Dave T

I've just bought tickets for Sweden v Portugal at Leigh taking my young daughter. She's really looking forward to it and actually asked to go to a football match.

Something I find interesting about myself and my relationship with RL is the value I put on my no. 1 past time. I have spent £115 watching a football game, £250 for a gig, £450 on a michelin star meal for 2, my bucket list will see me go to a major Euro F1 event in hospitality spending thousands - yet I am hesitating paying £50 for a World Cup ticket for the opener. That isn't me being 'tight' it is an embedded behaviour based on the perceived value of RL events being way behind all these other forms of entertainment. I'll end up buying tickets, but I'm hardly chomping at the bit to snap them up. I can't fully explain or understand it tbh.

I agree. There isn't any kind of narrative attached to teams. I think we (along with Sky, BBC, Premier and C4) could be a little more provocative with the presentation of our teams and games and then battles they have. We tend to just putbthe game there - without selling the narrative. I think this reflects on the league table, I don't know whether others do this, but I almost ignore the league table, I'm not actually sure who is sitting where in the top 3, yet this weekend at Magic feels like it should be a key game in that battle for the first spot. I love the Grand Final, but I dont think we need to go fully NFL with the lack of real importance on the ladders. I do think there is an argument for spicing up some of the rivalries, telling the stories better. As you say, the battle at the top and bottom has real stories there. What about that 6th spot, who is chasing that?

We also need to look past IMG being a consultant. That is a negative portrayal of what they do. A lot will depend on the terms agreed, but IMG are a huge company under their Endeavor umbrella and they actually deliver stuff, not just views. For example IMG have delivered Premier League Productions for over 15 years now and have just renewed their deal. From the little we know so far, this doesn't look like a consultancy, they are providing actual services.

I'll ignore the bats**t crazy idea that Sadler has already identified the solution. No disrespect to Martyn, but his idea is wacky and not far off click bait to drive discussion here. It's really easy to twist things to tell whatever story you want. Whilst it is right that SL has only 4 winners, we could easily present it in a more positive way. Since the start of SL: 4 Grand Final Winners 9 different Grand Finalists 8 different League Leaders Shield winners 8 Challenge Cup winners 13 different Cup Finalists

I almost tagged you in on this as I think your posts on this are always a perfect counter to BP's big city obsession. Agree with the above 100%. I really feel we ignore a whole aspirational population. I am working class, son of a homemaker and a bricklayer. I am very different to my parents, I have a differebt outlook on life, I want different things, but I feel the game still caters for them and not me. Within Warrington and surrounding areas (and all the other towns we are present in) we have populations who are not interested in the cheapest beer, the bargain basement experience, the working class image that we play up to. That is a valid segment that we do serve, but I dont think we play much outside of that segment. Expansion could easily be focused on expanding our customer base. We feel we are big in Warrington and Wigan, but I'd argue we are big in certain segments in Warrington and Wigan.

Indeed, it's the insularity point I was making, the geography point could have been anywhere. Its more that we need to be present in France, in London, around the UK.

Yes, for me this has been a real shortcoming of UK leadership. They've invited French teams to the party but expect them to manage the development of the whole game in France, including sponsorship and media rights etc. The fact that the SLE website does not convert to French is a perfect example of how we haven't embraced France into SL. I hope IMG recognise that our leadership structure needs to be thinking bigger than they are and not just hanging around West Yorkshire and Salford.

Agreed with all that. BP has become a bit of a one trick pony, but it's an interesting discussion, and it's why I'm so interested in the game focusing on the right things rather than vanity projects that maybe sound nice on paper. If we think about wanting big city teams, during SL, we have tried adding Paris, Gateshead (Newcastle), London, Wales, Catalans, Toronto and Toulouse. On paper that is quite a list of expansion projects in 25 years - but they have failed due to poor leadership and how they were done. Similarly, if its as easy as just having big city teams, as you suggest it becomes a bit hollow - we haven't seen Basketball, Ice Hockey, NFL Europe etc smash it just by using big city teams, even with Castleford and Leigh we have richer top leagues than those comps. It's too simplistic to say big city teams are needed. We can deliver growth even with the current teams there.

I think there is a real challenge around monetising the game in France. I don't think there are any guarantees that we will be able to tap into millions of Euro for rights and sponsorship there. I think we are miles off having any kind of effective French/European strategy though, so imho we are making a difficult job almost impossible. Toulouse has been utterly underwhelming, and whilst we can bicker about scheduling, they just haven't done a good job, some things within their control, some outside, but for something that should have been very exciting and an opportunity to start to change things, it has limped along. Its the same with London Broncos when they were last in. We need to think carefully about whether this is how we want it to be or whether we think there is a better approach. But in reality, better approach will lead to controversial topics such as if and how P&R is done, how expansion teams are funded, what support they should be given etc. I do think Catalans have been in SL for more than long enough now for us to see that commercial benefits are limited with them in SL, so if we are wanting to focus on commercial income, some things will need to be done differently, because with the current approach, I suggest we will just continue to bumble along and having to pay for channels to show our comp. We may need to take a gamble, but a gamble needs some basis in reality, the wild claims of attracting huge TV deals from Europe or North America need to be tempered - and in the flip side we need to start judging expansion on far wider remits than whether a millionaire can get a good team together, it's about increasing the fanbase, sponsors, player pool, media coverage, perception, international standards etc.

