whatmichaelsays

I look forward to traveling to that on the Leeds Supertram.

The point is that people talk as if variety of winners is essential for a successful sport that can appeal to new fans, when there's no evidence to back that up. I mention Wakefield because in the last 10 years or so, every SL club bar them and Toulouse has either won something (SL, CC, LLS), and/or made it to a major final. RL doesn't have a massive problem with teams not being able to compete to win things.

Equally, I'd like to see a driver for one of the smaller teams win the F1 championship, but decades of the same drivers winning year after year haven't held that sport back. Likewise, I don't think people were bored or seeing Usain Bolt win the 100m - they actually tuned in to see him win. The idea that RL is suffering because Wakefield can't get to Old Trafford really doesn't hold up to any objective scrutiny.

I agree that the original top five system was probably the system that rewarded league position most effectively. I also liked that we only lost one team each round, which felt like it kept engagement up for longer. That said, there was often the suggestion that whichever side won the 1vs2 qualifier was going into the GF "undercooked", having had two out of three weeks off prior. No system is perfect.

Leeds have won 14 of the last 19. We're talking a bit more than "a few games at the end of the season" or a side that has "been poor for most of the year". It's a side that has had a poor start but for much of the rest of the season, has been one of its form teams

I agree with Leeds' defence. I honestly think that game was won and lost in the sheds at half time. Wigan should have put Leeds away in the first half, and would have been gutted to have only been 4-2 up. Leeds could barely get out of their own half but their defence was a perfect example of "bend but don't break*. They lost their cool at the start of the second half and Leeds took advantage.

ETFs are a form of investment fund (they differ slightly from funds as they are traded on public exchanges - hence the name Exchange Traded Fund). They're pretty normal investments and pretty common - particularly in the US where retail investing is more widely done. Like funds, you can invest in ETFs that have different themes or aims - for example geographic themes, sector-focused themes, emerging market themes, ethical themes, sharia-compliant themes, crypto-asset themes, etc. White-labelling, (in explain like I'm five" terms) allows institutional investors to create their own theme ETF and trade it. If I wanted to, and I was prepared to lose a lot of money, I could create a "rugby league ETF" which bought shares in a load of rugby league clubs and pool them into a fund (if shares in the clubs were publicly traded).

That was a big part of Richard Lewis' thinking. His belief was that it was better to have people locked outside a smaller ground than it was to have more people and empty seats in a bigger one. It's not an easy problem to solve because whilst I think that the idea of including tickets in the season ticket would have an impact, the goal here should be profitability - not just getting whoever we can in for the sake of getting them in. The more I think about your "customer behaviour" point, the more I question whether that is something that is inherent, or whether it is something that has just become the accepted norm that, in the right circumstances and with the right proposition, the sport actually can challenge? To that end, I think it's a much bigger issue than to just look at the play-offs (and all-pay games in general) in isolation and look more broadly at how we sell the sport. It opens up well-trodden debate which this isn't the place for, but perhaps one issue to explore may be how we "de-couple" attendances from the season ticket and work harder on those audiences that may want to buy much more casually. I understand why clubs like season tickets and those buyers are the core fan base, but how hard are we supplimenting that with a more casual market that aren't going to resent paying £25 tonight because they've maybe doing that for the "big games" through the season? These are big games and whilst you can fairly cite examples of football clubs discounting tickets in early CL rounds, sports do tend to have less trouble selling their big games than we seem to have selling the play-offs. The NRL has sold out one of its semi-finals and Catalans sold-out (or came close to selling out) last week. There's something missing in all of this and if the best idea we can come up with to sell our big fixtures is to rely on the inertia of the season ticket, I don't think we've got this right.

The point about away fans was more that the behaviours seem to be somewhat the opposite for play-off games than we see from home club fans, rather than a point that away fans "make up" for the overall drop. I think that's important when the usual points are offered for falling gates; ticket prices, cost of living, Friday night kick-offs, multiple all-pay games in quick succession, for example - all of which impact visiting supporters at least the same, and in some cases moreso, than the local audience. You're right in that this issue is more about customer behaviour and that can be difficult to change, but if we are in a position where the best option is to "throw in play-off games" to "sweaten the deal", then is there really any commercial value in the play-offs beyond the GF? And if we do that, don't we undermine other events where there is an all-pay element? That's why I think the first port of call really needs to be that point around added-value, and I don't think the sport has really forced that issue.

