Archie Gordon

There is a message on the TO site that roughly translates to "Tickets? You'll be the first to know when we get around to it."

I read a response on facebook where some dude asked about tickets and some kindly random Frenchman said he would look into it and report back. That is how RL ticket sales work!

It delivers everything and more that you'd expect from an FFRXIII-RFL collaboration: No tickets. No TV. No Toulouse players. No doubt it will fall flat and the conclusion will be that there's no demand for international RL.

On SL+!

Welsby's having a shocker. His place in the imaginary England team looks under threat.

Hmmm. VR looking as hard as he can to support the on field call. Not sure that's the correct approach.

The new seats look nice.

No. You may see a different list.

We obviously negotiated really poorly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live-guide Hmmm. Hopefully, it will get updated.

I agree. The OTR games could be an opportunity. There was an indication that games at Ebbsfleet represented a 'Kent strategy' but that has been kiboshed. Stoop is likely a one off so no value to it.

Yes, they have a couple of home fixtures in June/July to re-home every year. One of those is at the Stoop this year.

June and July.

https://www.totalrl.com/super-league-given-major-boost-with-revelation-of-viewing-figures-and-attendances-from-early-season-start/ sheds some light. It's hard to parse in places but I think that 6 live games on Sky are getting 15-20% more viewers (in the aggregate) than 2 live games - e.g. 6 games in 2024 get ~300k total, 2 games in 2023 got ~250k. But it is unclear because the quoted rise might include all of SS/BBC2/iPlayer/SL+ numbers for 2024 vs. SS/C4 for 2023. Who knows. We do know that the two early BBC2 games pulled in ~350k compared to (I think) C4 getting 200-300k across 2023. RLonTV is saying that Saturday's Catalan-Saints game achieved: BBC3 110k, SSME 112k, SSA unknown. I think that's impressive for the channels it was on but what a shame it couldn't have been shown on BBC2 and perhaps got a 1/4m more pairs of eyes. More broadly, as per attendances, we are being fed limited scraps this year in terms of published viewing figures and SL+ subscribers. It's hard to say whether we are moving up, down or flatlining.

Ebbsfleet isn't up to SL standards so something must have changed.

Broadly, the story it tells is the gradual decline of the club!

Hmmm. Oh dear.

Yes. The score for TV viewership is now obviously a farce.

No need to wait until June. London are offering me free tickets for the forthcoming Salford game. Now, if a win there would catapult them into a 3-way relegation battle, I just might be interested in getting a posse together. As things stand - absolutely zero riding on the game, probably played in front of hundreds - I'll stay at home and do some gardening.

Or put a golden ticket in a chocolate bar. Degsy would have all his staff - including the dude on twitter - unwrapping bars 24 hours a day.

The tragedy is that there is an easy fix to make everyone happy. A grade clubs protected; B grade clubs can go up or down via P&R. Clubs can still aim for A and get precisely the same reward, no short-term tinkering/gaming required by B clubs, no appeals holding the system up in October, excitement and at the bottom of SL and top of Champ. Win-win.

When it comes to the argument that we should be showcasing the top clubs rather than those battling P&R, I remember back to when the Championship final could draw 21k and one of the top 5 Sky audiences of the year. I think that prompted the RFL to bin it, of course.

And I think this is the main point for me. The B clubs at risk of dropping out of SL or looking to get into SL are just tinkering for the sake of .25 points. I can't see any progress at Huddersfield, Salford, Cas, TO, Bradford, London, etc., that is anything other than sticking plaster stuff. Wakefield and Leigh are different only insofar as they have a money man with ambition - but they would have been fine under any system (though there is an irony that I think Leigh are at real risk of displacement by TO). I can appreciate the concept of rewarding the best run and biggest clubs by giving them the best opportunities for a shot at the top flight. However, I continue to believe that the RLC/IMG application of this concept is pretty amateurish.

That doesn't particularly make a difference to the point that the game was richer during the 8s, including the teams at the top.

I don't see it as zero sum. Ideally, for me, I'd love a weekend in September with Catalan playing Wigan for top spot, Warrington playing Saints to hold onto a play-off spot, with Wakefield hosting Cas and Toulouse travelling to Hull to see whether in each case the former can prise a SL place off the latter. As it happens, the very fixtures you don't want to see - London/Hull/Cas battling to stay relevant week-after-week - will be the ones that we are stuck with.