Dave T
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Posts posted by Dave T
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Just now, Archie Gordon said:
In fairness, isn't that how all negotiations work.
Beat me to it by seconds. Exactly right.
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1 hour ago, LeeF said:
Interestingly IMG also managed to get the current TV deal improved despite it being reduced from the previous ones. Another tangible contribution that sone seem quiet on
This one made me smile. It's no more than PR this, of course the end of the negotiation should see a better deal than the start.
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26 minutes ago, phiggins said:
I think that, unfortunately, the biggest issue that we have is not IMG, and it isn’t the clubs. It’s RL commercial. Why was Rhodri Jones talking about a refocus on ROI the other week, rather than pointing out this tangible benefit.
They have a key role, sat between IMG and clubs, but I fear they’re not up to it.
I think the problem is that we are just seeing more of the same, which is no surprise as we announced an inside man as MD.
I'm not somebody who always believes we need to look externally, but Jones just seems so utterly impressive as a leader.
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33 minutes ago, Barley Mow said:
Am I right in thinking that RL Commercial is essentially a joint venture between the RFL and IMG?
30 minutes ago, phiggins said:Don’t think so. It’s a joint venture between the RFL and Super League. Wasn’t it setup after the farcical attempt at a split and appointment of Elstone by SL?
I think it was part of the restructure triggered by the IMG partnership, and IMG have a guy on the board, as well as the RFL board. So they have an involvement, not sure how the formal jv/partnership is structured though.
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12 minutes ago, MattSantos said:
Interesting that if we have 13 A grade clubs next year, we could still have a 12 team top league.
That'd be fun..
It just supports what I've said for a while. The gradings mean nowt. It's the top x ranked teams depending on how many we can afford to have in. Genuinely not sure why they've kept the A,B and C gradings once they got rid of the guaranteed place for A.
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1 minute ago, Archie Gordon said:
Yes - the only point I was making was that we almost all believed it was £450k a year. There was a suggestion that to believe that this was a yearly fee required some sort of mea culpa.
Yeah, that's fair enough - agreed, fans can only know what they have been told, and there is little reason to doubt the website that we post on, or a prominent SL owner.
No fans have made this up.
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3 minutes ago, phiggins said:
He has publicly stated it after it had been reported. But if journos are writing articles purely based on the word of one club owner, then they really need to consider the strength of their sources in future.
Would be interested in @Martyn Sadler's take, given an article on here categorically states that there is a 450k/year consultancy fee. That could of course still be the case, with another invoice imminent.
yup, agreed.
Although I think one source is fine for a report. Whether it is enough to then quote it in various reports on an ongoing basis is another question!
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15 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:
That will be a lot of posters, to be fair.
There are many folks in favour of IMG who think the £450k a year figure is true - they often refer to it as "peanuts".
Come on Archie, that last line is disingenuous. If TotalRL publishes this, and an SL owner supports this, who are we to say that the bill isn't £450k?
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34 minutes ago, phiggins said:
To be fair, multiple reporters have written that the IMG contract is a £450/year contract, which will be what the circa £5m cost will be based on. I doubt they would commit that figure to writing purely on the sayso of DB.
If this number is wrong, then journos should be challenged. However they will have a source. DB is the one who has publicly stated this, meaning that effectively he is a good enough source for anyone to now claim that.
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Let's be blunt here. Derek Beaumont has been the mouthpiece of the claims that this is a £5m cost.
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So if we look at the series versus last year, focusing on the top 2 matches.
2023 - total of 28,375 (Saints and Leeds)
2024 - total of 31,205 (Wigan and Leeds)
Considering we removed one game, created an element of scarcity and clashes in West Yorkshire, and the fact that we were one year on playing a team with some recent history, I think delivering a 10% uplift is disappointing.
I often make the point that in RL we just don't deliver growth - and this is an example of that. The best example is Magic Weekend. This was a brand new concept back in 2007 and we got 59k. It was pretty popular and is something we've stuck with, but 17 years later we got a crowd that was lower than year one, and our peak during those 17 years was only 16% higher than the opener.
We saw the same with Roses, Exiles, England mid-season games.
Last year we got 14k average at Saints and Leeds - this year we really should have been looking how we drive serious growth to c20k per match. Not just more of the same.
