Big Picture

There is to an extent, it's just a matter of harnessing it and increasing it. Past games at Wembley attracted about 30,000 fans from southern locales and no doubt many from Midland ones too, plus there were 33,758 at the 2000 RLWC opener at Twickenham for a night game despite the near impossibility of northern fans getting down for it at the time. That crowd was only 7500 less than the 1995 opener at Wembley, so quite good in the circumstances. That's something they can build on. There's no problem structuring the tournament so that barring a huge upset the big 3 will make the semi-finals. The key is to make the games into events that people will want to see regardless (it is a World Cup after all!) and sell them out in advance. They have 3 years to plan this and they appear to have government backing lined up too. If they can't work out how to make one game work at a Midland venue, what does that say about the sport and its' long-term prospects in the UK?

I looked up the Wales lineup that day. Here it is: 1. Iestyn Harris (capt.) 2. Chris Smith 3. Jason Critchley 4. Kris Tassell 5. Anthony Sullivan 6. Lee Briers 7. Ian Watson 8. Anthony Farrell 9. Keiron Cunningham 10. Paul Moriarty 11. Justin Morgan 12. Paul Highton 13. Chris Morley 14. Wes Davies 15. Paul Atcheson 16. John Devereux 17. David Luckwell

Considering the Midlands' reasonable proximity to the heartlands it's a reasonable risk to have one game there, and the bigger it is the more it should appeal to people in the Midlands who I'm sure include many former northern residents who'd be fans of RL. Ricoh Arena's management is open to hosting all manner of events so they might come forward with a great offer and it's a lot smaller capacity than new venues in London are. I do think that with more countries than 1995, having one more game outside the heartlands than there was then would be a way to show some modest growth in the sport's national appeal. Part of the marketing has to be building up the World Cup as the pinnacle of the game, like they are in other sports. Then combine that with great ticket offers to get fans excited about seeing it.

I wouldn't suggest a stadium like Wembley for a semi-final, it's clearly too big. I'd look at venues like City of Manchester Stadium and Ricoh Arena instead and offer ticket packages that incorporate group games and knockout stage ones together as a way to fill them. I'd offer discounts for SL, Championship (both levels) and NRL season ticket holders and when tickets for more than one game are bought at the same time, have family ticket packages where the kids are included and price the group games according to which countries are in those groups. I'd allow fans to combine discounts too, so season ticket holders could get an extra discount when buying tickets for more than one game at the same time. The key thing is to make it attractive and compelling for the fans to attend. I'm not sure the Challenge Cup can be used as a direct comparison when it features teams fans see all the time in league games.

Why can't you market a semi-final for months (or years since the World Cup is 3 years away)? A semi-final should be much bigger than any group games, it's only one step away from the final of what should be the biggest event in the sport. Are you suggesting it's not bigger than the group games? A World Cup is special and real fans should want to see the big games regardless of who's in them.

With 14 teams, 4 groups implies two with 4 teams and two with 3. If they want an England-Australia or England-NZ game in the group stage to create a buzz they can't risk letting only 4 teams advance from that stage in case England loses their first game like in 2000. It's more likely they'd have 6 advancing past the group stage with the winners of the 4-team groups going right into the semi-finals and the other 4 teams into two quarter-finals. Putting the big 3 in the two 4-team groups more or less guarantees they'll all advance without any real bother and would give England (providing they can beat Australia or NZ who they'd presumably play first) the chance to qualify directly for the semi-finals. I've thought for some time they should tailor things as closely as possible to how the 1995 World Cup was run, with a bit more ambition where venues are concerned.

Quite possibly. Between 2008 and 2009 England played both countries twice each and as we know won all 4 games. The aggregate score against wales was 122-12 (a difference of 110 points) and against France 122-20 (a difference of 102 points). It's not necessarily a benchmark for this year, but that would suggest France might be favoured by 4 points (i.e. half the difference between 110 and 102) against Wales so it could well be close. A Wales team able to compete with France can only be good for International RL.

The current deal has a few more years to run, they'll have to wait until it comes up for renewal. Is there a reason to think the BBC would bid enough for them to make it worthwhile to sell them that way? If not, would extra ticket sales make up for the difference? Evening is prime time for TV networks the world over, evening games get bigger audiences. That's why Sky wants the evening kickoffs in the first place. At one time NFL games were all on Sunday afternoons until they found out they could get more for TV rights if they included evening games and Monday Night Football was born, followed in time by Sunday Night Football.

That's a point I've thought about before, the evening kickoffs favoured by Sky make it hard to draw well playing in London since so many fans would have to travel down from the north which is much more difficult for evening games. Consequently they moved them back to northern venues that are out of sight and out of mind where the media's concerned since they're all based in London. That being the case, would it make sense to have them somewhere in between like the Midlands, somewhere like Birmingham or Coventry which are both 120 miles from Leeds which is a 5/8 of the distance from Leeds to Wembley? If they played at Ricoh Arena, St Andrews or Villa Park could they fill the stadium for an evening game there? If they did fill it, would that make the desired impression on the media? What do people think?

According to the information here it's 115 yards long and 80 wide, or 105 by 73 metres. The uncertain part is whether that's the length between the soccer goal lines or not, and how much room there is behind the soccer goals though it looks tight from the pictures they have there. Capacity's low too, under 10,000.

You hit the nail on the head there. For a regional sport with a couple of outposts elsewhere in the UK, RL's already getting as much as can be expected for that. Pulling back can only reduce what RL gets for TV rights.