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Dave T

Coach
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Everything posted by Dave T

  1. Within reason shouldn't clubs be able to run themselves and ultimately fail? Of course we should support where possible, but this money that they have received was an advance, not an additional payment, so I think we do need to not overstated the support they've had. Does anyone know when that £500k they received will have been received in a normal situation?
  2. A dedicated channel wouldn't be a good idea imo. People won't like it but I think the only way you'd get benefits would be if it was joined with Union and there was a Sky Sports Rugby channel. But I lso don't like the idea of that tbh. In the current Sky Sports model, the aspiration should be getting as much Main Event coverage as possible.
  3. If we were going to have stringent financial measures that had serious repercussions, we'd struggle to get a league together. It would certainly be less entertaining if clubs had to 'live within their means' or 'only spend what they get in'. They are nice soundbites, but it's not really how it works. As we've seen in RL, a relatively small financial shock, maybe a sponsor going bust, an investor getting bored, bad weather affecting crowds etc. can send a club over the edge the margins are so fine. There isn't an option that sees the sport as it currently is and being more financially prudent. There certainly isn't one that brings growth with more sensible financial performance.
  4. I'm not necessarily sure there is a model that works here tbh. I'm not convinced it's the model as such that is failing. Costs increasing far faster than revenues is the challenge, but that isn't necessarily a thing about the model - it's a reflection of the reality with many many external factors playing their part. Whilst RL may be criticised for its lack of lofty ambition over the last 20 years or so, it was a sport that broadly did ok on being relatively sustainable. That was achieved by keeping costs down imo rather than being able to increase revenues, but even in a sport like Union, say, they are facing the same problems and have had a worse time than us in recent years. The model isn't horrendous, the execution and delivery is below par, and I would suggest that if we were to propose a new model for the pro game here it may involve culling of teams and routing the central funding into a small number of teams.
  5. Well not really. He moaned about something that is already happening.
  6. The accusations were the same though of being Little Englanders.
  7. Have we heard anything official from them? To an extent, as frustrating as it is, I can live with an announcement by the end of say Feb - as long as we know that there is an Ashes in October/November and the details are being finalised. It all feels far too secretive. The silence worries me that it means there may be a level of nervousness to formally announcing it as it may be in doubt, but to put a positive spin on it, it does suggest that the planning is far more complex than Wigan, Leeds and Hull.
  8. There is no evidence for your insinuation in the last line. They didn't step in with TWP before they left the comp, despite many red flags, they haven't with London now.
  9. Glad it's not just me who thought it was a dire article. I don't think Shaw has worked out what his actual point was and who he was angry at. I think a problem we have here with Salford, and not only Salford is that the amount of cash flow issues that put them in trouble is relatively modest. I think that's why we haven't seen a kneejerk reaction, there is probably a little bit of wiggle room here. The challenge that Salford do have though really is that in recent years, it's probably been as good as its gonna get - a Grand Final, and Challenge Cup Final, they've announced apparently record sponsorship etc. yet they are still relatively poorly supported and can't pay their bills. I genuinely hope the stadium commercial deal will help them, but it's hard to see how it's gonna be better than the support they've had from the council in recent years anyway. Fingers crossed that this is a genuine time for them to move onwards and upwards, but I'm not sure what's gonna change massively.
  10. Partner is ok terminology, in the same way that Sky are a partner. They do have representation on the boards, so are technically more than a consultant, but it would appear a pretty weak setup. I think one of the biggest challenges here is that none of this partnership came with a pot of money, and for a skint sport, that's a problem.
  11. It is important to remember that when our TV deal peaked, it wasn't because we doubled our viewing figures. It's far more complex than that. It's important that we position ourselves as a sport than can provide substantial quality content at a time of year that they sometimes struggle for live UK content. I worry our position is weak, and the real game changer is through getting genuine interest from other platforms.
  12. I think we are seeing the difference between PE and a consultant. I think people wanted them to come in and really shake things up and I don't know whether that will ever really be possible as a consultant really. If IMG were in charge, I think its clear things would be different (not guaranteed better) and I think that's jarring.
