL some how they've grown a massive fan base in the UK, and if we can more teams like this we will probably do the same. Plus gain viewership for the passers by flicking through Sky Sports and see the likes of Leeds vs Toronto or Wigan, Hull etc. Big industrial cities taking on a Canadian supercity. You couldn't get it in football.

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???

2. As for TWP's appeal they did indeed draw the biggest audiences in most of their League One games here when they were brand new, but lost out to York on a couple of occasions. In their second season that was certainly not the case at all in the Championship. Leigh were the much bigger draw and I suggest that was because Leigh took the biggest away following - perhaps proving my "away fans" point, but I'll await the League Express Yearbook to check the stats on the season just gone.

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...

4. I don't think we can create some sort of 20/20 with Rugby league nor some sort of "9 darter", 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??

We agreed on the talent pool though!!

1. Gary Hetherington has managed to take Leeds Average attendances down from 15,724 in 2015 to 12,352 in 2018.......

2. Again 2018 Leeds.v.Castleford 23,246 Leeds.v.Toronto 11,565......

You couldn't get it in football because they don't want it, neither Rangers and Celtic in the premiership, nor a European Superleague. 80% of Hull fans are ambivolent towards TWP if not hostile. Poll 1000 RL fans in Hull and ask them if they prefer Hull.v.HKR or Hull.v.Toronto? What do you think they will say?

Can anyone explain how Harlequins Rugby Union can attract 82,000 fans to a regular season game, in the freezing @rse end of December, yet the top 12 RL sides in the Northern Hemisphere can't get 57,000 to 6 games over 2 days in the glorious sunny month of May?
How do a side, currently averaging 13,000 and change at The Stoop, get 6 times and more to a single game?

We need to "collectively" market the game, not blame the Leeds or the Wakefields...we need to make our games "must attend" events......

The only way to market the game is to start with clubs like Toronto, Ottawa, New York and Toulouse as part of the Super League competition.

For god sake jean give it a rest let’s see how Toronto do in super league first before talking about other overseas teams

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.



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.



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.



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.

I think we start by looking at the strength of Rugby Union in London. Schools participation is immense, although it has probably been massive over the years with headmasters press ganging many kids into playing. Nonetheless the resultant amateur game has also been immense. I can't believe the numbers of currently registered players either. London of course was the centre of Union since Victorian times too. So how many London and greater London people have union roots -I suggest a few Million - so if they put on some sort of party for all Unionites at the stoop (a classic venue I have been to for RL) and if there's a wonderful opportunity for groups of old boys from all the schools who played and all the amateur clubs who played to have a fantastic meet up and booze up with the tube too take them home, then that is attractive.

I was brought up playing soccer and Rugby Union because so many schools didn't play RL in Yorkshire. I don't have a circle of friends interested enough in RL for half a dozen of us to go to the Magic weekend. I think the contrast is merely a numbers game and with respect I don't believe the 82.000 needed "marketing" to get them there. I do believe it was attractive enough for them to go as a social re-union event rather than anything that happens on the pitch. I have been to the stoop with Union friends and it's one massive beer festival, I missed half the game standing up for people constantly going to the bar or toilet!! Mate, I think all this marketing talk is OK to a point but the trouble is people do really have to have a connection and interest to go to events. I could ask a dozen lads from my area that's an RL area (but also heavily soccer and union as well) to go to Magic, but I would only get one say yes as long as I was driving. We can't beat ourselves up because Union beat us after 1896...

I'd like to purchase the book when this has finished.

Well yes crowds went down because we had 2 brand new stands constructed barring 2016 where average crowds went down 250.



Leeds vs Cas is always going to gain more crowd then Toronto as it was only there second season and that Leeds vs Cas is now the West Yorkshire Derby.



Of course they don't want Rangers/Celtic because its league 2 football in the premier league. There European super league is the Champions League. If Hull fans don't like Toronto that's fine they have there opinion but we need to grow the game beyond the M62.

Around 10+years ago, when there were actually London fans on this forum, a number of 250k - 500k was bounded about by their fans, being the number of children participating in rugby league in school and amateur teams around London. I am not going to dispute this figure so if it was correct, what happened to all these kids? Did they not all become massive rugby league fans? Would be interesting to know.

Hi Steph,

I think this was the time when Sports England had a lot of government money to throw around to encourage kids to play sport. What happened was development officers went to many schools and did some RL coaching and every kid who even looked at an RL ball was counted as participating in Rugby League. Again if I remember correctly the higher participation numbers you declared the more grant you got, so the numbers were shall we say "creative"? But as this all came to nothing then that probably proves this explanation is correct.

What probably counts as real participation towards the goal of being a professional is the number of kids playing regular organised competitive junior ARL in London clubs who enter teams into leagues. I have looked up the London Junior League but can't find a list of clubs and age ranges that have teams. They've just finished their finals day so the league for 2020 isn't published