David Shepherd

Are Sky really going to fork out serious money to cover only 8 UK teams? If we're going with 8 UK and 2 French, then we really need to see a substantial TV deal coming from France, worth at least 1/5 of the revenue we get from Sky. Playing clubs 3 times in a season is not only a bit boring, but also increases costs. Especially for the two French teams.

Are the NRL displaying a total lack of market knowledge here? You'd hope that they are aware that the French teams generate no TV income. If they're relying on 8 UK teams to generate TV revenue, then this is going to be a spectacular failure. Please don't read this as French bashing, I'm fully supportive of the concept. But the fact is that they do not contribute much financially to either of the competitions they play in.

Glad I jumped on straight away. Headingley looks to be almost gone. Brilliant strategy to create this buzz and one sold out venue before it goes on general sale is a great marketing tool for the other two. Everton looks to be selling well and the block I'm in at Wembley only has a few left.

Good news if true. We can’t have another year like last year.

Need to put a shift in after London. I'll be hanging over in a Vegas hotel, but my lads will be providing updates.

£25 walk up seems reasonable. £20 in advance to encourage sales. There aren't many folk left that don't have a smart phone or PC to buy the ticket in advance. I would have thought that the majority of walk ups would be away fans anyway. Maybe we need to introduce a Bulls tax for when the only well supported club rocks up too The young adult season ticket is a great idea and conveniently sorts out two christmas presents for me.

Makes sense to relegate a "B", but only if they finish bottom. Maybe we need to introduce a points penalty for getting the wooden spoon to stop clubs fielding dross like Hull FC did this year, thus putting the "A" status in real jeopardy.

No

Much better looking website. Glad they've removed the subscription element too. Past content needs to be free to ensure as many eyeballs as possible are on it.

I'd argue that Social Media should be high on the agenda now, and not just for IMG points. We need to be all over Tiktok, Insta, Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook with at least 4-5 posts a day, most of them just for engagement farming purposes (interviews, polls, lads training, daft quizzes etc). This is how we reach the next generation (not facebook & twitter, they're for old codgers like me. Young uns rarely use them). You won't see instant results, but you need to be in people's faces all the time if they're going to remember you when it's time to spend £20 on a Sunday afternoon's entertainment.

Was sat in a bar in Fuerteventura last week and there was a club RU game on TV (Leicester v someone, maybe). Wasn't the worst thing I'd ever seen, possibly a bit more entertaining than an international.

Don't like football, bores the pants off me. Will watch RU internationals if there's nothing else to do, quite enjoy a few pints watching Pontefract RUFC whenever I get a Saturday off. Got quite into Gaelic recently Used to love Aussie rules, but it's a shadow of the game it was when Channel 4 first showed it. American football would be brilliant if it flowed better. Don't think I've ever got through a game without needing 2 haircuts.

TBH, I thought the current benchmarks were very low. My little micro business blows away the engagement metric with only around 1/4 the followers that Barrow have. (the only champ club I've seen that has published a detailed analysis).

Winning the championship and 1895 are achievements in their own right. There's bonus IMG points on the line and finishing higher up the ladder also gives us more points. We can moan about the new reality all we like, but that's not going to achieve anything. The areas we need to work on are clear, it's up to the club (and supporters) to do that work. Make sure you like and share all the club's twitter and facebook posts etc, it's a really effective way of both increasing the club's reach (and therefore hitting potential customers) and improving our scores that doesn't cost anyone a penny. Social Media is a numbers game, the more people you reach, the more engagement you get, which then gets customers to buy your product.

They also spent more money than us and crucially, that money existed. We weren't even paying some of our players what they were owed. Agree that our recruitment was poor.