  13. The tendency to try and create divides and group people into IMG fans or haters is tiresome, and is really poor for this publication imo. My position is that I'm always happy to see new expertise brought into the sport - the reason for that is I just don't always feel that we take the business side of the sport too seriously - we have had past players being Commercial Directors and even CEO's who don't necessarily have the qualifications. We have some really weak performances at both club and governing body level - so I'm happy that we look outside of our existing structure. I have no direct experience of IMG, so I can't say whether IMG are the best partner, and I expect most of us are in the same boat. I was however very happy that we didn't go down the Private Equity route, even though that may have brought an injection of cash into the game, I think we would be giving away too much. So broadly speaking, I'm comfortable that we have brought in more expertise into the game. It's not for me to worry about due diligence etc. but I do expect that an organisation the size of IMG have far more expertise than we do within the game at the moment. A really important point to remember though is that the governing body is the RFL, and the Commercial body is RLCom. Ultimately, IMG are not the decision maker here (if they were we wouldn't have loop games by now) - and we cannot absolve the two organisations above of responsibility for the game, which many fans and even club officials seem to want to do. The way the game is run is on the RFL and RLCom. No passing the buck should be accepted here. And that brings us onto the results so far. For me it is a mixed bag. I've been relatively comfortable with everything that was proposed as part of their 'reimagining RL' piece. The summary of it I would sell as 'smarten ourselves up, present ourselves in the best way we can, improve digitally, improve engagement with fans, and we should see positive commercial outcomes'. I think that's broadly sound and uncontroversial. In terms of the two key things that have been delivered that have their fingerprints on we have Grading and SL+. Grading is a mixed bag. It shouldn't come as a surprise that many advocate scrapping on-field P&R, we did it before, other similar sports don't have it or are discussing scrapping it, the clubs voted it in. It's also easy to see that this would be a controversial one, it was last time, and will be for a while. But let's not put this down to an IMG radical idea. It's pretty basic, one that the leaders of the game wanted. In terms of implementation, I think it's been pretty poor tbh. I don't have an issue with many of the minor points that others do, and it does rank clubs as you'd expect them, but I hate the annual assessments and the timings, but I expect these were compromises and reflect the fact that they don't make the decisions. It's definitely a fudge and weaker for it imo. On SL+, I think it's been really rather good tbh. Whether it ever stacks up commercially I'm not sure, but the TV deal is a revolutionary one and being able to watch every SL game is a real step forward as a fan. So that's a real positive for me. So in the first couple of years, it looks like these are the two main visible outputs from the partnership that the sport has implemented. Its a mixed bag imo, and if I was scoring them it'd be maybe a 6 out of 10, room for improvement, but I certainly don't think there has been much controversial or wrong that has happened. I'd have liked a few more visible things - ticketing, marketing, events etc - but again, it should be remembered that it is ultimately the RFL and RLCom that owns this, and they need to step up. Apologies for the rambling post, but I suppose my final point is that it's perfectly possible to be happy with IMG and also want more from the partnership.
  14. My point is that the planned Ashes Down Under should be a really attractive tour for England fans, visiting a great part of the world and watching England play on tour. I went Down Under to the 2008 World Cup and had a great time. But the difference was that it was all planned by now. The planned Ashes Down Under has been canned, with nothing official announced at all - the last official announcement was telling s that there is an Ashes in 2025 Down Under. International Rugby League Maps Out Future And even though we now understand that the above plan is not happening, we don't know what is happening. These tours should have thousands of fans travelling to them. As a fan how on earth can you tie in your plans with an organisation that makes it up as it goes along and has a long history of just changing things on a whim.
  15. Confusion over proposed Kangaroos tour as Mal Meninga prepares for PNG clash after NRL grand fina | NRL.com
  16. https://www.nrl.com/news/2018/07/12/proposed-changes-to-international-rugby-league-calendar/ NRL proposal for 2019 Ashes. They didn't have the year off. They proposed to change everything round and tour England, GB Lions were already planned to tour Down Under, they refused to host GB and we were left with a half-assed tour that lost money. The Aussies played a couple of home Tests, but wouldn't play GB who travelled across the world to play in the region.
  17. Well just a few months ago the plan was for England to be going Down Under for an Ashes. Why on earth would anyone consider touring abroad to follow RL?
  18. History shows they suggested an Ashes in 2019 and then didn't fancy it.
  19. It's really weird language isn't it?
  20. I agree with your assessment on Sky in the main. In reality we are filler. And that isn't said disparagingly, most sports are to an extent. I don't think Sky are necessarily peed off or anything or disappointed that we are underperforming, we are what we are, but they are firmly sticking to more realistic market values. The cost saving is a real challenge for us as a sport. We are hardly in huge demand as it is, there is never competition for our comp and Sky have shown that they are relatively happy to have some days with little to no live sport on, which was unthinkable a couple of decades ago. To an extent they have addressed this with cricket, tennis, US sports and the new EFL deal which offers loads of content. We should also remember that once upon a time Rugby Union was important to Sky Sports, now very little is on there. Things like WWE used to be major for them, now gone. Champions League, gone. They really are comfortable allowing things to go, and I do think that as a bit of an edge sport we are at real risk. I expect if RL left Sky Sports the impact would be negligible.
  21. This aged well....
  22. Is there a worldwide darts governing body, or is everything basically just run by the pdc? Does each cou try have their own associations?
  23. If we talk RL in the UK and not limit it to SL, then we can see that we aren't just attracting the same people over and over. We get c150-200k for main SS live games, we get c500-750k for BBC cup games and we get 1-2m for major England games on the BBC. It isn't just the same 150k that are watching on Sky each week, I'm sure even here we don't all watch every game. We have a population in the millions who will watch RL on TV, and a few hundred thousand who will attend live RL events too.
  24. Merry Christmas everyone!
  25. I did see something about last years final reaching something like 27m on SM. I don't know the stats behind that but it is staggering. Like I say, it's pretty much a perfect sport for TV/video clips.
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