Yakstorm

Majority of the $15 tickets released at the ends of the ground have been snatched up. A lot of the other price points are moving slower. Hopefully organisers continue to open up areas at the cheaper price point. If this is what people are prepared to spend, better to get them into the ground than not.

I have more confidence in Danny than Nigel. Whilst Danny did make a lot of mistakes and burn a number of bridges early in his tenure, to say that he hasn't improved and performed some solid work since would be unfair. Danny has learnt plenty around governance and continuity whilst at the RLEF, which I'm sure he'll roll out globally and will hopefully help. Unfortunately, as the RLEF only had limited funds the impact made is never going to be as large as we want or hope. Hopefully he can help the RLIF around generating revenues outside of World Cups.

Hong Kong has defeated Japan 32 - 20 in the East Asia Cup match held in Tokyo today.

Remarkable result from the Thunder. They definitely went across there as the underdogs and came away with their first ever Test win. Certainly a good confidence boost ahead of the Emerging Nations World Championship.

Back onto Ticket Sales, the $15 tickets added for Bays 110 - 118 have been selling really well, with easily around 1,200 - 1,500 tickets moved in those sections alone in the past week. Unsurprisingly the 317 - 330 have been taken off sale, with only small ticket sales into those sections, with I imagine the focus for the rest of the week being on ensuring the lower bowl is as full as possibly by next Saturday. With tickets for the match being sold through more than one channel, I'm feeling we must be near the 15K mark now, although it could be more...

The Hong Kong Thunder and Japanese Samurai teams are made up of players selected from domestic competitions. As mentioned earlier, there maybe 2-3 players coming from Australia for the match for each team, but these players are mainly ex-pats versus anyone who has qualified under parent / grandparent rules. For the East Asia Cup, I would think that Japan would be favourites for this one. After winning in HK last year, plus home ground advantage, would give them an edge. Potentially if this match was later in the season, I'd have picked HK, just because the Super League squads this year are a lot stronger, but being only one round in, I don't think this will have translated into improved skills...

NZ and Australian audiences. Fox League will be broadcasting the game. On the changes to open / closed bays, will say I'm glad that they are making a conscious effort to push sales into the lower bowl by opening up more $15 tickets. The manner in which the game has been selling, the second level won't look too bad on TV as the front rows in a number of bays on the sideline having sales into them. The issue is there were still large gaps in the lower bowl. Now if they can fill out the TV arc then for most viewers they won't care about the announced crowd. Just like in Melbourne for the RLWC2018 opener, most people who watched the game or highlights weren't even aware of the unsold sections.

Results from Week One of the Hong Kong Super League: Toa Pacific 18 defeated Valley Broncos 6 Oreana Storm 40 defeated Wanchai Warriors 22 Impressive start by both the new teams... if the Nines is anything to go by, you would imagine that the Toa Pacific team would have to be favourites.... Warriors are again kicking off their season slowly...

And on broadcasting, Andrew Voss confirmed on Twitter on May 29 that Fox League would have the rights in Australia.... more or less implies that Sky Sport in NZ will have it as well.

Top tier at Denver holds under 30,000 (between 24-28K depending what sources you read), so there is a bit over 40K in the lower two tiers... regardless, ideally we would want them to be as close to full as possible... Updated sales map... interestingly large chunks of the southern section of the stadium have been taken off sale... not sure what the motive here is, whether they are selling these now through different channels, using them for giveaway, or just seeing if they can redirect sales for a period of time... As for how many have been sold, I'll leave it to someone more comfortable with the MIT DotCounter... the variance in dots I'm getting implies anything from 2K - 20K allocated...

This partnership seems different than the South Wales one, with the focus more on helping establishing / improving pathways at the Junior and Student levels. It seems to be mainly providing access to coaching resources, some budget to run a series of clinics and events and so on. Less so about dual registration or sending all the best players from Llanelli to Wigan. Still, I'm sure that there is plenty of upside to Wigan, but if nothing else, it is a significant vote of confidence for the Raiders and should minimise concerns that they won't be here next season.

We're sitting around 8K - 8.5K at the moment in terms of sales... General selling for Events in Australia & New Zealand is the 2 weeks before is where you go move 2.5x - 3.5x what you had moved before... Now no guarantee that we will see that selling patten happen in Denver, but arguable we would be looking at around 21K - 30K applying that patten to current figures. Arguably we would want to be closer to 12-15K sold over the next fortnight... puts us in a good position to hit 40K, and also means we aren't as exposed as we are currently if the pick up doesn't occur.

Have inverted the map to see if it makes it easier to see where the sales have been.... Teal is sold, yellow is unsold, grey is still on hold. Tickets are still moving.. just not quite as quickly as we would all like... hopefully with promotions starting to ramp up, we'll see some solid traction over the coming weeks.

So in case you missed it, Saturday's Magic Weekend match between Toronto and Toulouse drew a TV audience of 39K on Fox League, being broadcasted at around 9:45pm in the Eastern markets in Australia. This was despite zero promotion by Fox League, and it going head to head with the Royal Wedding. Now why 39K might not seem huge, it did beat a number of Super Rugby matches played that same weekend, and even competes with some of the Saturday AFL games, only being around 10-15K off them. The figure shows there is an appetite there, and considering Super League is keen to find ways to build it's revenues, surely (and I know Steve Mascord suggested this earlier in the year and it was pulled apart) it needs to be considered again, especially if there is any truth to SL wanting to add Toulouse & Toronto to the mix. 2pm in France is 10pm on the Eastern Seaboard in Australia this time of year, which is perfect for Fox League, whilst 8pm in Toronto is 10am. Both timeslots which Fox would fork out for as they look to build out their live coverage. The 2pm Fra / 1pm UK timeslot is actually a time which sells well into other markets like PNG and of course Asia (don't forget NRL is a heavily bet on sport in Asia), which could be other areas which the code could get some coin. Now I'm sure people will point out that there are issues with the kick off time (although is there a perfect kick off time?) and that the game should be trying to grow revenues in the UK, but surely the code shouldn't dismiss arguably trying to cash in on some 'easier' revenue options. A more Australian friendly timeslot also opens up new sponsorship opportunities, as shown in the 2013 RLWC, when the likes of St George Bank were paying for perimeter signage at Warrington.

4,137 was the announced crowd. Well done all involved.