whatmichaelsays

Mostly from them, as well as some from the council and the rest from the club. For all of the legitimate criticism that you could level at Wakefield for the state of Belle Vue, it is also entirely fair to acknowledge how they have been shafted in the process of getting to here. They've tried to follow the same path as the likes of Warrington and St Helens through the use of S106 planning, got screwed by both the developer and the council's poor enforcement of that S106, and been left to fight their case ever since. People forget how much of a role fortune plays in these sorts of projects. I've said this before and whilst it's not a universally popular view, I have doubts over whether St Helens and Warrington would be playing where they are now had they jumped into bed with Tesco just a couple of years later than they did.

There's no way that would stand up to a legal challenge. And I would argue that such a move would be detrimental to talent development as a whole. Why would Leeds, Wigan or St Helens invest in their academy offering (better coaching, better facilities, better development opportunities, pastoral care, etc) if it couldn't be used to recruit talent? On the salary cap issue, I do think we have to question whether it is achieving what we want it to achieve. Whilst we no longer have one club dominating like we did in the 80s, I would still argue that the salary cap has been something of a blunt instrument in achieving a more equal competition. We know that the bigger clubs get better value out of the salary cap than smaller ones, due to better opportunities, chances of success, better facilities and player welfare, and it is arguably investment in youth development, rather than player salaries, that have the bigger influence on success. I also think there is a fairness point here. The players have borne the brunt of the sport's commercial challenges for too long. The salary cap is £1m less in real terms than it was 20 years ago, despite periods of TV revenue and attendance growth in that time (and that is before you factor in that many had pay cuts imposed on them due to COVID) and increased workload in terms of the number of games. The players are more than deserving of greater rewards for their efforts. I would much rather see it replaced with an FFP-style system that is linked to club turnover. That way, we encourage clubs to invest in growth if they want to be competitive and - crucially - we don't expect the burden of the game's poor commercial performance to fall on the players in the form of reduced real-terms earnings. It will allow those clubs that want to reward their players appropriately to do so, without having an arbitrary ceiling imposed on them, and it will encourage clubs that struggle to attract talent to raise their standards.

I think that's a big point. RL is good at catering for the "I just want to stand on the terraces, have a pint and go home" crowd. With Magic (and to some extent, the Grand Final), we are good at catering to the "lads day out / stag weekend / booze-up" crowd. But what other crowds are we actually good at catering to? Yes some clubs do a bit of corporate hospitality and we do some cheap tickets for kids, but where are the initiatives to attract the real growth audiences that are going to broaden the appeal of the sport and the clubs? A point came up in the CF Semi final discussion about how the premium section was especially sparse, but the question there is surely whether that particular combination of RL, the CC and Elland Road offers the sort of experience that the sort of people who can drop £50 on a day at the sport expect? If it does, do we communicate that well enough? If it doesn't, why not? Again, this conversation doesn't necessarily have to go down the familiar rabbit holes of new formats or new teams in new cities or franchised comps - some of those may be part of a long-term answer but for the moment, there are numerous and sizeable audience segments right on RL's doorstep that the clubs don't seem to be motivated, or don't seem to know how, to try and appeal to - and that's something that the RFL and all of the club owners need to be challenged on.

The union lot has moved out of Headingley but it still hosts RL, cricket, hotel, a university campus, conferencing, weddings and all manner of other stuff, so fair to say that it's running 365 days a year.

A decent read and I agree, lots of parallels with what RL is going through. A lot of ideas that get floated on here often get met with "but why would I want that?", "how does that appeal to me?" or "I only turn up for the game - why would I be interested in....?, as if the future of RL has to be moulded in the exact image of the current supporter base. As long people have that mindset, it's very difficult for the sport to change.

Yeah, but they'll use the code RL50 and get it for £49.99.

This isn't just a sports issue either. It happens across all of the business and entertainment world. I think I've used this comparison before, but Porsche has a dedicated following of enthusiasts - the sort of people who join owners clubs and buy the branded merchandise - who were absolutely outraged when the company started making SUVs. To these people, they "weren't proper Porsches", they wouldn't be bought by "proper Porsche drivers" and these products would "kill the brand". Yet the Cayenne SUV now outsells the 911, Boxter and Spyder models combined and Porsche is now (if I recall rightly) the most profitable car manufacturer in the world. You might roll your eyes at comparing RL to a premium sports car manufacturer, but the problems that the two entities faced is the same - there are only so many people willing or able to buy one product and, as consumer tastes shifted, that group of people was getting smaller, so you need to adapt. You can cater to new audiences and yes, whilst it might irk your "hardcore" or "legacy fans" who buy the club memberships and wear the merchandise, it doesn't mean you have to abandon them entirely. There is room for both to co-exist. There are other examples too. We have clubs taking money from Sky to play games in midweek, only to complain about having to play midweek because Thursday nights, and to some extent Fridays, aren't popular with match-going crowds. This was an issue the cinema industry had until it successfully turned Wednesday nights from the worst-performing night of the week to the second-most popular (after Saturday) by finding the sorts of audiences that were looking for something to do on Wednesday nights (students, young adults, DINKs, etc) and coming up with the right incentives. RL needs to get into that mindset of understanding what audiences are out there, which of those it wants to attract and what those audiences want. Whilst I know that suggestions of things like 9s splits the room here, what is to say that a 9s comp couldn't be RL's version of the Porsche Cayenne? Why can't Thursday nights be the night where RL succeeds in attracting that millennial crowd or DINK (dual income, no kids) couples who have plenty of spare time and don't have to worry about the following morning's school run? What is it that the RL clubs are so afraid of when it comes to trying to reach new people?

