Dave T
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Posts posted by Dave T
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RL in the UK has dropped off somewhat in its production, not sure if we now use a different company, but they are very slow at changing between angles when something is happening. Its as though football or cricket producers are used.
That said, it can be just as bad in Oz, so maybe its just a challenge with the speed of the sport. I didn't see the first tackle today, but in the first match they ised the overhead camera from kick off and then changed angle meaning they completely lost the impact of the first tackle, which is always a good one to watch.
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3 minutes ago, FearTheVee said:
Well the last ashes series sold 75k tickets and we sold about that many over two tests in a few weeks before we even consider selling say 35k tickets at wembley with over four months to go. So something is definitely better, or something at least definitely feels better about the approach.
I accept that part of the pull is scarceity of the ashes concept given 20+ years since the last one, whereas in 2003 there was only two years since the last 3 match series.
There is more ambition behind this and the ticketing approach, announcements etc have been better than most series I can remember.
Sorry, yes, that's fair, I was talking more about the ticketing approach, which was mentioned in the post I replied to.
But the only thing that's different really in approach was the pre-register sale, which they also did for the last World Cup and it flunked. They have admitted that the first two tests sold out with zero marketing.
This goes back to my point on gigs somewhat, that an event can almost sell itself, and for some unknown reason this Ashes series caught the imagination of thousands up front.
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2 hours ago, Hopie said:
Wembley should be more expensive on average, its the premier venue in the country, its a prestige fixture that should be aiming at a market who are willing to pay that, I'd expect Wembley is the most expensive venue to hire, and I know it has a different market to those in the North, and most of that market live where the cost of living is higher so many things are more expensive and expected to be so.
If there is demand for £30 tickets, there are spaces in the top tier, but this isn't targeted marketing, nor do i think this is a wider strategy. Months left to sell tickets and we go another step on the discounting ladder, and this is just the public sales. As you say, not a good sign.
Wembley has never been more expensive though. We have 90k seats to shift. Surely only having 19k to shift at Leeds should see those as being more expensive.
I think people overstated the price of things in London. Its a demand thing - charge that for the West End, or NFL, or England RU tests etc. but RL matches dont fall into those categories.
I was surprised the pricing was more expensive in London than Leeds.
But irrespective of the above, bottling it and making things cheaper with 4m to go cannot be seen as a good thing.
I hope we are reading it wrong and they are just going all out for a record crowd, but its odd.
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2 hours ago, Cumbrian Fanatic said:
Just had a quick look and noticed that the back dozen rows or so of blocks 110-113 that weren't previously on sale now are, and they seem to be selling. These are the blocks Australians are encouraged to buy.
While not a fan of the usual RFL micro management, they do seem to be doing this a bit better than normal, opening up new seats as tickets sell so there are plenty of seats in each category.
Not perfect, but better than usual
I'm not sure i see anything better at all.
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2 hours ago, FearTheVee said:
Yeah - all fair points, was sure I'd read Moran was involved but perhaps not
Yeah, its been mentioned a few times, but we dont really know in what way. He may simply be underwriting it financially and taking a cut for example.
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38 minutes ago, Damien said:
Some of the other blocks I have looked at look unusual and not really natural, like you say like people have been moved.
That's the conclusion I've come to, its not natural for some whole blocks to be blanked and others hardly sold etc.
I must admit, im not a fan of moving people if that's what they've done. People select seats based on various factors, but it could just be as simple that they like those seats.
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Just now, FearTheVee said:
That's fair - but isn't Moran's mob essentially leading this so it is different from the off?
There aren't any indications of that really. This is an RFL event and being sold via the RFL platform. We dont know what, if any involvement Moran has here.
I do always think its quite a different market too. The magic Moran works is staging the right events, not necessarily marketing them well or getting ticketing well.
The gig ticket market can be an absolute car crash full of dodgy practices and they can't be trusted not to gouge customers. It benefits from huge popular demand, not great marketing and ticket sales techniques.
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I think that mistakes were made in the original ricing of Wembley. It's unusual for the Wembley/London match to be the most expensive game, yet that is what was set at the start.
If we look at versus Everton, a marquee ground in the North.