I refuse to believe that when we do something new we just get the crowd we will always get. Others grow things - we just seem to meander on.
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1 hour ago, DoubleD said:
Hard to see how the RFL will not have racked up another financial loss on this series
If we are losing money on internationals, then I'd suggest we really do need to be looking at the TV rights model for these. We've been insistent on being on the BBC to get eyeballs, but are we getting the knock on benefits from that, because the commercial income doesn't appear to be strong on that.
When internationals were on Sky we did used to have highlights on BBC the next day, and I do wonder whether we should be testing the water to see if anyone is prepared to pay for England internationals.
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1 hour ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:
Headingly was pretty good on Saturday
Nice atmosphere and busy enough....the crowd was noisier in real life than it came across on telly
Overall enjoyed it more than the Tonga games I went to
What was better about this weekend versus the Tonga game at the same venue last year? (assuming you went to both).
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54 minutes ago, north yorks trinity said:
You suggest everything should be world class but then mention Elland Road!!!
In seriousness I accept part of your second point in that all seater stadiums are great in many ways and deliver a brilliant atmosphere when full and we should always aim to fill the grounds we use for internationals (or, at least fill all sides to a fair depth back such as the lower 2 tiers at Wembley for example).
However, two counter points: Firstly, all seater stadiums are less good at hiding gaps. This isn't just relevant to seat counting anoraks; it can make a significant difference to atmosphere at the ground and perception on TV. Secondly, as a sport we appear to have great difficulty actually selling out anything. There were announcements last week that no tickets were available for Leeds yet there were significantly visible areas of empty seating. I realise that selling through multiple outlets complicates things but I don't see other sports' sold out events struggling to appear full.
I think world class is obviously ambiguous and can mean different things - so I am happy to concede that it doesn't have to mean all seater, or the very best grounds in the world, but I do think it is a 'feel' of the event.
Have the internationals that we've staged in the UK over the last 3 years felt genuine top quality events? I'm not sure we can answer that as a resounding yes.
Even if we accept that stadium criteria is heavily opinion based and a case can be made for more 'rustic' grounds for England games, shall we say, I think that even at Wigan and Leeds they need to be top quality events. They just aren't anything to write home about.
I suppose the 2013 World Cup is a great example. We played in some really average facilities, but there was effort and the events felt like real events. I haven't really experienced anything like that tournament since I don't think.
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2 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
Cheap (relatively) venue hire, 2 weeks as opposed to 3, higher crowds per match than vs Tonga, a suite of sponsors on board.
I doubt the FT will be writing about it but I don't see it being a fiscal disaster either. It's probably just a relatively, very modest profit.
I agree. I expect it was in line with expectations on a crowd front.
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7 minutes ago, north yorks trinity said:
I think Headingley is a great rugby league ground which can deliver a great atmosphere with a smaller crowd than is needed for the same effect at most other grounds. Not everything has to be "world class" or we are just setting ourselves up to be disappointed! That said, the atmosphere was a little more muted than I'd hoped for on Saturday. Could it have been made into more of an event at a realistic price? Not my area of expertise but I suspect so.
Regarding whether to play internationals in the saturated market of West Yorkshire/historic Lancashire or elsewhere, I'd say definitely both. London should always get a test as it reliably delivers crowds better than the "heartlands". Then the question is how ambitious a stadium to pick in London, but it can generally be relied on to outperform Wigan/Leeds/Hull. Another advantage of taking a test to London would be to increase the scarcity, and therefore hopefully desirability, of tests in the "heartlands", as I think it is vital that at least one test per series is played there too.
Why shouldn't everything be World class? England Autumn internationals should be the pinnacle.
Headingly is a great Rugby ground. But if I'm honest, I think all seatered modern facilities are the minimum for these games. I think Elland Rd is fine as a compromise for some games.
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Just now, RigbyLuger said:
We have to do it properly though, and not just the Rugby AM Roadshow AGAIN. If anything plays up to a stereotype of League fans, it's them and their "act."
Yep. The fanzone at the Olympic Stadium for that first visit was one of the worst RL experiences I've ever had.
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Just now, Tommygilf said:
I totally agree the mates rates thing is obvious now, and clearly the sport really is strapped for cash.
I've always been of the opinion that the likes of Wales and France should either be played in those countries in the first instance, or failing that in non-heartland venues in England. The likes of London or Bristol come to mind. It would need to be brave, but it's not unheard of levels either.