I don't think that's entirely fair. I think there's only a very small fringe that would argue for artificially planting clubs in affluent or fashionable parts of the country. What I think most argue for RL should be doing more to appeal to more affulent audiences - many of which are on its doorstep and in its heartlands - as well as making it easier for people outside those heartlands to "buy" RL in one way, shape or form. To keep Wakefield as an example, there's plenty of money around its southern greenbelt, and many of our RL towns are now commuter areas for people working in well-paying tech, legal and finance sectors in Leeds and Manchester. There's no rule that RL supporters have to be from non-affluent backgrounds. There isn't something that triggers in your brain that means you find RL boring once you hit a certain salary band. But what we often see is people talking about how RL is only a sport for the skint, how trying to appeal to anyone outside the base is trying to attract people who "aren't proper RL fans" and that doing anything is a waste of time if people aren't going to go on and buy season tickets. If the sport wants to grow, and I would suggest most fans would want to see that, then it has to broaden it's appeal because there's enough evidence to show that the "core" base is one that is both shinking, and unable to really sustain that growth. That invariably means ensuring that RL is catering to the wants and expectations of different audiences, ensuring that it is better at speaking to those audiences and yes, dare I say it, making RL more fashionable.

Carter is a board member of Super League Europe - an entity set up to maximise the commercial potential of the competition from, amongst other things, TV rights and sponsorships. If having French clubs in Super League isn't bringing in revenue from those sources, then Carter (amongst others) is not doing his job.

I'd agree with that. Whilst @meast is right that the traditional RL communities are changing, it's up to the clubs to change with them. Maybe that "tribalism" nature of sports fandom and the club's ability to tap into that is waning, but that doesn't mean that you can't engage people in other ways and tap into both the local leisure market, as well as those people who may have left those RL towns for work or study. Wakefield arguably has the same challenge (arguably now overflow housing for people priced out of Leeds) but within a short drive of Belle Vue there is a huge development of housing where some plots are going for £500k. Which club - or which business - wouldn't want that sort of market as their next door neighbours?

This is the thing that strikes me - the creative output that comes out of the RFL on this is actually very good. The animated videos of Tom Briscoe's fifth try and Danny Houghton's try-saving tackle are brilliant in terms of production values. But as you say, it's the sort of thing that I as an RL fan will appreciate and probably find, but what is the distribution to people outside our usual bubble? This is why I personally get so focused on the "audience" angle whenever we talk about growth or expansion; we need to know who we actually want to reach - everything else is secondary. Since the finalists were confirmed, the 'Challenge Cup' page has been running four ad campaigns across the Meta network (so Facebook and Instagram) - although the creative is exactly the same on two of them. What we don't know is how much money is being spent and who is being targeted by this (Meta only discloses this for political advertising) but I don't think there is enough creative out there, there probably isn't enough targeted creative (if you didn't know RL and the context, the Danny Houghton tackle means nothing to you and the ad actually cuts out before the real killer line in Dave Woods' commentary lands) and suspect what we have isn't being distributed widely enough. We often talk about how the RL "marketing" is poor when what people really mean is "advertising". The advertising creative isn't - it actually as good as what many other sports come up with. The problem is how it's actually targeted, distributed, measured and what the product on offer actually is - the marketing bit.

That's been my take on the games I've seen with Leeds as well. I don't look at that team and see one that's got a particular issue with work ethic, effort or their defence, but one that has a real lack of attacking cohesion and execution.

I'd love to see a proper analysis of this, because I would be amazed if there is any meaningful level of latent demand for satellite subscriptions based on teams being in/out of Super League. I agree that 2x10 is a poor idea, but not for this reason. Again, not sure I agree here - although I understand the premise. If our best teams are winning Super League, that's a good thing. Having the fastest car and best drivers winning the world championship hasn't held back Formula 1, and the likes of Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Adam Peaty and Team Sky have all been fantastic for their respective sports. Many successful leagues in many sports have competitive imbalances. Yes, we need more competitive competition and we need higher standards across the board, but we shouldn't see it as a bad thing if our best teams and best-run clubs are still winning the Grand Final. I'm not sure how you can put "bringing smaller clubs up to the level of the bigger ones" in IMG's remit here. They're not the ones responsible for the clubs making the right investments in recruitment, talent development, coaching and the facilities do develop their talent, or for the developing the revenue streams to pay for it. To answer the question of the thread, I think the answer is "yes, but only if we support them and allow them to do what's right". My fear with this sort of deal is that, much like the clamour for Eddie Hearn, people see this agreement as "the saviour" to our problems when many of those problems - including some highlighted in this piece - fall squarely in the clubs' sphere of responsibility. The worse possible thing right now would be for the SL board / clubs to think "that's the marketing taken care of" and sit back, expecting the TV companies to queue up, the fans to come flooding through the gates and the cash to start rolling in. They still have work to do - they're still the primary point of sale for SL and they're still the people who should know their local markets better than anyone, and they need to be willing to listen to and embrace the agency's ideas.

