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whatmichaelsays

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Everything posted by whatmichaelsays

  1. It works for the algorithm, but you don't market to algorithms.
  2. What is it you actually want from this exchange Grubs? Those that can, should. Because heaven forbid, they might actually make attending rugby league more attractive to more people and just might make some money in the process. Those that can't? Well, that sounds like a Leigh problem....
  3. This is my take on it as well. Comcast didn't buy Sky to impose an American culture on the UK. They bought Sky to make a profit from selling content that UK audiences are willing to pay for. There's a difference there. RL's value to Sky has and always will be based on how many subscriptions depend on RL content, and the value of that content to advertisers. If RL offers Sky a fairly small, low-value audience that isn't likely to cancel if RL was dropped, our TV deals will reflect that. This was always my issue with the likes of Elstone talking about making more from the TV deal, or people talking about the RFL "selling the game short", because it always seemed to be based on the premise that if our TV deal was sub-optimal, it must have been down to a failure of salesmanship, rather than a failure to add value to what we were offering Sky. Elstone talked about getting more from Sky, but rarely seemed to talk about what more he was offering them in return.
  4. I think the re-branding of the channels was in part a response to a consumer demand for a more "a-la-carte" form of subscribtion, catering to the "I only subscribe for [sport]" crowd. If I remember rightly, a big factor behind it was Sky winning the rights to Formula 1 - given that they have historically had very little motorsport content. Sky has also partly created this market themselves with NowTV. The proposition was somewhat diluted because it was comparatively expensive to only subscribe to one channel of the set, and sports like football, for example, were split across two channels (SS Premier League and SS Football). You also had no idea whether, for instance, RL would be in Action or Arena, so had to get both. In all honesty, the proposition probably only works if you were an F1, golf or cricket fan.
  5. I've given them. Nobody is saying that this is an easy thing to solve. Also, nobody is saying that our only measure of success should be soccer. What we're talking about here is driving incremental growth, using tactics and strategies that RL has so-far shown that it doesn't really have the expertise or resources to take advantage of. The fact the IMG have skin in the game on this is a good thing. Referring back to the mid-90s is irrelevant to this discussion. The people involved in RL are different, the environment in which we have to sell the sport is different, the needs and expectations of consumers are different and what works and doesn't work are different. It feels like one of those points where people blame decline in CC Final attendances on the fact that there aren't any pub or working men's club trips anymore - even though that pub and club culture hasn't existed for more than a quarter of a century.
  6. 2023 is not 1995. You're comparing an era that was before the mass adoption of multi-channel TV, before social media, before Google, before high-speed internet, before it was common for working-class people to go to university, before low-cost airlines made people more mobile, before our communities became as transient and diverse as they are now. More importantly, before the vast majority of current club leaders took leadership roles with their current clubs. Without checking, I suspect that there is only Hetherington (then at Sheffield) left from 1995's crop of leaders still in a prominent position within the game, and he has been publicly supportive of IMG's involvement. What worked in 1995 does not have relevance to what will work today, tomorrow and into the future. The world has changed, and so have the communities that RL serves. As you ask about IMG, they have been a significant partner of the Premier League for much of it's life, and played a role in the growth of what is now one of the most successful sporting competitions in the world, and arguably the UK's biggest cultural export. They have online streaming capabilities that the RFL couldn't possibly create themselves, and they've delivered pretty sizable commercial growth in Euroleague basketball. But yeah, no value, right?
  7. That's completely missing the point. You said: That's plainly not true and football clubs aren't the reason for that being the case. Football clubs don't prevent rugby league, or any of the clubs, doing more to engage new audiences and using them as an excuse is a complete cop-out. Yes, we might be competing for attention, but that's where creative thinking and a better understanding of who the sport wants to reach makes the difference - and that happens to be something that IMG have a decent track record in. There is undoubtedly things that RL does do well, and some areas where we probably punch above our weight. But we also have areas where we don't do well, and the sport has recognised that and sought the support from a partner that does have expertise in those areas. I can't understand why anybody would have an issue with that, unless they were frightened that we might actually succeed.
  8. I've said this before and whilst it's not a universally popular view, I stand by it. People forget how much of a role fortune plays in these sorts of projects and to be frank, 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. That's not to say that they'd still be playing at Knowsley or Wilderspool, but that their respective projects may have looked very different. If St Helens or Warrington had launched their projects slightly later and closer to the 2008 recession, where the housing market collapsed and when the grocery retail landscape changed, prompting supermarkets like Tesco to shift away from the "hypermarket" model to compete with the likes of Aldi and Lidl, would those projects have worked the way they did? We'll never know the answer, but I don't think it's completely unfair to suggest that both clubs could have found themselves in a similar position to Wakefield or Castleford. For all of the fair criticsm you could throw at clubs like Castleford and Wakefield, they have tried to do what many posters on here suggest they should do and mirror what clubs like Warrington and St Helens did, working with major developments and using S106 planning to support their projects. In the case of Wakefield, that failed because the developer took advantage of a loophole in the planning consent that the council subsequently wouldn't/couldn't enforce. In the case of Castleford, they've been impacted by the collapse of the retail sector (especially "big box" retail) and the rise of online shopping. Both clubs now appear to have found a way forward, but it's unfair not to acknowledge the role that fortune (or lack of it) - alongside some undoubted hard work - plays in this process.