TBH, even tapping into the mates rate thing, Wimbledon seems a perfectly nice ground for a France game instead of Warrington or as pre-match entertainment for a Featherstone match.
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Just now, redjonn said:
I agree with what you have said on this thread, but do wonder what sort of stadium event improvements would make that much difference.
For me it starts with the buzz i have before getting anywhere near the game. The buzz of getting a ticket, the buzz of looking forward to the game all week, the buzz of travelling to the game... once at the stadium it would be the icing on the buzz cake.
I mean when I'm to a RU international I have all those buzz aspects even though I know I probably won't think much of the game nor the stadium experience, especially as most of the game I'd be up and down off me seat to let people past as they go the bar and come back.
I think these things will be different for.different demographics, but I think one of the biggest feelings around international RL for me is lack of effort. Even if the choice of entertainment or whatever isn't to my taste, I can appreciate effort.
Just opening a stadium and putting two teams on the field isn't what others tend to do.
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1 minute ago, Tommygilf said:
Oh absolutely and like I've said several times the RFL deserves to be embarrassed into better action IMO. The events we put on simply must be better. This was a desperate cash strapped series and it showed imo.
That said I do also think both these attendances make a Brentford match vs France, Wales or even PNG/Lebanon not seem so ridiculous.
I think the fact that we get around half these crowds for a game versus France means we have little to lose really in terms of taking the games elsewhere (on a purely bums on seats aspect). The challenge is making it work financially as we clearly access mates rates at RL grounds.
But we are seeing ever diminishing returns, at some stage we need to be brave.
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1 hour ago, DI Keith Fowler said:
I think that's good from Warrington. Sponsor looks miles better obviously, it's a bit different from recent shirts but still recognisably Warrington, and it's not a raglan sleeve cut which has been done to deaf by kit manufacturers.
I'm not a huge fan of the home shirt. Having the yellow base still feels like an away shirt to me. But, I don't buy rugby shirts anyway so hopefully the young 'uns like it. It'll look decent on the players.
As a Wire fan I must admit to being a touch disappointed that we do appear to have moved away from the white shirts that we had during the 70s and 80s.pretty consistently.
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19 hours ago, Damien said:
Has anyone else noticed that embedding link, such as Twitter, doesn't work anymore on this site?
It used to always work fine for me but presumably something on the site has changed or a plugin needs updating.
The site is almost unreadable at the moment.
When people share links i just see huge blank sections in posts. And that's after I've had to click the tiny crosses to close down the adverts.
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13 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
There's a lot of the matchday that can be improved at Headingley for sure, in many ways off the field it didn't feel any different to a Rhinos game. In fact I was disappointed with Oxen for their lack of England Merch stalls given they are the supplier! The food offering is better than in the past though still not enough of them, and they still haven't got the bars right. It didn't feel like a major event. There was very little in the way of sponsor involvement I felt, eg. no ABK beers or no fanzone mascot type things.
I did certainly notice a massive diversity of fans from all over at the game though. I don't know if this was also apparent at Wigan.
I also noticed a decent variety of sponsors, including a few returning, on the advertising boards. That has to be a positive as does the seating sellout.
Headingley delivered what it always would I suppose with minimal budget, solid but not spectacular. We got twice as many at Elland Road for a 3rd test against NZ in 2018, as a reference. As a second venue in Leeds it works pretty well.
I think as Damien described it, the series is maybe passable at best. We really need to be getting way beyond passable don't we?
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22 minutes ago, The Rocket said:
Well Herbie`s doing his bit, this is the second or third article I`ve seen today where Herbie is saying the Aussie`s are the next target
Herbie goes bananas for England, now wants a slice of Aussies after dusting off Samoa
That's great, and i can watch that on BBC.
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England vs Samoa Series
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
The attitudes are a little weird, and I do think it makes them look a bit stupid.
Super League players are more regularly going over there and doing well, England regularly win against NZ, Samoa, Tonga etc. We lost the 2017 World Cup final 6 nil in Brisbane, our clubs often do well in the WCC. Considering all the advantages that the Aussies have, it's really quite staggering that we are even close to them, and for them to act as ignorant as they do speaks volumes about their journos and pundits tbh.