Dave T

I can't believe this was even still a story. Nice to see plenty of people on social media calling them out due to the amount of international RU games played over the weekend with their Union counterparts.

Premier Sports' top rated show for the last week of October was 10k for the United Rugby Union Championship. The 15th ranked show had 600 viewers. The week earlier it looks like they got 30k for an RU international (USA v All Blacks I believe). From memory, the Championship always rated quite well on Premier when it was on previously so it'll be interesting to watch and see if it can challenge the numbers for the United RU - which generally gets between 5 and 10k.

Could you provide any evidence for this claim in bold Gav?

I think it is disappointing that we no longer appear to have a 'marquee' event at quarter final stage. Our Quarter Finals will now be at Hull, Huddersfield, Wigan and Bolton, which is a bit meh. As bad a ground as Liverpool is, it gives a great impression on TV and shows us as a major event playing in historic grounds. However, on the flip side, if we can fill all four of these grounds, all hopefully shown live on the main BBC channels over a weekend, it would be a great look. So, disappointing with the lack of marquee replacement, but Wigan looks great and is a great ground for an international. I do think the biggest ground should stage England, which I think is Bolton.

As happy as I'll be if he is a dud, this is right. There are some gems to be signed who haven't done it in the NRL yet and we should be open to trying to uncover them. He could go either way, he could be a Green or Hastings, or looking at my own club, we signed Matt Rodwell and Michael Sullivan who were duds at 7 and had far more experience. Still one of my favourite Wire players in SL is Brent Grose who had limited NRL pedigree.

Yes, I know that, so I understand we had some sparing events in non- traditional RL towns, and this was one of those - and it has gone and not been replaced like-for-like.

I really hope this is the only change. This was an ambitious World Cup schedule, but the majority of games were in standard heartland venues - this moves from prestigious to heartland again. Another forced change or two like this and it won't be great.

I don't like Anfield, but it was one of the marquee venues that gave the tournament more prestige. Disappointing, but hopefully 24k in Wigan will make up for it somewhat and it will look and sound great.

https://www.seriousaboutrl.com/we-had-a-legal-document-wigan-explains-how-they-could-have-forced-things-through-with-george-williams-42850/

Possibly, or that there isn't anyone around that warrants a £300k salary at the moment. Wigan claimed they offered Williams their highest ever contract in the history of Wigan RL (Iirc), which suggests they don't have a 2nd marquee, but they are prepared to spend. Although, I'm not sure I trust too much that comes from the Wigan club under Lenegan and Radlinski, I think they gaslight the Wigan fans.

Yes, I have held the above view for a while, however I think we have to move with at least inflation and have space for growth for those who want to spend more. I'm not a fan of marquee rule tbh, I thought it was flawed from the start and I've seen little to change my view there. While technically clubs can spend far more than the £1.8m that it seemed to stick at for a while, the way they can do it is a bit artificial - in reality you only get the benefit if you are prepared to pay individuals large amounts, when that may not be the best approach. I'm not convinced it is the traditional big clubs who need to drive their standards. In reality, they are the ones developing the players, pulling in the crowds, sponsors, getting viewing figures etc.

You don't seem to know what virtue signalling is.

This confused me, I had to spend a few minutes searching to find out who Melbourne Lions are

Spot on and I made a similar point earlier in the thread. I tend to agree with Damien on the salary cap. I've been reluctant to see too many increases as I'm not convinced the game can afford it and I'm not a fan of the rich backer model of Union, but I think we maybe need to loosen the reigns on the bigger clubs who can afford more now. I think the salary cap is working too much for the smaller clubs nowadays rather than the bigger clubs and the wider game. But, when we see some top clubs still needing to have owners pump hundreds of thousands in per year to balance the books I'm not sure it'll happen.

Agreed. I don't think the response to not developing enough players is to scrap the Academy.

I agree, particularly on the Huddersfield point, but it is a challenge when we are highlighting that a 12k ground is too big for an SL club. I think the point is that that club should be too small for SL. I can see how this can work for Salford, and my view is that clubs live or die by their decisions but the biggest frustration for SL is that if they did get 5k averages they should really be right at the bottom end of the table and eventually ousted as other clubs overtake them, but we seem to struggle to get clubs to overtake the likes of Salford, Wakefield, Leigh etc. Hopefully Toulouse will be one, but as long as we have a really week bottom end I fear people will keep looking at 10 teams as a solution.

Could you link to this Parra shirt that Wire have rebadged? It seems to be a common comment.

On a thread about Sports Marketing if you focus on the rules you don't like, and then make the point that the primary focus is the stuff on the pitch, don't be surprised if people disagree with you. On this Sports Marketing thread all you appear to want to discuss is minor rule interpretations. It is perfectly fine to hold the view that tweaking the game will deliver better results than effective marketing (I strongly disagree) but don't keep making out that isn't what you are saying.

To take this to its logical conclusion, I find it a shame that you think Football and Rugby Union are such superior sports to RL as shown by their greater crowds, TV figures and investors.

Of course that is the primary attraction, but there are a hundred other things that people could be doing instead, so it needs to be packaged and sold to customers. People wont just turn up. Your 2nd paragraph is contradictory. You say it isn't about a rule interpretation - but then explain exactly why it IS about a rule interpretation. Also - you do keep ignoring that I have acknowledged that we should always look to tweak and improve the game where relevant - what I am saying, is that it won't grow the game. What I am also saying is that this is a Sports Marketing thread and existing RL fans are positioning rule interpretations as a major issue and missing the point.

I'm very critical of Salford, I think it may have been earlier in this thread I was pretty blunt about them, but sometimes I do think we go a bit too far and forget a lot of the good work that goes on in RL and at the clubs.

Their offering is far better than when RL was previously on there. Obviously the RU content drags it down somewhat but its not a terrible channel. And in HD which was always an issue a few years back.

Posts like this should be trotted out when the forum comes round to its monthly cycle of questioning the value of existing teams like Salford.

And that brings us back to the whole point of the thread, and is possibly one of the perfect examples of why the sport is not more popular. This thread was about marketing the product, how we package it better, sell it better, engage with fans better. And it has turned into existing RL fans discussing their minor bugbears with the sport. And I think this is where the sport has gone wrong. We think the most important thing is the stuff that happens on the field, when it is pretty clearly established that it isn't the most important thing. The reason that in a town like Warrington 10k turn out on a Friday night to watch RL but in London it is 500 isn't due to knock ons, or blowing up for forward passes. On your first point, I don't disagree about repetion being boring, but it is a prominent feature of all sports. Football, Netball, boxing, basketball, cricket, RU, motor racing, it's all based around repetion - it is how that repetition is punctured with moments of skill, scores, controversy, and imho RL rates very highly versus most (all imo) other sports.

Yes. I don't fully agree with the BBC point though. We have decent coverage on the BBC. We have regular cup games and all England Test matches are shown on the BBC. We should try and stay away from the likes of Amazon (unless we create new content for big money). The Autumn internationals in RU are very easy to ignore nowadays and I think RU will regret their choice of Amazon for these. Post-covid if we can get cup games on BBC, then regular internationals every year, then 10 SL games on terrestrial TV, we will be doing very well. We maybe get around 80k people going to matches on a good week. On Sky we can get 400k to watch two games a week, and on BBC we get maybe 750k to 1m on Cup games and up to 2m for internationals. Chasing those high end figures is clearly the right thing to do. The way to do that isn't by focusing on knock on interpretations.