  9. No they don't. Rugby League has extremely poor market penetration even in its heartland areas - particularly with younger and more diverse audiences.
  10. This is the very problem that, amongst other things, brand helps to solve. It's currently very difficult to "buy" RL if you're not in the heartlands. The sport is poor on many areas that would allow us to break through our geographical barriers, including digital, content, merchandising and branding. Move away from the goal of RL being about selling tickets and matchday attendances, and towards the idea that the goal is to build an audience. That's what IMG bring to the party and that's where all of those things above become so important. Because if we can build an audience that appreciates RL irrespective of where they actually live, that makes it easier to sell our media rights, our sponsorships and the product when we take it away from the heartlands. So things like "people seeing it on the internet" become important, because if we can package our content in a way that people enjoy it, can find it and - importantly - recognise it as ours, that's how we address the core problem of "how do people 200 miles away stay connected with RL". That's where branding is important because if you see something online that impresses you, say a brilliant corner-flag finish from Tommy Makinson, recognise it very clearly as being from "Super League", that builds salience that makes it more likely that people will see the next piece of content we produce, and the next. Before you know it, you have an engaged audience that you can package up and sell. That's where the branding isn't nonsense because, taking that content as an example, the branding, the logos, the typography, the soundtrack, the presentation and everything else, helps us own that narrative and allows us to move to a situation where people think that RL is where you see that sort of skill. It's the same reason why when you see two golden arches, you think "burgers" and when you see a swooshed tick, you think "trainers". What we want is for someone to see what makes RL great, and think that's from "Rugby Super League".
  11. An awful lot of cyclists pay whatever you think "road tax" is.
  12. Leeds squad numbers: 1 Richie Myler 2 David Fusitu’a 3 Harry Newman 4 Nene Macdonald 5 Ash Handley 6 Blake Austin 7 Aidan Sezer 8 Mikolaj Oledzki 9 Kruise Leeming 10 Zane Tetevano 11 James Bentley 12 Rhyse Martin 13 Cameron Smith 14 Jarrod O’Connor 15 Sam Lisone 16 Derrell Olpherts 17 Justin Sangare 18 Tom Holroyd 19 James McDonnell 20 Morgan Gannon 21 Luke Hooley 22 Sam Walters 23 Liam Tindall 24 Luis Roberts 25 James Donaldson 26 Corey Johnson 27 Toby Warren 28 Max Simpson 29 Jack Sinfield 30 Levi Edwards 31 Leon Ruan 32 Oli Field 33 Joe Gibbons 34 Alfie Edgell 35 Riley Lumb 38 Jack Smith
  13. Yes and no. Leeds probably could have found the financing for their respective development, but as with so much involving the shared development of Headingley over the last 20 years or so, Yorkshire CCC is the problem child and they don't really have a pot to pee in. The arrangement with Legal and General is that it would provide the finance for the shared stand, so to say that they "paid for it" would be like arguing that your mortgage lender paid for your house - technically true, but also not contextually accurate. L&G lease the stand to Leeds City Council, who sub-lease it to Headingley North/South Stand Ltd - which is a joint venture between Leeds CF&A and YCCC. The council is involved largely as an underwriter to protect one party from the other, especially given the value of the Test cricket to the local economy. If YCCC were to, I don't know, be involved in a scandal that saw them stripped of Test status and lose all their sponsors (unlikely I know), it limits the damage to the Rhinos if YCCC can't pay their share of the lease.
  14. The big issue here is whether the sport / IMG feels that the "Super League" brand is powerful enough for RL, given the very obvious threats to the sport's ability to own that brand and keep it distinctive. Using your lager brand as an example; that is a brand that Stella puts an awful lot of resources into promoting (usually through advertising) and defending (against negative images), etc. Even then, there isn't really anyone trying to appropriate that brand. In my line of work I've worked with brands that spend more on brand protection than I suspect RL/SL has ever spent (or been able to spend) on brand promotion. Resources are what they are in RL so there becomes a real question over whether "Super League" is a brand that we can own and keep distinctive, given that the term is also being appropriated by other sports (particularly football). That was always the risk with quite a generic term like "Super League" - you either have to spend a lot of resource in owning the brand and making it distinctive, or you leave the brand open to being diluted by others using the same or similar terms.
