Toby Chopra
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Posts posted by Toby Chopra
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58 minutes ago, Rovers13 said:
This for me too oxy, and I’m waiting to see the fallout from owners too because if I got a C I’d be off quicker Than Usain Bolt lol.
No owner should be surprised at their own grading as they already have all the information at hand to work it out. If they haven't it's on them. It's just the other clubs' gradings they won't know at this point.
As for Grade C's - all Grade C really means is you're not eligible for Superleague, and those clubs that are the likely C's are way off that anyway.
Any owner who chucks in the towel when the gradings come out was already planning to bolt and was just looking for an excuse.
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8 minutes ago, 40yearsatlondon said:
possibly...but IMG want it and toulouse at some point....and they will get there wish
If IMG really wanted London and Toulouse in they would have set up the criteria to enable that in the first place - it's their system so they could have done whatever they wanted. But when we looked at the system one of the most striking things is how little it offers such teams.
IMG have vaguely talked about London being a target market but nothing up till now has done anything to support that, while they've never talked about France.
I don't think teams like London and Toulouse are priorities for them at all.
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14 minutes ago, Derwent Parker said:
Still
"hypothetically" if London finish say 10th in SL and Wakefield dont finish top in Champ, and replace London with "gradings" there's a good chance that is when the proverbial will hit the fan?
Some will no doubt throw a wobbly, as they do with most things.
But this is the scenario that was voted for and was always quite likely in this transition year.
As someone who on balance is in favour of the gradings system I'd be a hypocrite if I suddenly went cold on it because a southern team is the one affected.
Let's face it, a month ago no-one was even considering this scenario because London being promoted was so unlikely - which frankly is an indication of how thin London's foundations are.
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15 minutes ago, wiganermike said:
When some of the releases relating to how the grading system will work appeared included was a graphic that showed a bunch of grading scores in descending order with a cutoff after the 12th highest determining the initial 12 in SL (or whatever they decide to re-brand to) for 2025. This along with replies to club-made inquiries from Championship clubs, as to whether a grade B club that won a Championship GF would replace a grade B club in SL, created the impression that the 12 constituent clubs in any given year will be determined solely on the basis of being in possession of one of the 12 highest grading scores.
This along with the lack of any weighting mechanisms for non-SL clubs means that the system heavily favours clubs that have spent more of the preceding 3 seasons in SL. This then leads everyone to the conclusion that London will have a difficult time overhauling the deficit in grading scores vs Wakefield or any other contenders for the SL places available for B grade clubs. All other contenders will have had more seasons in SL than London and thus will get higher points for categories like performance (Wakefield get more points for being 12th in SL this year than Fev get for topping the Championship table), attendance, tv coverage etc. This combined with a poor finishing position in 2022 for London means that even if they achieve what Leigh did next year they will still likely struggle to make up the deficit and secure one of the 12 highest grading scores.
It is expected that merely being in SL next year and being graded in the Bs will not suffice to keep that SL place. London (or any other SL club) will need to be one of 12 highest scoring clubs out of 34 to retain their place no matter how well (or poorly they perform).
Correct
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13 minutes ago, Leonard said:
To be fair - if you finish bottom with 4 points and crowds of 2k, of which half are away fans - you deserve what you get.
This is the harsh truth actually.
As a southerner I'm excited to see Broncos back in SL, as I want to see the game spread its footprint and it also makes it a lot easier for me to see top level RL.
But in terms of which club will make the most of being in SL for long-term growth of the game - which is the model we've decided to pursue as a sport with the gradings system - then Broncos in their current state aren't the best bet for that spot.
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1 minute ago, OriginalMrC said:
I'm not necessarily singling you out because others have also been saying similar. But unless you have inside info this is pure speculation. Nothing has been finalised!
What do you mean "nothing has been finalised"?
The move to the grading approach has been formally agreed by the RFL council, and the definitive criteria have been published and most are pretty transparent.
https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/docs/Grading Handbook (Final Version).pdf
We can says with almost complete certainty that if Broncos finish at or near the bottom with anything like the crowds they had in 2019, they're going down. It would take something spectacular and unseen in 20 years in terms of crowds, corporate and performance to save them.
