Chamey

That's massively impressive, probably the best commercial deals agreed by anyone in NH RL. From the podcast I gather that you've seen the letters of intent? I can see how £5m would last over the three first seasons, and 10,000 average attendance generating average profit of £20 per match each would put it into the black, but RBNY averages 18,000 despite having a massive sponsorship budget, the sport having a massive number of fans, and two decades of name building. Do you know if more backing would be forthcoming, should NYRL be losing £1m/yr (6,000 odd fans) in Y4? Cheers for answering our questions by the way.

I've been doing some rough maths, including assuming that NY are almost as successful as Toronto, and the only way I can see that £5m lasting beyond two years is if the 'major airline' and hotel chain has agreed to fund £1,000,000/yr worth of flights and rooms, and even if they have agreed to that, the money wouldn't survive until year four (and the team doesn't get near to profitability) without displacing RBNY as the major crowd-puller in the stadium. Is there a commitment to funding the team beyond the initial £5m they'll put in?

My local area from where I grew up still has an independent local paper, demographics help somewhat with a fairly elderly population. However the key differentiator is that they still provide an awful lot of good content, and only provide a small amount on their basic, but functional website. Once a news org goes down the road of lots of ads and an awful website then it usually loses it' purchaser base pretty quickly.

I also believe that EFL sides do the same (or did until two years ago).

I like the Workington and Widnes kits, but that Fax one may be the worst I've seen, across all sports, for next year. Was anyone thinking when designing it?

The short-term future for both RU and RL in NA is professional, between the two there will be 10 full-time sides in NA next year, the year after probably 14, the year after that there could be anywhere between 0 and 18. Professional sports are inherently unstable and opaque, so no-one really knows. TWP are clearly the most successful pro rugby side in NA, but carries much greater costs than the other sides. That being said I'm not convinced that NY has the same advantages going for it, the big one is, no easy to reach convenient stadium, the RB Arena is a nightmare to get to, and probably quite expensive, why not go to Gaelic park for year one? I'm not convinced that this bid is as nearly as well put together as Toronto's was.

Aiming for 5,000 fans in the first year is somewhat bold, yet commendable, but budgeting for 5,000 is madness. Red Bull football only averaged 18,000 this year, in a season where they went 22 wins, 5 draws, 7 losses, with a massive marketing budget, the sport having a massive supporter base, and a long history in the market.

Considering that Gibraltar RU first invented it, I'd be surprised if they didn't have some protection on it.

Apart from Parksider of course.

Oh gosh, another 8 year cycle, I can't wait for the Aussies to step in with their new and improved 8 year cycle that starts 6 months later in four months time, again.

Ditto with .rugby domains, WR(U) now own the .rugby domain because nobody contested it, which would have dragged it to a tribunal, who probably would have ruled one joint ownership.

Insert joke here about how if the England players went on strike and refused to play for England the soonest we'd know is their next game, in 2021. Anyway the real issue is that the RLIF agrees a specific roadmap it gets agreed, then four months down the line the Aussies come out with a shiny new plan, get the RLIF to adopt it, and then four months later... While some Aussies are doing great work for RL (such as the teams that start in Sydney, and export it back home), the ARLC seems to try to do all they can to undo any progress, unless it's NRL backed.

The same panel they use was the most accurate one at the past General Election, the way they do it is ask the people what they think of teams, of course the Olympic teams are going to be very popular, because they’re only seen once every four years, hence why I stripped out the Olympic sports.

I've been meaning to save this for later, and do some pretty graphics, but I'll share some early. For what it's worth, YouGov have done some quite good research on sports teams in the UK. Excluding the Olympic sports you get the following National teams (only 33%+ teams listed): Team | Favourable % | Heard of % | Millennial popularity % England Football | 59 | 97 | 64 England RU | 53 | 93 | 52 England Women RU | 42 | 86 | 47 England RL | 42 | 89 | 41 England Cricket | 42 | 94 | 38 England Women Cricket | 38 | 80 | 32 NZ RU | 37 | 77 | 35 B&I Lions | 35 | 70 | 21 (52% in Baby boomers) Great Britain RL | 33 | 78 | 24 (42% in Baby boomers) England 7s RU | 33 | 76 | 32 Wales RU | 33 | 86 | 28 So basically, football is incredibly narrow at international level, Scotland and Wales football are less popular than their RU counterparts (Wales: 33 RU, 27 RL, 25 football, 24 RU 7s, 21 Women's RU. Scotland: 26 RU, 20 RL, 24 football), while RU is relatively deep. 'British' teams are absolutely tanking in both RL and RU. In club terms (only clubs 15%+, no football): Yorkshire Cricket | 23 | 73 | 15 Saracens RU | 20 | 67 | 16 Harlequins RU | 20 | 67 | 15 Lancashire Cricket | 19 | 70 | 13 Wasps RU | 17 | 62 | 14 Somerset Cricket | 16 | 63 | 15 Leicester RU | 16 | 56 | 15 Leeds Rhinos | 16 | 57 | 13 Middlesex Cricket | 16 | 63 | 11 Durham Cricket | 15 | 63 | 13 Bath RU | 15 | 59 | 13 Essex Cricket | 15 | 69 | 12 London Irish RU | 15 | 63 | 12 St Helens | 15 | 58 | 12 The big three sports in terms of awareness are football, RU and cricket. However in terms of millennial popularity it's Eng Football, Eng RU, Eng Women's RU, then RL. Cricket is tanking. Either way only four sports have any significant presence in the above list, but one of them is somewhat more regional. Have a browse through yourself.

To be fair, Madagascar v Oxford Uni RU got 25,000 for both their games, and the national cup final sold out the national stadium. While RU probably isn't the national sport, all evidence is that it has a decent level of support, and hence a good amount of mainstream attention, which to be honest is the ceiling for most sports, because football is a behemoth.