Dave T

We have plenty of history of these teams playing, that shouldn't be ignored.

That's correct, however it is a warning that making bold statements about crowds and stuff won't make them happen. These games had England 2nd team playing against the likes of Wales, France and Ireland with very low interest. They also played Tonga one year with a fierce brawl at the end!

This isn't really a thing anymore, is it? People are best just moving on.

Some ideas here seem a little like this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_Nations_Cup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_European_Nations_Cup

No combinations so far has varied the ratings materially. Not Bradford with huge crowds, not a decent London, not Toronto. We are piddling about with tactical solutions thinking an extra 3 or 4k fans at Hull KR over Leigh will make a difference. Bradford left SL, other clubs became the stronger clubs and the 200k watch them instead. The Premier League didn't used to have Man City in, now they are a draw. Of course there will be variances, but they are minor. The evidence is there in viewing figures, we don't need to create hypothesis.

No combinations so far has varied the ratings materially. Not Bradford with huge crowds, not a decent London, not Toronto. We are piddling about with tactical solutions thinking an extra 3 or 4k fans at Hull KR over Leigh will make a difference. Bradford left SL, other clubs became the stronger clubs and the 200k watch them instead. The Premier League didn't used to have Man City in, now they are a draw. Of course there will be variances, but they are minor. The evidence is there in viewing figures, we don't need to create hypothesis.

To be clear, my no impact point is purely on TV viewing figures. And I mean material impacts. Some of the Wigan v Saints Derby numbers are modest despite us seeing it as a national event! And those Bradford Grand Finals all rated worse than the Salford Grand Final. Its a bigger thing than individual clubs. I think I clarified in another post that the benefits of certain clubs etc. being in are there for the game as a whole, but on the narrow topic of sky viewing figures, nah.

But if those clubs weren't in SL there would be other clubs! That's why it's silly. Bradford have gone - no impact. Hull weren't in SL at the start - no impact. We are scraping around talking about club a getting 5k versus club b getting 10k. That is small time.

If you look at the press releases they don't even mention tv. They do talk about player development and the investment the Dolphins. Let's say the Dolphins get 20k crowds, that's great but it ain't a game changer in terms of adding new fans to the TV viewer base. Extra games will bring the extra few hundred k on fox though - that is what Fox are paying for. Any of the expansion teams would have done that.

That's impossible to answer as that would happen over time and it would depend who replaced them. But we don't need to go to extremes to make silly points. Catalans v Hull KR being the highest rated regular game this year and Saints v Salford being the highest rated SL game ever shows that TV viewers aren't as entrenched in our events like the Good Friday Derby as us. Clearly those games are important, just not as important as we make out.

It'll provide 2 extra rounds and extra games. Probably the same people watching more games.

I've posted at length what I think will help drive value. I think club makeup is pretty minimal in its impact. History shows us this. Content (variety, quality and amouny) is more important. It was nonsense when people said London were critical, just as it was when they said it about Toronto, and now they say it about Catalans. These clubs may be crucial for the game for a myriad of reasons, but viewing figures don't really appear to be affected by them. And please, nobody come back with the Catalans game being high this year, otherwise we come to the conclusion that Salford are the most important club to Sky viewers by far. If we look at Skys content, they appear to be able to secure a lot of cheap filler and they focus their serious money on sports that have huge events. We are sitting in an uncomfortable position between that - filler that isn't that cheap. More events would really help us imho.

The problem is that this would come through in viewing numbers, and they haven't materially changed even when we had London in or Bradford with 20k fans, or Catalans with zero UK presence. I think I made this point earlier, the dedicated RL fans are probably a modest part of the 200k - we get swamped a little bit. I know it was always PR, but it was always quoted that 40% of viewers of SL were outside of the North.

Yes, while we may be a secondary sport for many, there will be a tipping point where their content doesn't match your needs and you unsubscribe. But in any case, we know this is modest and Sky can handle it. I think we do ok on the providing viewers metric versus the subscribers one.

Well I certainly do, there is clearly a population that does. I suspect that population is modest. But they have two key metrics at play, subscribers and viewing numbers. We know directly the numbers we give on the latter, the former is probably more subjective, particularly as they have never got rid of RL. The one thing that worries me about Sky is that they are more ruthless than they perhaps used to be. Things like WWE which were institutions on Sky are no longer there. On the positive, Sky Sports Arena is basically Sky Sports Rugby League for large parts of the year - on a monthly basis we provide pretty much all the figures.

