No I am not
...not according to my wife



If we are to remain as the Poundstretcher Superleague, then at least exhaust that avenue....a few years back we had some action with Big Soup, Foxy Bingo and about another half dozen being associate sponsors, but now it looks like were Betfred and Peas....dacia are there purely for the WCC (any news on 2019 yet?) whilst the other declared sponsors have been there for eons, with specsavers, Rhino and northern rail.....and I doubt they are paying more now than they did when they started.

Aviva, after 8 years have been replaced by a bigger brand in Gallagher in the Union comp.....and their stable, whilst also emptier than before includes The Times and Sunday Times, Land Rover, Citizen and Ricoh as well as their FTA broadcast partner, C5

the bit in bold is key, IMHO to our sort progressing on the media front. We need FTA games included in the next TV deal. It's doubtful at this time that SKY will offer more, so we need to get better value from them and 1 FTA game on BBC2 on Thursday evenings would be a start......even if it's Toronto at Wakefield, the exposure would see us as being an international sport, if one that plays out of a bomb site (only joking guys)......but we need to push ourselves more.

Ha! You're the exception. You don't live in a council estate in Hull or Doncaster.

The Wasps situation wasn't really relevant as sign of how RU has gone anyway - as others said they always struggled to build a fan base as they were forever moving around and lack of their own stadium was killing them. Coupled with the mess that Coventry FC and the stadium owners (council?) got into, Wasps spotted an opportunity and took it and fair play to them. It has really paid off for them.

The double header international a couple of years back at the Coventry stadium wasn't full by any means but at least it was people trying to do something different and innovative.

8 months in......
are we competing yet?
[urlhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/07/super-league-clubs-transformed-adam-pearson-hull[/url

I agree re the international at Coventry, however as usual in RL we didn’t follow it up with any kind concerted effort or strategy. So if we want to expand/engage people in Coventry we need more than a one-off international. We need to regularly take games there be it internationals, SL games, Cup games etc.

We often have good ideas in RL but never see them through properly.

Indeed......the only thing we've stuck with is Magic, because it pays some of the top heavy wages at the RFL. Every SL side should be made take 1 game OTR each year......same venue each year, for a minimum of 5 years.

If you made Leeds take a game to Leicester each year for 5 years, I have no doubt they'd build gates year on year.......same for Wigan, Wire, Saints and FC.....but the rest????? You'd have Carter and the rest of the "smaller" clubs whining about lost revenue rather than seeing an opportunity...

Yep. Although even with the Magic Weekend we don’t maximise its potential. We’re at Newcastle United’s home ground, why aren’t we tying in with them? Offer their season ticket holders discounted tickets. Get a famous Newcastle United player to attend and get it all over the tv coverage. Tie in with Newcastle RL and get them at the games. Have them play a curtain raiser, have the club marketed heavily at the game. Have anyone with a magic ticket be able to get in free to the next Newcastle home game etc and then target any magic ticket buyers in the Newcastle region with marketing for Newcastle RL. And we should take an international there to back up the presence.

Instead we have a game in Coventry a few years ago, the odd game in London, the odd game in Liverpool with no concerted plan.

Like you say, take a game somewhere every year for 5 years and market it properly and it’ll grow. But we never commit to anything.

Exactly, I remember seeing a news broadcast about the Magic Weekend when it was in Edinburgh and none of the people interviewed in the street knew the event was even on let alone that there was virtually no advertising around the town.

The best thing to do with events like this is, until the sales start to remove the need, to paper the crowd. I mean how many times has the Magic Weekend actually sold out? Surely you could look at giving away a few thousand tickets especially if you're given those tickets out in schools and offering rugby league sporting equipment and support to those schools on the understanding that they include RL as part of their sporting curriculum. Be like the tobacco industry - hook'em young

Gallagher Premiership 2018.19
Week 1: 12,764 average
Week 2: 12,529 average
No event games, each team has played 1 home game at their regular home stadium....smallest gate at Sale, 7,145 largest at newly promoted Bristol 26,079. Currently averaging 6 tries per game and only 4 penalties......interestingly, last seasons Champions and early pace setters, Exeter have not attempted one Penalty in 2 games so far!

So, they've got bigger gates for regular non event games than they had a decade ago, have increased the number of tries scored from 4 a game in the 2010/11 season and have a natural geographical spread from Newcastle to Exeter, a 6 to 7 hour trip. Their games are shown on BT sport as well as some on FTA on C5, they have one of the largest names in insurance as their naming sponsor.

In 4 weeks time they will break for the start of their 3 tier European club competitions, as well as for the Autumn international series that will see not only the usual ANZAC and South African teams in Europe, but also touring sides from Uruguay, Japan, Tonga, Fiji, Georgia, Argentina, Namibia, Samoa, USA and Kenya playing multiple games, Including a Double header in Chicago of Ireland v Italy and USA v the Maori Al Blacks.....many of these games will be on FTA TV as well as on SKY.