Anyone who played in David Waite's Great Britain team. In every position a loose forward, except at loose forward.

The last Leeds v NZ game was a great occasion. Granted, there was a feel-good factor around the place that probably won't be there this time, but still a really enjoyable day and the young Leeds team on the day gave a great fist of it.

I think one comes before the other on this one. Recent years have shown that there isn't a huge appetite from TV companies to go too deep into their pockets for international RL rights. It wasn't that long ago that we were hosting an England international on PPV via Our League and, whilst I'm sure the BBC would have an interest, their willingness to pay is another matter. I agree, location is important. But let's not ignore the fundamental flaws with the product on sale.... Improving all of that stuff doesn't really change unless you can get very good at selling to different audiences. RL supporters aren't daft - you can't fool them that and England, France and Wales triangular tournament is something that it isn't, and you can't fool them that it's worth a price that it clearly isn't.

Even when the England football team plays San Marino or Andorra at Wembley, the match is commercially viable. Even if tickets are discounted (by football standards), people attend it. When the England RL team plays Wales or France, we play it in Leigh, try and charge £15, everyone complains about how it should be a fiver at best and included in their season ticket, and it proves to be a waste of everybody's time.

To be fair, I wasn't insisting that it should be England vs Aus or NZ (and it should be the Roos v Kiwis if you're playing around ANZAC day). The point was more that if the NRL is playing the tune on this (and they are), we need to be fairly pragmatic about dancing to it, because history shows that they aren't co-operative on this one.

I would be more than happy for the season to be shortened to carve out a gap in the calendar for England to travel to Australia and take part in the one mid-season international slot the NRL deigns to carve out for internationals around ANZAC day, but our clubs would never go for it because "wE nEeD tHe FiXtUrEs!" Have a three-week break in the SL season, one week for prep and travel, play internationals in the middle of that break and then, to give the players some recovery time from the travel, bring forward the Bash weekend for an exclusive weekend for Sky TV in the third week?

That's my reading as well. They way I see it, SLE has simply appointed an agency to do the things that it doesn't have the resource or expertise to do, in the same way that many other companies appoint agencies to take care of marketing, advertising, content, research, etc. My entire thought on this is that I sincerely hope that the clubs / RFL / SLE don't simply see this as "that's the marketing taken care of" - which I think was the sentiment behind the clamour for Eddie Hearn. Even though IMG have work to do, all stakeholders have to buy into what IMG want to do to make this a success, embrace what they want to implement and just as crucially, continue to invest in their own individual marketing and growth strategies.

But isn't the more important thing to understand why, when it comes to the cup and play-off games, people's reaction to being asked to pay £18 is "f--- that"? In the wider context of sports tickets and even tickets to other forms of entertainment, is £18 that outlandish? If the product on offer isn't worth £18, surely that's the issue to fix? Rather than trying to find ways to work a product that people don't feel has value into yet another bundle of tickets? And it's not as if RL is the only sport that has a largely working class audience. The difference is that other sports have found ways to engage other audiences in addition to that working class core - something that RL seems particularly bad at.

I think the issue here is that RL hasn't really adapted to reflect modern ticket buying habits. The clubs rely so heavily on a captive market that pays up front, struggles to appeal to more casual ticket buyers who might buy on a match-by-match basis and don't really want the commitment of a full season (and when you consider that it's now so easy to 'unbundle' so many other package deals - mobile phones, TV/Netflix, holidays, etc, that's a growing segment of society). Then, when we have "all pay" games, we struggle. The play-offs have the same problem. Why is it that fans of the so-called "the greatest game" are so unwilling to pay to watch the climax of the season amongst the best teams still standing? Is it that they don't want to, is it that the offer isn't good enough, or are we selling to people who can't buy it? Whatever it is, bundling in tickets to the season ticket just masks the real problem - the RL product isn't attracting people outside that core group, and that core group arguably bored and/or tired of being asked to buy a lot of RL that, in many cases, all looks exactly the same. If we're just going to start bundling in the cup, play-offs and anything else into one "all inclusive" subscription, is there really any point in having the cup and play-offs at all, aside from the two showpiece events?

But is that a failure of pricing, or is it a failure of product, positioning or promotion? It's most likely a combination of all four. I understand the argument that if the CC was bundled in to the season ticket, crowds would be stronger, but that certainly doesn't mean that the cup is more appealing or commercially viable. Including the cup into season tickets just seems like we're relying on inertia and apathy to make the cup feel more popular, rather than actually making the product on offer more valuable (whether in real terms or perception terms). That's not really a great strategy for any business, let alone one in the leisure and entertainment industry.

If we're just bundling in the CC cup with season tickets, what's the point (commercially at least) in playing it in the first place? Surely the aim should to be to make the cup something that people want to pay for?