tiffers

Sounds like we're both in the same boat! The missus came with me to Aus and the mere mention of a world cup trip to Southern France and she was hot on the tail of that one! My only maneuver now is to hope that a Nov date puts her off given the sun will have well and truly packed up by that point in the year!

Your description sounds ironically like you were there with us on that trip...

Same here. It was brilliantly funny in places and incredibly sombre in others. Well worth getting for anyone that hasn't already. I read in less that 48hrs. I just couldn't put it down!

When I've done this trip with Leeds in the past it's been same day trip on the chartered flight with the players and staff etc. A mate of mine stood on JP's foot when getting on the plane and we were giving him hell for potentially injuring him!! You arrive at Leeds Bradford nice and early (6.30am-ish). Get into Perpignan for mid-late morning. Have a few hours in town before heading to the game. Straight to the airport afterwards and you are tucked up in bed late night in England. Yes, its a bloody long day. BUT, you get access to the players and staff, you get a good few hours to explore/have a french lunch in town and then the game. I thought it was pretty good value for the money! No doubt all clubs could do this, you dont need to sell masses of seats to fill the plane and £600 is hardly insurmountable for supporters. Equally, you look at it as a cost reduction exercise if you really have a negative mindset about the whole thing/cant sell the plane out. Anyone that produces £600 is reducing your cost of flying the team out.

Ticket pricing is just one lever you have as a marketeer. Be that in RL or in any other entertainment business. I'm assuming the strategy is to pull in the under 30's with cheap tickets as a loss leader, so they come in large numbers and the incentive is then to get them to spend on other things in the ground (likely beer and pies)... what else are Hudds doing to get this target group of people in the ground early to keep spending that money whilst they are there?

Precisely how all clubs should be pricing their match days through to season tickets. The value you perceive in not having to queue or to wait whilst busting for the loo is worth it in your eyes. Others wont value you that as much and subsequently quite happy to queue. I'm a bit like how you describe and would def be upgrading in those circumstances! Similarly I'll upgrade regularly on trains, airport lounges, Club Wembley (when at CC finals) etc. In RL terms, when I manage to make the epic journey from the deep south west to Headingley, it's such a bloody long way that I always pay for some kind of upgraded experience. A bog standard experience just wouldnt justify the journey and energy it takes to get there. If you're a student that happens to live just off Kirkstall Lane then you may well be quite content with the match ticket alone. I sure as hell was back then! The danger point comes when you start to price yourself so low, in the lower ticket categories, that those customers perceive this as too cheap/low value to the point its so easy to not bother turning up "its only a few quid". Or psychologically they get so used to paying so little that any price movement is a major hurdle as their perceived value is so low. Unless you are driving other revenues from that group then you may well have to swallow the fact you'll lose a proportion of those exceptionally price sensitive customers when you do eventually have to move the price. Either intentionally as part of a long term strategy, or just through sheer inflationary pressures!

"Research into how cost affects our perceptions shows that price matters so much to our understanding of value that we sometimes rate pricey things as superior or more effective, even if they are the exact same quality as the less expensive option." https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171006-the-psychology-behind-spending-big There is absolutely such a thing as too cheap. Offering a range of experiences at different price points allows for different types of customers and their needs. A £20 ticket on match day will work for some. Others clearly will want the more exclusive expensive option that allows them to show off to their mates about how they spent 20 mins talking to Ken Davy last night. It's about how the Giants respond to those very different markets overall to increase turnover and margins.

You're correct. They are looking for someone to be the figurehead of a team of 2 direct reports.

I'm sorry, but the benefits package is absolutely woeful, @Dave T. 20 days holiday is exceptionally poor, then to state you are expected to take 3 or 4 days of that at Xmas is appalling. It certainly doesn't shout that they value their staff. Their marketing team consists of this post +2 FTE reporting into it. If you want someone to be able to run multiple campaigns, be able to run CRM systems, the website, social channels, be creative, provide analytics for decision making and then also drive strategies for growth, you need to be paying a fair bit more than £30k. The going rate for a marketing manager to specialise in one of those things would be £25-30k in my experience. If you want someone to take on all of that, and be good at it, you need to be offering a package that is a whole lot better. It strikes me as a long way from commercial reality/striving to push boundaries.

The job desc is an awful lot for a mere £25-30k... I appreciate that its a very small team @ SRD, but you will really struggle to get a commercially savvy, experienced marketing manager for that money... They are off the mark entirely with this in my opinion. The "benefits" package is woeful. 20 days holiday of which 3/4 days have to be taken through Xmas. Seriously!?!? Who worth their salt is going to accept terms like that... It strikes me that SRD do not value or understand the impact that this role should be having in the business... No wonder we (RL clubs) arent seeing exponential growth in revenues... Pay someone a bit more money, offer them a fair and reasonable benefits package that is actually beneficial, and you would absolutely reap the rewards of a competent Marketing Manager in the £'s you are counting at the end of the season. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.

Correct in that it doesn't trade on the European angle today. But for a lot of people the SL brand is seen as being the pro-Europe/NH expansion competition. Poss. partly fueled by the number of expansionist clubs that have been brought in since inception (PSG, Catalan, Crusaders, Toronto, Toulouse perhaps on the way). We have seen games played in Barcelona and across the south of France etc. All of this contributes to the way in which some people feel about brand SL. After all, a brand is defined by what people think and feel about it. Equally, the SL brand talks to being the elite domestic league for a lot of other people too and those opinions are just as valid. I think the crux of the issue is that there are distinct differences of opinion and we aren't clear what the long term strategy is for the competition with all this chopping and changing of structure. This muddies the brand message and what it stands for.

Great post Tommy. And very thought provoking. The top tier identifies as the "European" SL, yet for all intent and purposes, behaves like a national competition (with the invited French team).

Perhaps people are looking at their potential for growth vs the existing stagnated growth we have seen.

That's just not true. Lock Lane can have a profitable game against Leigh Miner Rangers. It's all about perspectives on what is an acceptable return for the respective nations/teams involved. Yes, to muster larger profits you need the broadcasters and the big names. But Serbia vs Italy may well be happy to play for much smaller returns than England. Further down the line they may well be demanding that a very good return on a broadcast deal/in front of large crowds is what they are willing to agree to. But today and in the current environment that is wholly unrealistic and we need to start somewhere with the NH. Small profits are better than no profits.

The M5 or a massive IKEA