Dave T

People are here telling you that they go to pubs and bars all over the place that don't have dart boards. That suggests your claim that pretty much every pub and bar in the world has a board is wrong. Maybe the bars and pubs you go to have dart boards, but that isn't necessarily representative of all pubs and bars. Sure, plenty local boozers do, but many many pubs are now food pubs, chains etc that don't, and town and city centre bars rarely have a board outside of the game bars that are emerging.

Of course they could say that. But 12m ago they would have struggled to name a darts player. And I'd guess they'd struggle to name a Union player now.

That wouldn't be a great test. Ask the same question for darts, but ask them to name an RL team and it would be more comparable, as one is a team sport and one an individual sport. Littler is absolutely a breakthrough star, but 12m ago, since the retirement of Phil Taylor I'd day it was very different in the darts world.

I expect it is where there is an element of formality i.e part of the pub team. In the same way we don't really just count people who pass a rugby ball around on the car park as RL participants. I do always think we need to be careful not to let our own personal experiences to cloud our judgement too much on stuff like this, which is easier said than done. The original post that sparked debate here was based on one poster claiming that pretty much all pubs and bars have dart boards - which is demonstrably untrue, but because the pubs they frequent have dartboards, then it's a claim made with vigour. But it's wrong. Just like you saying that there are people playing - in reality that could be no more than 6 or 7 people a week, maximum, and they go to the pub once a month. I do personally enjoy pub games, and really like the emergence of the games bars, including The Flight Club darts bars.

Well no. You claimed that pretty much every pub and bar in the world has a dart board. You're just blatantly wrong and are now stroppy. In reality, you mean one kind of pub.

Darts and RL conversations are always interesting, as on many metrics, RL is clearly the bigger sport, including live audiences, participation and commercial value. Darts does very well on major events with some good peaks, as we see at the Worlds. Perception is key here - the amount of times people claim we can learn plenty from darts is interesting. I enjoy darts, and it lends itself very well to being on TV, creating viral events on social media, and creating stars. It is also easy to make the events look quite good on TV, with some modest crowds and empty seats hidden. If we look at the 4.8m figure for the 2024 final though, there are a few things to remember. This was an outcome of the Luke Littler effect. the figure the year before was c2m, which is also very very impressive, but it does support the point that this is a bit of a phenomenon. It should also be pointed out that the 4.8m number is the largest peak ever on Sky Sports for any sport other than football. But we wouldn't claim that darts is bigger than Golf, Tennis, Formula One etc - so that probably shouldn't be used in the context of an RL discussion. Darts is doing very well, it has a great story at the moment, I'm enjoying it, people should continue to do so, but I don't think a sport that has five times more people playing it than the other should be so negative about ourselves, particularly when we also bring in five or six times more fans every week than that sport.

This is just not true at any level, and I'm surprised you are then annoyed that people are disagreeing with you. A certain type of pub may have a dartboard, but I'd suggest that for the vast majority of times they hang unused and when you look at pubs and bars in the round, with food pubs and modern bars, they just don't have dart boards. I'm interested why you were so bold in this claim, because it is very easy to disprove it pretty much instantly.

I expect awareness is favourable to RU top leagues in many instances. I think outside of football, awareness is really in the localities.

Nah. People are aware. Just like I'm aware of not all. People like to slag RL on this front, but I'm prepared to bet more can name an SL team rather than a netball team.

No. You are simply wrong. It's a digital incompetence issue.

Edit

Indeed. I think people are getting a bit hung up on the rant element, when there is a valid point that there is very little about going watching matches, and on a mobile device not even a link to tickets. And this isn't just a Giants or even RL thing, plenty are bad at this kind of thing.

Aye, I have no idea what their issue is to be honest simply giving my view. But yes, the fixtures are now confirmed (subject to further tv changes obviously).

I always like to see companies that I like get involved in our game (and I know they have sponsored RL before), but as a family package holiday provider, I think Jet2 are pretty much excellent, in a field that can be very very mixed.

I think it would be easy to be really clear on what the current status is. All clubs now have fixtures, and they should be listed in the ticket section with the button set to "Buy now, not available, sold out etc". I think a system which allows you to set an alert for when the tickets go on sale would be useful, as well as a useful data capture tool. And I always think a customer guide - i.e. prices, how to buy etc. is useful. And I do find it bizarre that the Giants site does remove the ticket link from the mobile site. That's a basic.

Yeah mobile. I did think that may be the case. But tbh, it really should be mobile-led now.

The complaint isn't entirely without merit. I think its fair that they aren't necessarily on sale yet, but their site doesn't appear to have a link for a ticketing portal that might tell you this. They do have a ticket section, but it's found as part of a news feature and not the nav. Wire don't have their tickets on sale yet, but they do have a ticketing link front and centre.

I agree Rob, and if we're honest here, the criticism is in reality based around a couple of Leigh fans who make it all about their club, and struggles to have any kind of really sensible discussion around them. They've pretty much become characters on here, we see it happen a lot, I remember we had Wendall on here banging about glamour club making Wire threads impossible, and Gledhill making it hard to discuss Bulls for example. I think we are seeing that to an extent. It's all part of being on a forum, and different teams suffer more at times in my experience. I enjoy the Leigh content personally, I can ignore the stuff I dont like, there's a few very good posters from your team imo.

I think this confirms you don't really understand embarrassment, as suspected from your article.

That just isn't what happened.

I think the point on this one mate is that there are a very small handful of fans who expertly bring threads to focus onto Leigh, so it isn't necessarily about dedicated threads as such. It's actually quite impressive how it happens This was a very common feature of the board when TWP were a thing.

There has always been an interesting overlap with TWP and Leigh discussions. And then Leigh replaced them in SL.

Stop being an over-sensitive bore Harry. Even when people write positive posts about your club it aint good enough for you.

I don't think it's right to nitpick about deals like this. We pretty much never know the value of sponsorships, it doesn't seem to be a thing that they are announced nowadays, and it's up to Leigh to get the £'s that they want/need. It's a very strong brand and the more of them we have backing our clubs and the sport the better. The cringeworthy stuff making out this is like nothing ever seen before is silly, but good on Leigh for what they are doing. I expect the deals they are signing are nothing too revolutionary, but they are giving their fans plenty of excitement and enthusiasm with things like Reebok and Jet2 logos on shirts. I've no issues with them shouting about that after plenty years in the Championship and a couple of rubbish attempts at SL in the past.

I'm convinced DB has shares in LE. That article is embarrassing.