An unsurpassed marketing triumph. Talk about the Emperor's new clothes.....jeez

RWC 2015 seems to be a hot topic on a number of Rugby League forums. This would appear to be a strange phenomenon that is unique to League as I have scanned a number of Union and soccer forums looking for paranoid rants back when RLWC 2013 was on and can't find any.....

Why is it that RL fans of a certain ilk feel the need to deride Rugby Union in regards to the spectacle they are currently running across England and Wales? They are averaging 50,000+ per game, England got 8 million TV viewers at the weekend and from what little I have seen on TV, the fans seem to be enjoying themselves?

We all are of the opinion that Union is a slow and ponderous game and pales into insignificance when compared to League, but the REALITY IS that the general public, when faced with the opportunity to attend or tune into International Rugby Union will do so in far greater numbers than will do so for League. Rather than try to score points against the bigger and better run sport which is more popular with comments like "the Emperor's New Clothes"why not accept it for what it is....a tournament that is light years of anything we could ever hope to produce. It's slick, it's seamless and it has, regardless of your one eyed opinion, captured the attention of a fair chunk of the population.

It will hurt it a bit though if England end up going out at the group stage. Host nations success always adds massively to an event.

I don't know what would be funnier.....England going out or England having to qualify for RWC 2019 in Japan

Rugby League supporters would, I suggest give Union 10/10 for the amount of money it attracts, marketing, hype and professional organisation. Only say 2/10 for what actually takes place on the pitch which, despite the things we'd give 10/10 for, is still amateurish at best. I'd expect that Sam Burgess thinks the same.

Did you come to that conclusion from watching BT Sport?

You've got to admit he's right though. Off field RL could learn a lot from RU. On field RL would learn very little from RU.

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.

Good post. You make a lot of sense. However, because i'm a League fan in the Heartlands and to help ChangingGutterGalliant in their crusade against league, I have to disagree with everything and say Its all unions fault why we aren't as popular as them.

They are saying it could cost England RU £60 million should they not qualify, with branding contracts to be renewed such as O2 and Nike.

All Rugby League clubs should offer all registered playing members of amateur RL and RU clubs in their catchment area season tickets for a fiver.

I have always thought a similar thing.

I have never known Hull FC target the large University student potential in the City as well and offer them discount tickets for games and get flyers up around the campus - there will be plenty of people there from Union areas of the country who cannot get their Rugby fix

When you say 'they', do you mean Dave Hadfield and Nigel Wiskar?



A RL fan worrying about a sporting organisation that makes £150 million in a year and has a spanking 82,000 seater-stadium in London that is paid for is a bit like Granville in Open All Hours worrying about the finances of Harrods.

I've seen the £60 million quote too. It's not RU that will lose it, just the country in general, from beers on the semi final weekend to England flags to Betting at William Hill.
Same as when England football don't progress. The potential earnings lost is massive, but it isn't all income to the governing body.

I know that RL fans often diss RU fans, but what are these other species at the RUWC? Are they less advanced than humans?

There is only a finite amount of money in circulation. If it's not spent watching the yawnion it will be spent on something else. It is not lost to the economy. Anything lost to the RFU, however, is a bonus.

same thing wit us, we had a long standing partnerships with the university but to my knowledge apart from offer students/employees cheap match tickets never really targeted the large student population in Huddersfield, had we done that, then maybe, some of the students would still be avid fans after they'd graduated and maybe got their family and friends involved.

we need someone in RL with a vision to sell the game to the likes of O2 and NIKE and make them want to be a part of us.

Offside Monkey makes a really good point about the amateur game in the 2 sports.
It's a huge recruiter for the international and event games in Union. The reason it is is that the amateur game in Union has much stronger links to the sport itself but also its more inclusive. It allows people to keep playing and so keep involved in the sport.

If we want to do the same we have to make some big changes in our amateur game.
First and foremost we have to make it much less confrontational, much less about violence & intimidation and much more about enjoyment and inclusivity.
I don't play, partly due to lack of fitness, but mainly due to the fact I simply don't enjoy being around a bunch of violent, intimidating, swearing, aggressive people, many of whom have either been or are one step away from jail.
That's obviously a generalisation and doesn't apply to all, but it sadly applies to far too many of RL's open age amateur players.
We need a purge of these kind of people from our sport. And it's not just players. Coaches and club officials are too often the same.

Even if we do that, the nature of open age RL is still very physical so it will rule out a lot of people who don't fancy it. So we need Touch RL teams and leagues. Far, far more than currently. It can be our 5-a-side football. And it involves people in the sport.
On the same theme we need far more girls and women's teams. Am I right in saying that from Year 7 onwards girls can't play in the same team as boys?
Whilst we start to see a drop off from boys as well at this time I'm sure there must be plenty of girls who want to carry on playing RL but can't or don't because of the lack of girls teams.

We then need a much stronger link between the amateur clubs and both their local pro clubs and the governing body/national side.

The amateur game is a huge gateway to the sport for both young people and adults, and too often it's closed to far too many people.

On the £60m, nothing will be lost. It will stay in the bank accounts of the followers of the host nation, mainly the English supporters or those marketing to the supporters. Those who traveled to the UK will still spend and will probably still watch the same games on the TV without any real change in spending.

You may have missed the point. The article suggests that is mainly sponsorship of the shirts, both the maker and advertiser, as the England brand wont be as strong.

They make it a must attend event not the rfl its scared of telling people we exist,love the fact they spun the line 450 million world wide watched the opening ceremony but only 8 million in this country so that leaves 442 million other people to tune in

big TV viewers in aus,Namibia? The whole of Samoa ? Ah must be Argentina,great spin by them nearly as good as 3.1 billion watched the last final

half the world's population its still on the BBC website

its about time the rfl thought big time for once

Is English not your first language?

Oh....screaming liar liar pants on fire at the IRB isn't going to make their comp any smaller....they have spin down to a fine art, which might be down to the quality and quantity of people they have in their marcoms departments. Just a thought!

I did my degree in Warrington and played for the RL team who played in a Wire strip, we were coached by Brian Chambers and I did my 9 week 2nd year work experience with the Wire. Now I've always been a RL fan but coming from Manchester I never actually supported a team until I went to uni and I've been an avid Wire fan since.

They've made the event 'feel' big which is a trick in its own right.

The grounds are sold out even for the lesser games, which are all being played in big stadiums, the pubs were packed Sat night for the Eng v Wales game and will be even busier this week with the Ashes game, and we're still only in the group stages

Well done to the RU. We should learn some lessons.

A poor game it may be, but brilliantly marketed.

The Chairman of the event, the head of Eng RU...... when interviewed all come across as smart, eloquent businessmen who promote there sport to the world, unlike the fat, parochial, northern buffoons that represent RL.

I'm not sure what you read when you look at posts, but that's not what he said. He said we should use more spin when it comes to promoting our game.