  15. Agreed. You need both the long and the short, not just the short. Businesses that do both make more money.
  16. Anything owed to Davy is a director's loan that will never be called in. What Huddersfield's plan is for life after Davy is a different story, Without checking, I'm sure Hull KR will owe plenty to Hudgell that he neither expects nor wants to see back.
  17. Bingo. You can't just go from saying "This was worth £10, now it's worth £20", (nor go from saying "This was worth £20, but we've been selling it to you for £10 for long enough, so we're going back to £20") without offering something in addition - or by finding new audiences that will see what you're offering as fair value. There's a big difference between what the RFL / clubs may think the value of something is, and what the percieved value of something is to the intended audience - or indeed, different audience segments. Events like the ones I suspect Jones would like to price on a par with are able to command those fees because they feel like big, premium events. The fan experience feels like it is worth a high-double or even a triple-figure ticket price because they make an effort to deliver that value and make the events ones that people want to clamour for tickets for. He's right to say that the on-field product is good, but that's true of all other sports to the eyes of the beholder and it's also a variable that you can't control. It needs more. Jones has been part of an organisation that put this sport on a treadmill of discounting to the point where the core customer base came to expect it. People knew that the discount codes would come, they knew to expect the Groupon deals and they knew that schemes like "tickets for heroes" were badly policed. They're not going to change those expectations just because you tell them to and as someone who has had high-profile commercial roles with the RFL for some time, you have to say that he needs to clean up a mess of his own making.
  18. I'd agree with that. I really don't think that the structure is the problem here at all - at least as far as the commercial prosperity of the sport is concerned. There are however lots of areas where RL has either been very late to the party, or where the resources just haven't been invested (digital and content being a prime examples). Those happen to be two areas where IMG and their agencies do have experience. That's where, for instance, IMG may well set new, higher standards around clubs making players and staff available for media duties and giving greater access (this a not-new complaint from people at Sky), they may well require all players and staff to be media trained to certain standards, and they may have certain KPIs on digital reach. All fairly easy, achievable things.
  19. To be honest, I've no idea and I've not given it that much thought. I've said from the outset that IMG can only succeed as much as the sport's stakeholders support and enable them to effect the change they they see fit, even if doing so may not be the most confortable decision. But if IMG have been brought in to create a commercial strategy for the sport, I would fully expect that they will be setting a standard that all stakeholders - the clubs included - need to strive for, whether those are quite visible standards (such as academies, womens and/or PDRL teams for example), or less visible ones. I'd also expect those standards to have a degree of fluidity to them. Some will be short-term goals tham may adapt annually based on how the strategy is performing, and others will be more medium and long-term.
  20. Wigan have lost money consistently on recent years. Regarding Saints, I think there has been something to do with measuring the value / depreciation of the stadium that has impacted what their accounts show, but I've neither the time nor inclination to look at it at this hour. But to take Leeds as an example, it's really no surprise that a club so exposed to the corporate and hospitality sector has seen a loss during a period where the hospitality sector (particularly the corporate side) has been one of the most acutely impacted industries (even more so than pro sport). It's a freak event that does not necessarily offer a true reflection of the business.
  21. Agreed. Whilst the accounts are interesting in and of themselves, taking a snapshot of a freak period isn't particularly helpful on judging the state of the game.. If you take a 3-5 year view, the narrative may be quite different..
  22. It's less about telling clubs "what to do", and more about setting standards and strategies for how any central stakeholder wants to run things. The RFL (or entity of your choosing) can't tell club owners how to run their clubs, but what it can do is impliment a set of standards and expectations for how it wants to run the competition in the future. This is what grading is a step towards. If for example a club doesn't want to run a women's team, that's their perogative, but if the RFL wants to have women's teams at all 12 SL clubs, then those clubs that don't run one have a decision to make - meet the standard, or potentially accept a place elsewhere in the pyramid. You can apply the same principle to financial operations, commercial operations, community engagement activity, etc. Those are the sorts of decisions that a strong governing body or competition administrator should be enforcing. It's not telling people how to "run" their investment, but it is telling them that if they don't meet these standards, the value of their investment can go down as well as up.
  23. It's worth remembering that the clubs relied very heavily on the benevolence of their supporters and sponsors. Almost all clubs asked supporters to "donate" the value of their season tickets during the period behind closed doors, and this protected the second-biggest revenue stream after the TV deal. Yes, there was the loss of matchday ticket sales and concessions sales, but I suspect that these are relatively small income streams (certainly as most clubs outsource the latter). The sport also pooled a lot of costs with the hosting of games at single venues so whilst things were no doubt tight, the sport did manage that period well. Leeds did take a loan, but I seem to recall that was mostly to underwrite the loss of income from hospitality - and Leeds is the club that's most exposed to that market. Also, we had free pizza.
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