Sideline tickets - Everton £35-£60 vs Wembley £65-80
Behind the goals - Everton £30-35 vs Wembley £30-45
They appear to have realised this now, and have reduced the price of some £45 Wembley tickets, and have also added the new £20-30 tickets in that upper tier.
But the pricing of the first 50k tickets at Wembley were far more expensive than the 50k on sale at Everton.
Providing people don't lose out, I'm ok with them changing things based on where we are, but this is not a good sign.
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28 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:
Oh dear. On the plus side it does seem that hardly any tickets had been sold in the blocks that were converted, so not too many disadvantaged, but it's just a mindless move. The fact that almost all existing lower tier Cat 4 seats had gone isn't a reason to create more, it's a sign to hold your nerve and push people into higher categories.
It is odd that these blocks are pretty much completely unsold, I wonder if the only sales in these blocks were group or community sales or something.
In fact, looking at the two central blocks behind the sticks they are largely sold out, I wonder if they've moved people into this block to recategorise.
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2 minutes ago, Hopie said:
Previously discussed in the thread, and not correct.
These are 4 extra corner blocks reduced from £45 to £30.
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4 minutes ago, Damien said:
Just on this being really conservative I'd expect revenue next year to get a £4 million bump with the Ashes series. I think being more optimistic it could be as much as £6 million.
I think we should be talking about a minimum of 120,000 tickets sold, at a much higher ticket price versus the likes of Samoa and Tonga, with much better corporate and sponsorship sales. The more optimistic upper end you are talking up to 150,000 ticket sales.
Either way that should result in a healthy profit for the RFL.
Just imagine if we'd really built up our commercial operations to best in class over the years and with a regular high-quality international calendar tapping into TV rights and sponsorship at a much higher level than we currently do.
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2 minutes ago, LeytherRob said:
I don't think there can be any argument it wouldn't have been better as we now know there have been multiple loans taken out to pay players which would have been avoided.
We can argue whether it would have been good enough but" better" is out of the question. Less debt to service is always better in this scenario.
My point really is that it's just scratching the surface. Cutting £60k per month off the wage bill is great, but it wouldn't change the fact that they would still have to take the monthly loans, had an even worse squad and therefore not made any material difference to how this season would have looked to Salford. Unfortunately, they are past being able to cut a few costs to get out of this - the only real solution was to get a takeover, which has failed as we now know.
In reality, the difference between the proposed action of SC and what has happened would be maybe a couple of hundred grand extra loans - which isn't the big issue here.
I think the two options here were go bust or get a new owner/investor. I think it is clear they were well past cost-cutting being a way of surviving. That's not to say that they shouldn't be trying to get costs down, but it wouldn't be any better for the rugby element of the club in 2025.
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32 minutes ago, sweaty craiq said:
This is where the previous RFL board showed outstanding weakness and lack of vision. If the hammer had been used when it should instead of listening to bull droppings coming out of the club we would not be here today 1/ Salfords squad would be larger 2/ Salford fans would know exactly where they stood 3/Salford fans would have been fully united behind a backs to the wall season as London in 2024 4/ The comp wouldnt be compromised 5/ The negative publicity would never have occurred
By allowing the garbage spouted to be swallowed Salford got to game 1, thus making RFL compliance totally unrequired as the penalties from TV outweighed doing the right thing.
What would have been better about that?
They'd still be struggling to pay the bills, and they'd still be struggling to win games.
It's all a bit of e technical point really. The alternative really wasn't much better - saving tens of thousands a month of course makes sense, but the issues are far bigger than that.
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It'll be good to read the full report but one thing that always worries me about the RFL accounts is that there rarely appears to be any kind of narrative presented, just a load of random events that show revenues declining. There rarely appears to be an overarching story of how we are going to recover this and get back on to a steadier footing.
Its never good to see them present England activity as a burden.
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20 hours ago, LeytherRob said:
And the perception is entirely accurate. This was still in my google sheets from last time you claimed it was only a couple of years of cheap tickets. 2017 also had £99 tickets, but even the years that didn't were under £150 which is still way too cheap for an adult season ticket.
What's quite clear from that is they havent really got a clue what the value is and what these tickets are worth.