Rightly or wrongly, that's the system that's been signed off.
I always found it odd when some (not you) says "IMG want their favourites London and Toulouse in" because when we looked the the criteria, it's basically as stacked against them as any other Championship club.
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30 minutes ago, JM2010 said:
Half empty? Has it already been played? Gutted, I was looking forward to going
I'm literally on a train to Manchester. Should I get off?
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5 minutes ago, Catflap said:
The RFL are killing our great game.
So what should they have done? Pumped unlimited amounts of (imaginary) money into Newcastle and any other failing club without end? People hurl blame around but rarely offer any solutions.
Fact is, even when Kurdi was at the height of his investment, the club got nowhere near the crowd levels to approach sustainability. There's great community work being done in the North East, some of it by the Thunder, and I hope it can be sustained. But like we saw with Skolars, measuring success as having a semi pro club in each area isn't necessarily the right aim. The century old semi-pro system that the heartland clubs have been in isn't always the right goal for everywhere else, and the results as seen in Newcastle, and elsewhere over the decades seems to confirm that. .
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30 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:
Fandom and Finances ought to place them about 18th. And they won't make much ground up on the other categories.
From what I can see the only categories they'd outscore Wakey in are non-central turnover share - cos they get almost nothing central - and catchment. In total it would be an advantage of about 1.6 points.
Because of the 3 year average, fandom, performance and finance should see Wakey comfortably overhaul that, plus a little stadium bonus for primacy of tenure.
Which is why David Hughes should go for broke - he's spent enough aimlessly over the years so now do it when it really matters - and try and not finish bottom
If London could finish 9th or 10th, and Wakey slip up in the Championship as we've seen with Fev it happens - then there's a chance.
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2 hours ago, dealwithit said:
I don’t buy this idea that London won’t obtain enough IMG points to stay up. There’s a lot of reading between the lines being done on here than anything factual or public. We all know the broad categories, but no one here has a copy of the calculator.
The detailed scoring criteria have been published and most of them are things that are either in the public domain or we can make a very accurate stab at. We can work it out with 90% accuracy, and unless London do a Leigh in SL and Wakey crash and burn in the Championship it's almost impossible for them to stay up.
https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/docs/Grading Handbook (Final Version).pdf
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Just now, Leonard said:
I don't think you can be a casualty if you are not in the top league or if you are and finish bottom.
However if London finish 11th, Cas 12th and Wakey win the Championship, it's almost certain London will still be the one to go down - unless they pull 7,500+ crowds and the corporate goes bananas.
But 2024 was always going to be a volatile year in terms of the gradings, we knew what we were signing up for.
For London, they could look at promotion in two ways: 1/ The criteria will almost certainly send them back down, so don't overspend and think long-term. Or 2/Throw everything you can possibly spend at 2024 and aim for something like top 9, because it'll be EVEN HARDER to go up from 2025 onwards. I hope they choose the latter.
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5 minutes ago, Barley Mow said:
Promotion/relegation next year isn't based on on-field performance (alone), but on the grading system IMG have brought in.
Points are calculated over a three year period and heavily weighted to clubs in Super League.
That means that if London are promoted, they will only have had one year of the in three in Super League and are therefore unlikely to get enough points to be on the top 12 clubs come what may.
If Toulouse go up, it could be a close thing between them and Wakefield (both with two years out of three in SL) as to who gets the 12th place for 2025.
Thereafter, the incumbent 12 will continue to accumulate points more effectively than those outside SL and so whoever those 12 are in 2025, they're likely to stay in SL long term.
Agree. Potentially the second biggest losers today after Fev are Wakey.
Toulouse - presumably now the favourite for promotion - are the one team that has a reasonable chance of exceeding Wakey's IMG score next season, because they too will have 2 years of Superleague to boost their grading.
It'll be a close run thing, especially if Toulouse can avoid finishing bottom.
