Dave T

International rugby league fixtures 2023-2030 (intrl.sport) Yes, the Ashes is meant to be next year. No more details than that. There have been a couple of threads on here in recent weeks about what kind of tour people would like to see.

I'm not a subscriber but if I go on the app, all 6 games from the last round are in the 'Games on Demand' section...

Are the Sky main games not on delay on SL+? SuperLeague+ will then broadcast four live games during each round in the opening 15 rounds, with the remaining two fixtures available with a 48 hour delay on demand for annual subscribers

Yep. In effect, this buries SL coverage further by moving us off the main channels (apart from the two main games per week), but for customers it means little. I'm with virgin media, so not 100% sure what happens there, hopefully the app will go on there, but who knows.

It doesn't change anything. This is for Sky subscribers. In fact, it makes the Sky offer less compelling for those who maybe don't want to stream. Although I'm not sure if this can be accessed by Sky/Virgin boxes.

There is also the challenge that quite often the Cup games are lesser events. Clubs don't make any effort with the 'event' sometimes not all stands or bars are open, the crowd could be half that of a league game etc.

1. The RFL had been the main driver of the Tri/Four nations concept, and when the RFL had substantial sway on the international board it was agreed to move into a Fed Cup which was an expanded Tri-Nations. There is no reason to believe that the RFL abandoned this tournament to replace it with nothing. 2. Nonsense. It was a Test match played during the international window. Every other sport does this. This one really shouldn't be up for debate, it was as clear a sabotage as you'll ever get. 3. As I said, I do have some sympathy here on the Covid point, but it does jar somewhat when we cancelled our tournament and RU was staging huge games in major stadiums here at the time our tournament should have been held. On the 6th November 2021 - Italy had 29k in, Ireland 40k, Wales 70k, England 81k and France 55k. Australia Union played three consecutive Tests over those weeks in front of 67k, 81k and 68k. NZ were over for 4 weeks in front of even more fans. 4. Tonga series was underwhelming - but lets be clear here - it compares very favourably to much of the stuff that the NRL has put on internationally. Australia played three tests this Autumn and they got 18k, 20k and 13k - with two of these being against their closest rivals NZ.

It's not necessarily disrespectful, I think it's a fair question around the value/going rate of Women's RL at this stage. Just had a quick look on Wire's Facebook and their home game was a fiver, Leeds charged a tenner (kids free). The fifteen at Hudds seems out of kilter, particularly when you are also selling a men's game at £22 that day too. As a comparison point, Women's football SL you can get a ticket for Man City's last game for £12.

I'm just not sure you are gonna click your fingers and make the Cup more attractive, it's going to need something bold to work. I know it may seem lazy to revert to cheap tickets, but I do think that needs to be part of the offering here. Even at Premier League clubs when it comes to cup games the price is usually half what it is for league games, maybe even less. Personally I'd be charging £10 for adults and free for accompanied kids. I think we need to forget gate receipts being a huge driver here, as let's be honest we can see crowds as low as 2-5k at the likes of Wire now for the cup, so hardly a main driver anyway. But every time we stage these games, particularly on TV, we damage the brand. Sell these games as a great intro to RL - a chance for anyone to sample it without cost being a barrier. We are in a vicious cycle at the moment where low crowds damage the cup brand and this in turn affects the final attendance. This surely affects commercial performance of the cup.

It does rather miss out quite a bit of the narrative. International RL is a tough sell, and when the biggest and richest RL nation in the world consistently undermines it, you get to the point where you have to question the motives. Four perfect recent examples. 1. Successful Four Nations concept scrapped, not replaced by a 6 or 8 team tournaments which was mean to be the plan. 2. The sh** show that was the Denver Test. As above, RL is a tough sell anyway without internal sabotage. 3. The postponement of the RLWC in 2021 and the associated costs that created. I have some sympathy with them on this one, but when other international sports were working out how to make it work, we just walked away. 4. The recent criticism of the England's staging of the Tonga series, saying we need to do better (a valid point), but it was distracting from the car crash of the Pacific Final that they'd just held in NZ in front of a smaller crowd than that in Leeds. I was one of the biggest critics of the RLWC last time, but we have regularly pulled in crowds that the biggest RL nation in the world can only dream of.

Convincing people they are worthless so they become grateful for whatever they can get is one form of negging.

That's what negging does. We now become happy for any scraps.

Logistically it's fine. Commercially it's absolutely barmy. To charge £37 if you want to watch both games just feels like a poor decision.

All of that is just an unnecessary fudge though. They have designed a brand new system, it should be made fit for purpose and future-proof. Grade A is genuinely unnecessary unless they are going to be fluid with the number of teams in SL, which they won't be. The whole 'suck it and see what happens' approach doesn't demonstrate control. When you have a blank canvas, creating something flawed is a worry.