Yakstorm

Catalans, Salford and Wakefield all improve on their averages, so positive news there. Reasonable crowds for Saints, Hull KR and Huddersfield, but pulls down their averages.

Sky won't care what the crowd numbers are to be honest. The only time they care about bums on seats is how it looks when broadcasted on TV. Empty grounds kill atmosphere and detract from the product, near full grounds do the opposite, but in reality for a subscription TV product the two main things they care about are subscribers first, viewers second. Wigan v St Helens could sell out Wembley each week, but if it isn't translating into more Sky customers or boosting TV viewers so they sell advertising, then they won't offer more.

Some massive speculation and wild facts in this thread. First off the Auckland Nines was very profitable for the NRL, Duco Events undertook all the risk and the NRL received a nice pay cheque each year. For Duco, only the last year made a loss in the Financial reports they put out. The NRL, when Greenberg got involved, decided that all NRL events should be run by NRL staff members and not outsourced. Hence why it didn't return after the gap year but already the NRL is asking clubs and fans about it for 2020. Secondly for the RLWC, Sydney got it because the NSW Government was splashing cash for 10 World Cups in 10 years (they have also said they want to bid for RLWC2028). The NSW Government didn't bid for any of the Men's matches in 2017 and the 2017 RLWC was run by a completely separate entity and team than the NRL. Part of the reason it didn't do as well financially was the lack of experience in selling tickets. Anyway great to see the teams announced. On a positive, each of the 12 named all have domestic competitions, so they are all legitimate teams. Would have preferred to have seen Jamaica or Serbia versus Cook Islands, but anyway it is what it is. This 12-team format is designed to maximise government sponsorship and TV revenue yields. More teams wasn't going to equate to more money from the NSW Government and as for Fox, they just wanted Friday Night and the Saturday Day timeslots.

It's their first full international against the Hawks (they've hosted the US Pioneers before). They hosted the Canada Wolverines a couple of years back in the America's Championship. That was a full sanctioned international.

Do we actually know how the Easter Monday matches are selling? Naturally based upon the number of derbies stacked on Good Friday, there will be some relative round to round drop, but hopefully each of the clubs can continue to draw above average crowds.

England Knights v Jamaica in Jamaica would cost a small fortune and do little to raise the profile of the RLWC2021 back in England. Whilst we would love to see it, as a sport, especially at the international level, we aren't flush with cash, so need to be strategic with any matches. As mentioned by many posters, we would be wise to drop the Knights title and just call it England v Jamaica and play it on a weekend and at a reasonable sized ground. On whether that ground is in London or the north, it depends if the RFL plans to market the match. In London, the market is less likely to be concerned by the lack of GB players in the England side, but of course the challenge is you actually need to market the match. If they intend of repeating what they do with many matches (ie. Expect people to turn up), then let's pick a small, safe venue in the heartlands.

It's still officially listed at 11,513 and they got a crowd around that figure just last year so I imagine it hasn't dropped much if at all. Still a solid crowd.

Castleford v Wakefield - 9,316 so that will see the Tigers back in the green. Do we know what the Broncos got?

Catalans will definitely finish with growth YoY off the back of the Camp Nou match. Already it has moved above their average and with a 30K+ crowd very realistic at this stage, they arguably get 3-5 games aggregate in one fixture. It might be this game as well which helps the season average.

So we're about to head into Round 11 now, just before the Easter spike, and this is how we're tracking versus the 2018 totals: Castleford - 7,779 (7,898) Catalans - 8,435 (8,353) Huddersfield - 5,388 (5,745) Hull FC - 11,363 (12,174) Salford - 4,012 (2,748) Warrington - 11,533 (10,088) Hull KR - 8,374 (7,964) St Helens - 12,863 (11,478) Leeds - 12,224 (12,807) Wakefield - 5,011 (5,244) Wigan - 10,605 (11,708) London - 2,132 Of the 11 clubs that took part last year, 6 are down, 5 are up. On the plus side, of two which are down, Wigan and Hull FC, both have their largest game of the year, and Wigan has already confirmed their Good Friday crowd will be over 20,000... that means their average will shoot up to around 12,680ish (or higher), whilst if Hull FC get more than 15,418 they'll at least be on par with their 2018 average. Hopefully all other clubs get an uplift as well over the next two rounds.

Set to be the biggest crowd of the season so far. Wigan have announced over 20,000 sold.

So the prime seats - Grandstand - 1st Central, is literally down to less than 50 seats across this section with only a handful of seats left together (good luck getting a group of 6 or more into there). Considering how popular the section is, I wonder if they'll open up the closed off 11 rows at the back of the section, or if they'll try and force sales up and around. Not-unexpectedly, due to the limited seats in Grandstand - 1st Central, next tier up, Grandstand - 2nd Central Lower has been selling well from the middle out, however almost no one has bought into Grandstand - 2nd Central Upper. Grandstand - South hasn't sold a seat, Grandstand - North side has a few sales, whilst Corner South 1st - Grandstand has possibly sold about 30% of inventory.... the different 5 euros makes in sales... The Nike End / South Goal is possibly lucky to have 100 sales across the three tiers, whilst the Lateral - 2nd Lower is possibly the third strongest selling area (that we can see) after Grandstand - 1st Central and Grandstand - 2nd Central Lower.

Great kits. Nice of the sponsors to allow the clubs to adjust their implementations to be closer aligned to the historic implementations.

I think we'd take forcing people at gunpoint if it means we get as big as crowd as possible.

Confirmation that over 10,000 tickets have been sold to the match: https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/els-dragons-catalans-juguen-per-primera-vegada-al-camp-nou-el-18-de-maig/