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11 minutes ago, Dave T said:
Nah, completely disagree with this one though
NFL is massive worldwide. Not in a regular participation or live attendee sense, but it has a huge amount of interest.
Cumulatively, and in terms of global reach, sure. But it'd still say it's not bigger than RL in the UK.
When we used to see the BARB data more often Superleague got higher viewing figures on Sky and also on terrestrial when the beeb showed a London NFL game and CCF.
UK rugby league sells nearly 2 million tickets a year. Could NFL sell out Wembley 20 times? I doubt it.
In terms of selling out big venue events, for me it keeps coming back to the questions of scarcity and a special experience, rather than one sport being bigger or brasher. We can't really do anything about scarcity, we can make the events feel more special. Whether that's enough to generate the numbers we need, I don't know.
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1 minute ago, Damien said:
I think we need to realise that some events are unique and will attract people just because they are the absolute pinnacle and offer something completely different. I'd firmly put the NFL games in that category.
Sure we can learn stuff from practically everyone because most of what we do is poor. However even if we had the money and copied the NFL experience in its entirety I still don't think we would sell out a regular SL game in London and certainly not at the prices the NFL charge.
I agree, but I suppose that's because NFL fandom in the UK is one built almost entirely via TV viewing, not game attending. So when you do get to attend it's something special. Put Wigan-Saints on at Wembley and you have to discount 75% of the RL fanbase for whom watching RL in person isn't anything special. Then perhaps that leave just not enough people to make the numbers work, even if you threw loads of money at the event.
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25 minutes ago, Dave T said:
NFL is box office. It's Hollywood. It's a huge multi-bilion quid industry. Of course we could learn many things from other sports, and we need to do far better with how we stage events, but the comparisons don't really work.
It's like comparing Taylor Swift selling out Wembley to Ocean Colour Scene getting 3k in Manchester.
I get what you're saying Dave, but the NFL is still a smaller sport in the UK than rugby league and has a fraction of the number of fans here than Taylor Swift does. She has a genuine global reach, the NFL doesn't in any volume. It does, however, offers its small (relative to football etc) number of UK fans something exceptional on the two or three days a year it comes to our shores.
I think its Hollywood-ness is one of the reasons why NFL has any fans here at all, but it isn't the reason they sell Wembley out and we don't. It's just a better offer, and one we should be capable of matching.
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5 minutes ago, The Future is League said:
So in your opinion what piqued the British peoples interest in NFL to turn up to the NFL games in London in numbers@
Most of them have been NFL fans for years, watching on Channel 4, Sky, Gamepass etc, and latterly for the younger generation Youtube.
Don't get me wrong, NFL is still very much a minority sport in the UK, but its fans know that even a "bog standard" regular season game is something special and will take their chance to see it.
It's not a given though - the NFL cut the London Monarchs and then scrapped NFL Europe entirely cos European NFL fans knew it wasn't the real thing and didn't show up in good enough numbers. The quality of the event, both in its sporting significance and the wider experience matter.
I'm undecided what the readacross for rugby league is. As I said above - it's a bit of chicken-and-egg. For as long as CCF/GF don't feel like "can't miss" events, there won't be a clamour for the wider rugby league fanbase to see them, reinforcing the slightly subdued nature of the events. I'm not sure of the best way to break the cycle. But the fact that 75% (I'm guessing there) of the fan base already get their live rugby league fill during the year is part of it. It has to significantly stand out from what you might experience even at the biggest games at your club. I'm not sure our finals do at the moment.
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2 minutes ago, crashmon said:
TBH If you had Wigan vs Leeds at say Millwall (marketed by the RFL), and the week after Penrith vs Paramatta at the same venue (Marketed by the NRL).... I honstly think you would get more for the NRL game than for the SL game
I genuinely don't know whether you're right, but I'd love to see that experiment!
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39 minutes ago, The Future is League said:
We are talking about an imported sport against a British sport and the imported sport is winning by a country mile
Although I agree to an extent that our inability to create must-see events is part of the problem, for vast swathes of the country RL feels as much a a foreign sport as NFL does. For many demographics these days, where sport or culture comes from is irrelevant, some people are much more internationalised in their outlooks. It's like asking why anyone in Britain would listen to Elvis, Michael Jackson or the Foo Fighters.