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1 hour ago, M j M said:
That's not what that usually means
It often does tbh. I think it is misconstrued as us only putting 50% of tickets on sale bt in reality it often means that different places are selling in the same block.
We saw it in action at the cup final this year, one link took you to a map with some rows on sale and a different link to a map with the alternate rows on sale. We normally can't see it.
I notice on SportBreaks and the likes that they are offering packages with Cat A tickets, they are possibly holding the greyed out rows in these blocks while the RFL also sell in the same block.
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12 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:
I understand that it's more important financially to have a thousand customers paying premium prices than two thousand all using Groupon, I do understand that their are other areas that affect all round success, such as your example of Leeds. It's just that Huddersfield seem to be lacking in all those metrics.
But my main area of concern is a wider one. Do other clubs follow suit if their attendances don't seem to be growing? These things rarely happen in isolation.
Most clubs have facilities that are suitable for them. Hudds doing this isn't going to encourage others down that route.
And it all depends how you perceive it. This is Hudds aiming for a more appropriate stadium. Its a real negative slant to view them.cutting capacity as a bad thing. The JS Stadium is not appropriate for Hudds Giants.
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11 minutes ago, Bull Mania said:
Looks like there's been a surge in ticket sales as lot more blocks appear be sold out now. 28 blocks I make it.
There are quite a few blocks with every other row on sale, likely meaning they are selling these another way. I expect many of those blanked out in premium seats are with the hospitality companies etc too.
There seems to be a bit of an oddity in that those blocks suggested for Aussie fans are almost sold out, whereas there is decent availability in the equivalent blocks at the other end.
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8 minutes ago, langpark said:
I completely understand what you are saying and it's a completely valid concern. If Huddersfield move to an 8k stadium tomorrow, and maintain the exact same crowd levels (4-5k) then most of the criticism about their crowds will disappear, despite there not being any improvement in the crowds.
Partly. Salford get criticism for crowds in a small ground.
There are two slightly different criticisms here. One is low crowds, which this won't necessarily fix, the other is the emptiness of the ground, which this will fix.
I agree with MJM here, 10k should be the level, but it is clear that for whatever reason, the John Smiths stadium is not right for them.
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27 minutes ago, Hopie said:
But the prices haven't changed in the bowl, despite some people thinking they have.
What we seem to be seeing is a correction of some cockups.
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56 minutes ago, Damien said:
Is club wembley the ones in the 200s?
Yeah, although a couple of blocks are other category premium seats.
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The hospitality does seem to be flying too. Sold out at Headingley, limited at Everton too. Looks like good sales at Wembley.
I have holidays and other commitments so havent got any tickets yet, the only one I can attend is Everton, and its £720 for two hospitality tickets, so just working through whether I can justify a grand day out.
Great to see this area is doing well, an area we really struggle with, I really hope it isnt just that tickets are sitting with partners unsold yet.
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4 hours ago, Damien said:
Again this to me as a strategy makes perfect sense. They should be looking to maximise profit where they can and not leave money on the table. It's really good to see.
It does look more like colouring issues with the maps rather than a repricing necessarily.
The only ones that look weird to me are the Club Wembley ones, but I havent kept an eye on them.
If they've never had blocks on sale that's fine, I expect they havent increased prices in blocks theyve sold.
They have history with recategorising prices, they did it at the World Cup if you recall, usually downwards.
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8 minutes ago, Cumbrian Fanatic said:
The top left corner have of Block 102 have always been £150 seats, it is the colouring of the blocks to orange/black from orange that has changed. They have added the top right corner of block 143 which haven't previously been on sale. I hazard a guess that these seats give access to the Bobby Moore Lounge
I think they've got a new pack of markers and sorted the colouring out in reality.
See also the £30 blocks that were coloured at £45 levels previously.
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England v Australia 2025 - coming to the UK!
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted · Edited by Dave T
I think in reality, they have loads of expensive seats left. I'm always cynical of sold out blocks that dont make sense.
I expect premium seats are being held by hospitality providers in those blocks. Very little looks naturally sold out at all. I think they have been creative with the 30k number, knowing it will never come under challenge as we will sell more than that guaranteed.
This push to release cheap seats can only be read as ticket sales are not where they want them to be.