In reality there are quite a lot of root causes, I suppose it depends how far back we want to go and how wide we want to think. But, IMO, the main root cause of why we underperformed (let's wrap it as that), is due to fundamentally poor leadership and weak governance that hasn't allowed the game to make the right decisions. Not having a team in Birmingham is an outcome of this, not a root cause. Without resolving leadership and governance challenges we will never maximise our potential. And that isn't to ignore expansion, great leadership wouldn't have messed about with silly things like PSG, they'd have had proper vision for growth and implemented initiatives properly.

I think this is right when speaking to most people, but not BP. But not being in certain territories isn't a root cause, its an outcome, it has its own root cause. I also think it is very important to remember that these discussions usually talk about "RL" when in reality we are talking about the UK RL comp.

Well it depends what question you are trying to answer. You are searching for some weird utopia where RL is like football played all over the world, in reality we are a sport like many others fighting for our corner of the market and being the best we can. We can't just be a different thing, we can work on looking differently and being better than we are, but it's like putting the root cause of your house being valued poorly as because it is not in Malibu Beach.

The game in the UK can get more money without completely trashing the existing game and making up 12 big city teams though. Asking and answering the wrong questions is an issue. As this thread has highlighted, we have had many of these sponsors in the past - that suggests it is more than just what clubs we have in SL as that hasn't really changed.

I wish you'd have mentioned this before....

I don't think there needs to be a hero's and a villains argument at play here. A commercial national governing body shouldn't be running the world game. They should be focusing on their remit.

We are notoriously bad at retaining sponsors. We have very very few that get involved in multiple sponsors. I really think this is where an international calendar is crucial. You can't really sign up sponsors for long terms as there are lean years in between world cups. But even locally, to turn only one of those new sponaors into a UK sponsor (Specsavers) is poor.

A really disappointing element of the women's game of RL is that we have the same sponsors. Women's sport is a real opportunity to tap into new audiences and partners. Our approach is to lump sponsorships in with the men's game and play the games as pre-match entertainment for the men's games.

Agreed. Focusing on root cause is really important. I often think we try to 'fix' the wrong thing.

GoDaddy, EZE Group, Laurent-Perrier, Specsavers, getthelabel.com, Moss Bros, National Lottery, Marriott, Hertz, Wales, Gullivers Sports Travel, Programmemaster, Wooden Spoon, Ticketmaster, Steeden, Centurion, BOC, Vivomed, Heartsine, Singha, Gatorade, Thirsty Planet and MyClubBetting.com. According to a Google link this was the panel of sponsors - I know this wasn't the final list.

Yes, I did mean to mention players. We really are an unfriendly, ungrateful, snivelling bunch of toxic morons at times, generally speaking.

On things like this, I think somebody referred to Tissot (it may have been you) - but done well, these things can really stick. Tissot were probably one of the highest profile sponsors that we all remember that were involved - and I expect their deal was really modest. At the World Cup in 2013 we had really professional presentation of the sponsors - we used the big screens to great effect for example, and many announcements in the ground were sponsored. TBH, what all this screams of is lack of resource over anything else. There is nobody who is responsible for just making sure this stuff gets done - I've worked for organisations before where it is all about return on investment and then forgetting about some of the softer things (or rather things that are seen as softer things rather than a core part of your proposition).

Agreed - and the Papa Johns sponsorship tbh is a bit of a case study in how toxic our game can be at times. I have rarely seen such negativity around a sponsorship deal (maybe the Stobart deal) - but for the RL media, fans and others to so actively and publicly criticise a partnership was not helpful. The deal may have seemed small time, but sometimes these things can grow on an intitial deal - and I think sometimes as fans we need to stop and think about the harm we can do to the game.

There are clearly differences in product placement acceptance between Aus and the UK, but there is definitely something in the OP. As a sport we struggle to get sponsors, yet in reality we should be able to offer a hell of a lot to sponsors, we should be more flexible than anyone. We have opportunities for sponsorships all over our assets, yet we have gone backwards. Where is the sponsor logo on the ball that we had? Where is the man of the match sponsor? Where is the VR sponsor? Where is the Magic Weekend sponsor? Where are the pitch sponsors? Which company sponsors the clock and stats on TV coverage? Where are the sponsors when going to ad breaks on Sky and C4? These are all indicators of two things. Firstly, that times are hard, sponsorship has dried up, we aren't the only comp reliant on people like Betfred. Secondly, that we are performing poorly and seemingly offer little.

To be fair, this thread isn't really about that point. They can choose who they want for their Origin games, they are not IRL sanctioned games. The discussion is about the NRL running the international game.