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1 hour ago, The Future is League said:
There is some serious problems with marketing our game in this country as a whole.
There is a NFL game taking place at the spurs football this afternoon which will probably be a sell out of 62,000 people, and the 2 teams taking part are from the USA and the NFL is alian sport as far as this country is concerned yet unlike us they can more or less sell out events, while Rugby League a British sport can't sell out big events in this country, and last week they had 80,000 at Wembley for a game, a crowd which could only get by offering cheap tickets and just for the record the cheapest ticket price i can see for todays game is £96
25 minutes ago, Odsal Outlaw said:Because we don’t create events. We simply put a game on (or sometimes 2 or 3 games) and expect people to turn up.
I think that's a big part of it.
If you compare the Jags games at Wembley with the Challenge Cup Final, it's not even close. The former you know you're at something big, the latter we're still doing the same old stuff we did decades ago, it feels and is dated. And this means you don't even attract neutral rugby league fans, let alone "sports fans".
In fact I think the "sports fans" or "event crowd" is overstated. It's very rare for people to attend a major sporting event without some sort of previous engagement with the sport. I can vouch that almost everyone that goes to a London NFL game already has some sort of engagement with American football, and this is their one chance to see it in the flesh.
If you live in the north, it's easy to see a rugby league game, so there's less need to trek to Wembley or wherever to see a big final. If you live elsewhere, the few RL opportunities you get offered just don't compare with what else is on offer in terms of committing the the time, effort and expense of going, best to just watch on TV.
To an extent there's a chicken-and-egg situation there, because as the CCF or even GF don't scream "must see" games, then there's less demand or buzz to attend, reinforcing the feeling.
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31 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:
You do realise that this next year the distribution in SL could be as much as £800k shy per club of what it was just 6 years ago, and obviously that has a knock on effect the further diwnvtge league structure we go.
Sure, it's a terrible state of affairs. But 90% of that decline has long been known and predictable and is due to the shrinking TV deal. Any additional shortfall due to low crowds at the CCF and GF is something that clubs should know is possible and they shouldn't commit the money before it's confirmed. That's just sound business.
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3 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:
You contradict yourself , how with P and R can you be certain you're getting TV money next year ?
Yes we all know what we should be aiming for , achieving it is the problem
I'm not quite sure of the point you're making. With P&R you're quite right that you don't have any income visibility, and this has been catastrophic for some clubs. That's why we're moving away from it, so clubs can budget realistically. Income that is highly volatile and unpredictable shouldn't be the basis of an operating budget.
As for we all know what we're aiming for, I don't think there's any consensus on that at all, but that's not just a rugby league thing.
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21 minutes ago, Dave T said:
On your first line - what is the evidence? If that really was the case and it was such an issue, wouldn't we offload Catalans?
This is brought up by fans on boards like this and the odd owner every now and then who want an English game.
Let me have check back. I thought I had read that RFL had warned clubs about this at this week's meetings (as much because of the CCF shortfall as Cats) and some chairman had expressed concern. But it could have been Gledhill!
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13 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:
In theory all clubs should rely on purely their own income through turnstiles, but business and life isn't like that , especially Sport business
I'm not saying clubs shouldn't include distributions from finals, they certainly should, I'm just saying they should ensure that they don't budget for something that isn't guaranteed to happen and is completely out of their control. If the distribution ends up being higher, add it to reserves or the season after's budget.
(Also, as an aside, I'd say only having turnstile income shouldn't be an aim for any sport, it's a sign of weakness in the modern world. Our aim should be TV deals and international revenues that dwarf our spectator income.)
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17 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:
Point missed.
Fair enough, I haven't had my coffee yet
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London (Merged Threads)
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
Agreed. But that shows they can't just change it on a whim.
IMG should be smart enough to see that an underpowered London team isn't something that they can hang any London strategy on, so they won't go out of their way to try and keep them in.