Meanwhile, later this week, the Superleague chairman minus Heatherington will attempt to force their will on the rest of the game by bribing the Championship clubs with more crumbs from their table in the forlorn hope that it will enable us to compete with Union (Adam Pearson's words, not mine). Widnes are in freefall, Leigh are in turmoil and Featherstone are suffering as a result of duel registration not delivering them a top 4 spot, so including the current 12 SL sides, we have maybe 16 full time sides in the UK (and France)...so to answer the original question, yes, were that far behind....we are light years behind them in almost ever facet of the game both on and off the park

Laughable how you see this as reasonable, and that you place Hull in the same category as them clubs

133,921 people watched Hull FC at home this year...they are the 2nd best supported side in SL XXIII....so yes, I include them whilst excluding clubs that deliver fewer than 10,000 as an average.....teams like say, HKR who had 46,307 fewer fans than Hull FC attend games in 2018.

what is laughable as you happy in your insular little bubble seeing avoiding relegation as success. Given your club has won nowt since the 1980's, it's no wonder you feel bitterness towards the bigger and more successful club in your city

Thus why the game doesn't need two clubs from one city hogging spots in the elite comp.
Merge or drop down.....

Mergers will be great, we could have a 4 club top flight and a "big" game every week


2 clubs in the same city seem to work well in the round ball game and they "sell" the derby aspect of the fixture.

Since the failed franchise experiment in RL, we have totally lost sight of the actual sport.

There was a time when people on here would be discussing the game but, not anymore:

I would go so far as to suggest that the derby games in SL are one of the few plus points of the game right now, for both genuine fans and armchair fans alike. We seem incapable of generating significant interest in the actual spot.

What’s laughable about a concerted effort to expand the game into an area of this country? What’s laughable about Hull being in that category? They’re a big club with decent support.

Comparing Hull with a population of 300,000 with Manchester 2.8million or Liverpool 1.5million is pointless..

Manchester's population is a fraction of that. You are deliberately including Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan, and Salford, which are part of Greater Manchester, which is a Metropolitan County, not a City. Hull is a City surrounded by nothing.

Like an urban black hole?

Why is it pointless ?
Surely, we are comparing one of the top fixtures in the SL program with one of the top fixtures in the premiership.
Just because the premiership game pulls 70,000 fans and SL pulls 15,000 doesnt make it pointless, unless you are covering your ears in the style of a spoilt 7 year old and not wanting to listen.

Taken in context and given the population of Hull compared with your (inflated) population of Manchester and Liverpool, in percentage terms, there is a greater interest in the RL fixture in Hull(or Wigan (if you go for Wigan v Saints)than there is in the football (Liverpool or Manchester).

There is little point in bemoaning the fact that our sport is less popular than football as this always has been and always will be the case.
However, we can learn from how they promote their game both as clubs and within the media or, are you closed to that as well

NB: I only responded to EastHull's assertion that FC didn't belong in the top tier of clubs in terms of attendances and fiscal ability.....I didn't say HKR weren't worthy, just that they were the 2nd side in the city.
3rd biggest gate i SL this year was the Hull derby at FC,......and HKR sold their shed out for the reverse fixture.....30,000 fans over 2 games we can't afford to ose

I was responding to one our new posters (Joff), who was unable to see the merit in derby games and couldn't grasp the virtues of "selling" the games bigger games.
Along with Wigan - Saint's games, the Hull derby is one of the biggest club fixtures in the RL calendar.
He made some comment about a Hull derby being irrelevant compared to a Man United - Liverpool derby in the round ball game due to the (inflated) population figures that he gave.
As you rightly say, given the "pull" of RL, 15,000 is an excellent attendance figure (many more for the Wigan Saints games) and we need to sell these fixtures to TV viewers, build them up, just as other sports do with their "big" games.

the Hull derby is easily my favourite game that doesnt include Saints

Regards

King james

It is for now, until the mouthwatering Toulouse vs Catalans fixture becomes a regular derby in the not too distant future.

Too right. Thats going to be an absolute pearler

Regards

King james

Don't talk cobblers. Apart from Trafford or Tameside none of those towns/cities consider themselves to be part of the City of Manchester based on the people I have met. Wigan is about 25 miles by car. It's like saying York, Harrogate, Huddersfield are part of Leeds. I couldn't give a hoot if it becomes a city region. There are some distinct advantages to it.

Your talking about Greater Manchester as a Metro County old boy, would you say Liverpool has a population of 1.4 Million ? Or is that the Metro county of Merseyside?

You cannot class; Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan and Salford in the population of Manchester as a city.