Dave T

Ignore the 8.30pm. Events in Europe regularly kick off later. Why aren't people so vocal about Thursdays when Wakefield complain about them? We all take a hit with Thursdays.

Possibly the only thing here is that this is a Sky production (Toulouse don't have a TV deal) so it falls within normal Sky scheduling and planning. But as per my last post, Catalans sold out Thursday for the semi last year (which we don't here) so maybe it's not that big a deal and it'll still do well.

Thursday night in France is not an issue. Its not allowed to be an issue for anyone else so give it a break. We play games over Easter, and we play games on Thursdays, maybe the Thursday is far better than Good Friday in France, I don't know. They filled their ground on Thursday for the semi last year. Catalans crowds do fluctuate a fair bit, seasonality appears to be a bigger factor there than in other places. It looked good, was a decent crowd, it's not really an issue.

Couldn't agree more. For any faults the comp may have overall, the finals have generally been great, had plenty of variety and some great moments with underdog victories.

Which SL clubs have websites worse than Cornwall's? Because I'd be very worried if that was the case.

I agree with the general principle of your post, but I think there are too many Hollow points and soundbites in it. Let's say Wire went all out and attractes 2k brand new fans to that last cup game vs Wakey. Our crowd would have been 4.5k and they'd have been massively underwhelmed. Now had we included it for members, we'd have had 7 or 8k standard plus 2k new fans making a decent event. Getting a good cup crowd on optimism and playing well is good, but not everyone can be in that position. We have a well established sales process and window where we make the majority of our sales. At Warrington we have probably sold 78k match tickets for the year out of our total expected crowd of 100-130k for the year before the season starts. I don't know why we make it hard for ourselves and try and sell thousands of tickets for games at short notice that are on TV.

I take on board all of your points, but subscription models are here, and valid. I made the point earlier that Netflix don't charge you more for a big premiere. We have made it more expensive for these games (they used to be included or heavily subsidised) and made it easier to sit at home and watch on TV, with more games than ever being shown. Wire get more vs Wakefield in the league than they do versus Wigan in the Cup. That isn't because the Wakefield game is the more attractive event. We can't ignore what is happening in front of us. We have spent decades building up a fan base on subscription models (season tickets spread over direct debits or bought for Christmas) and then we act surprised when those same fans watch on TV instead of getting their wallet out again for a game.

Funnily enough, I like it. I don't have an issue with training wear that moves away from standard colours. Otherwise it's all a bit samey. If you want something that is red, white or dark blue, you can find it there.

Obviously we were at Wilderspool long before I was around so who knows, but I did see us play in front of low 3k's so we may have had fewer than that for some random cup games in the past. Not sure.

Yep, there is no excuse. I think today was a tough sell, but that should lead to a disappointing 5 or 6k not 2.6k. I assume this is the lowest ever competitive crowd for Wire at the HJ.

Yes, they have pushed the seeding too far. I mean look how good this Barrow v Hudds game is.

We do need to be careful with the narrative of saying it has lost its appeal. I don't think that is true. If Netflix put their next big show on with a £5 fee on top of their subscription I expect viewers would be massively down. The constant ignoring of how RL fans purchase tickets will kill off the Cup - and the next thing will be the playoffs.

I wonder if we are just going to carry on delivering these kinds of cup crowds until they dwindle to nothing and the cup gets scrapped. We saw when these games are included in season tickets (not necessarily free) that the crowds are good. This isn't working.

I think this is right. I know Birmingham is a big City, but have been once in my life for cricket and could tell you nothing else about it. The likes of Liverpool benefit from the tourism angle, but 'normal' cities like Leeds less so in my experience.

That does cut out the other end which was probably the most populated stand. 6k seemed about right from watching on telly.

I get that, but I dont have an issue with more choice. Somebody somewhere must like them. OK, I'm not positive about the last line.

I suspect they just don't make many and sell them dirt cheap if left over.

I do understand that some of them are rubbish, but is there such an issue with these shirts being on sale to customers? They'll either buy them or they won't.

I think they will learn what level of promotion drives viewers, what teams drive viewers, whether playoffs are more important, would the cup be more valuable etc. Is regularity needed. It's all good.

I think the analysis will be really interesting at the end of the year on all of this. One thing we appear to have learnt in recent years is that RL appears to be a decent enough secondary sport that people are happy to watch in decent numbers, but doesn't necessarily have a huge hardcore - and I think that makes sense, our footprint is relatively small. But I think we can overstate the importance of teams, Sky figures and the BBC haven't particularly demonstrated that, and even some 'big' games can fall foul of low viewing numbers. Scheduling and promotion appears to be really important for RL, maybe more so than other sports. Let's look at the disadvantages this last game had versus the first two: 1. Lack of two 'top' teams (no disrespect to Wakey but the narrative is they may fight relegation - this game was like Spurs v Brighton rather than the first two which were like Spurs v Man United). As it turns out, it was a cracker. 2. Lack of major promotion - the noise around that opener was massive. C4 will know they didn't put the same promotion around this latest game. 3. Lack of continuity. Hull v Saints followed up the heavily promoted opener and benefited from that. This game was a little out of the blue. But C4 are also learning here. I expect there will be bigger numbers throughout the year and the playoffs could be great, they are the ones I am really interested in. But it's all good so far, let's see how we go over the next few months.

I think there is certainly a case that new facilities are automatically a good move, but that ultimately comes down to the commercials. Salford is a perfect example of that. But I think there is also the challenge that the likes of Hilton Park just weren't fit for purpose and would be even less so a further decade on.

There is a certain irony in this. In all seriousness though Catalans crowds do seem to be affected by seasonality a bit more than UK clubs, so hopefully we will see some improvements.

One of the worst elements of the licensing era is the complete fixation we have around facilities and perception to the tv audience. Often we overstate these points to suit our own arguments. In reality, clubs with good facilities should be able to offer a better proposition to customers and benefit from increased crowds and income, and therefore be able to run a stronger club. I don't have too much issue with Wakefield playing in a dump, but it should be something that is a millstone around their neck that stops them competing, and therefore they fall to their natural level. However, there are two elements at play. Firstly, facilities is not proving to be the silver bullet in terms of crowd numbers. Cas for example have been able to deliver solid crowds, better than some teams in far better facilities. This belief that good grounds = good crowds is flawed. Secondly, the restrictive Salary Cap has helped to keep the clubs with lower incomes competitive, when in reality a club wit a turnover of £7-10m should be blowing teams with a turnover of £4m out of the water, but they can only spend the same amounts. We do see the richer teams have some benefits as they are generally the clubs players want to be at, but the cap does create a spread. The likes of Cas and Wakey have shown that they can keep competing with terrible facilities, and good luck to them, but a large part of that is the artificial suppression of spend at the top level. I think it is important that we allow clubs to be aspirational and push their spending if they have the infrastructure in place and the income being generated. I don't think we necessarily need to go down the route of excluding teams from P&R, but we should be creating rules and an environment that makes it harder for these to compete.

The numbers look disappointing, and whilst the game turned out great (for non-Wire fans) it probably wasn't a big draw, with a low key build up and plenty of rivalry and nice weather. But this is the business C4 are in, they will understand fluctuations in viewing figures and seasonal trends, so we don't need to panic, I think looking over the full year will tell them a lot. But it's disappointing for the game that we can get higher on Sky.

Fans just getting voicemail apparently, and the mailbox is full. I really don't understand why we are not using online ticket systems with queues for this stuff now.