That is clearly one of the bigger issues. As a bare minimum Wales should have games against France, Ireland, Scotland every year and imho they should be home and away. That is quite a nice competitive fixture list that could be built into a nice level of comp. On top of this they should be bidding to play against touring teams and England at least a couple of times during a 4 year cycle, plus then the World Cup which gives access to major teams depending on the draw.

Yup. Games against the top nations really should be the cherry on top - it should be part of the outcomes of a strategy of development and growth. It shouldn't be THE growth strategy. Playing games like this(and ultimately getting battered) isn't really going to develop anyone. I see the arguments for France games as they are a) closer to England in the first instance, and b ) there is other decent level activity ongoing underneath that

Let's follow your example. For the 25 years following that defeat they played: South Kora - 26 times Hong Kong - 23 times Canada - 19 USA - 18 Fiji - 15 Samoa - 15 Tonga - 15 Wales - 8 They had 10 games agaist A teams, or Junior teams or World XV's. They played England once, NZ & SA 3 times, and Australia twice. This all includes the major World Cup tournaments. Games against the World's top 5 accounted for 6% of all their matches. So really whilst you may hold that up as a good point, it doesn't suggest that Wales just playing against England every year is an effective plan at all. In fact it suggests that 95% of Wales games should be against teams more around their level. In fact it suggests that you need a hell of a lot of investment and other activity and just playing a few top level games in front of 5k fans is a short cut and will not lead to growth.

The numbers vary quite a bit but don't necessarily correlate with who is playing. The biggest factor tends to be around scheduling and competition on other channels (hence my hypothesis that RL is a good secondary sport for many viewers). Clear examples of this are that the best rated Grand Final was Saints v Salford over the many Saints v Wigan or Leeds games. We also saw a great figure for Catalans v Hull KR earlier this year, but a Catalans also returned some of the lowest figures for other games. There is some correlation around games, I. E. Big derbies do ok, but they often come with more promotion and better scheduling. One of the other important factors that goes in SL's favour is that when we are playing post-football season, we often provide very good figures compared to other content - they drop off a cliff for Sky Sports during the Summer months.

That isn't the worst case is it? Worst case is you batter these teams every year and end up playing in front of 5k for France and 2k for Wales with no sponsors, broadcasters and you lose money. The risk of that is lower in France and I hope we see a sellout and good battle tomorrow to show the potential.

SL in general looks quite good on tv imho. Leeds, Saints, Wire, Hull, Hull KR, Catalans, Cas generally show up well on TV irrespective of the game being played. Wigan can be hit and miss, but is outstanding when they bring in a crowd. Salford is a weird little ground, but can be OK, particularly with an away following. Wakefield and Hudds both look poor and generally get few games shown because of that. Toulouse looked good with 9k in the last few weeks, so should look good. As a sport we spend a disproportionate amount of time moaning about the two or three poor examples.

How do you mean? How we present the games at the stadium or Sky? I don't think our in-stadium presentation is bad. We compare favourably toamy NRL events that are played in huge grounds with 50k empty seats. But the likes of Brisbane games at Suncorp will always look great. In terms of Sky presentation, I think we go over the top with criticism, I despise Baz and Tez, but can live with the rest. I also think the way sport is presented here and in Oz is different, I think some of the Fox stuff is decent, but a bit over-polished and American. I liked the more casual chats that the Sky pundits stood in a bigger studio during Covid - I think that was more modern. I don't think we have too much of an issue in this area tbh, sure it could be sharper, but UK Sky viewers see RL presebted in the same way as other British sports on Sky.

Superb.

I think this is a good point. I think we often over-state some of the issues. Clubs being so close may be an issue for canibalisation reasons, but I dont think it is an issue to tv viewers at all for the reason you outline. It could be a bonus due to the rivalry and atmosphere coming across well. Similarly, some people believe Cas' stadium is an absolute embarrassment on TV, when I don't think TV viewers are that interested. I think we need to appreciate that people often understand context and the real world. We can be overly harsh on ourselves - people understand that Rugby League is not the NFL - but RL fans will still compare them directly.

Yes, I keep an eye on the Scotland team. I was going to clarify the Welsh point, but it involved more typing on my phone.