Fair points, although interestingly, away fan attendances do hold up very well when it comes to play-offs (and tend to exceed regular season norms). I understand that for visiting fans, this would be an all-pay game anyway, but it's interesting to see that the effect is almost opposite to what we see with home club supporters. For me, whilst I understand the arguments for play-off games being included in the season ticket, I think the real issue to address is why fans perceive the play-offs as poor value - or at least not enough value that merits paying for the ticket. You're right that we have years of data on fan behaviour and we have no right to act surprised, but the answer to this question doesn't have to be "bundle it in the season ticket". The answer could (and arguably should) be "make these events that people will regret missing".

It's not massively clear whether Leeds have been allocated the full 4.5k, or whether it is a smaller allocation that they have been allowed to offer at a discount (membership card holders of all tiers can claim a £5 discount until the end of today). Earlier in the week the club announced sales of 1.2k on Monday and around 2.5k on Wednesday, so whichever way it will be a good showing in that end.

U OK hun? Dm me babz

Isn't that par for the course at Wakefield? It's not as if Carter is particularly supportive of his players in many of his media statements.

Reported in The Athletic this morning:

Only 50% on the M62? Sounds far does that. Best keep all games within the boundary of a Greater Manchester Area bus pass.

And as per your earlier point, scheduled flights aren't exactly ideal in terms of match preparation due to the timing and the business model of low-cost airlines. Jet2's business model, for example, relies on flights leaving the UK in two distinct "banks" - one early bank around 6-9am, allowing the aircraft to fly out and back in time for an afternoon bank of around 2-5pm. That either means a very early start on matchday (being at check-in/security at 4am), or an overnight stay. Other low-cost airlines rely on similar models. Private charters at least allow the clubs to set their own schedule, as well as minimising the amount of "terminal" time, going through the private terminal rather than the current chaotic security rigmarole.

And I'm sure that Oates' credit card will be taking a nice hammering at the bar. As has been mentioned previously, there's a good reason why Leeds don't have a high turnover of sponsors season after season.

They can, and maybe it's just my inference of the term, given that "loyal fans" can often be used quite emotively when it comes to how clubs price things. I think the point still stands.

These aren't really being sold to "loyal fans" though - or at least, that's not the clubs main intention with these charters. They're being sold to corporate customers and, whilst any bum on any seat helps the club offset the cost, that's clearly who the club wants to be sat in them. A captive market of corporate decision makers stuck in an aluminium tube for two hours with Rob Oates? That's what the club wants.

I think the point is more that if we are to have expansion clubs in the picture, we have to acknowledge that there are different factors that affect each club, and many of those factors disporportionately impact expansion clubs. If almost all of the domestic playing talent is based in a part of the country where the cost of living is cheap, it's a very tough sell for a London club, or any other club with a higher cost-of-living (Bristol would be another example). That means that London get much poorer value from the salary cap as it stands, for no other reason than geography. Should the rules or should different exemptions be in place to reflect that? I would argue yes. It's not about giving clubs a "leg up" or "favouring them at the expense of.....", but about ensuring that each club is put into an environment where they can succeed. There is a big difference between equal treatment and equitable treatment.

The Broncos also need to be allowed to spend what's necessary to put a successful side on the field, and that means adapting the rules to recognise that they play in different circumnstances to most other clubs. If we work on the assumption that any new London club had the funds required, under the current model of the salary cap, they're massively hamstrung by the fact that the vast bulk of the playing talent is based in a low cost-of-living area. At the moment, the salary cap allows for a 10% London weighting. That's not enough when you consider that the average weekly rent in West London is on a par with the average monthly rent in West Yorkshire. So you either need to have a situation where: You have a much higher London weighting, The cap is adjusted to allow for allowances in housing costs (for example, allow a club to cover some accomodation costs "off cap"), Have a more generous overseas quota for expansion clubs, so that they aren't stuck trying to convince players to move from a low COL area to a high COL area. This may also help attract talent to the league as Aussie talent does tend to come to the UK for the travel opportunities, and London is very much a draw.

These days, Leeds almost always fly in and out on the day of the game.

Leeds have always positioned their France trips at the corporate market. They've long acknowledged that supporters will go the Ryanair route, so have always pitched this as more of a corporate jolly-up than a supporter trip. No regular supporter goes on the club plane.

I think what's important here is how the sport decides to carve up digital and TV rights going forward. You're absolutely right to say that Sky (or any broadcaster) aren't going to willingly allow Our League to become a defacto competitor to its own rights, but at the same time it is extremely important that SL is allowed to maximise the value of its content. That might, for arguments sake, mean giving Sky exclusivity not only of the first pick, but of the match night itself - having a situation where only the televised fixtures are played on Thursday or Friday nights for instance, but that opens up a logisitcal can of worms and will be resisted by clubs that rely more heavily on corporate clients. That said, I do think that streaming is somewhat over-played as a solution (I say this as a subsriber to Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and NFL Gamepass) and I think it really is something that, even with IMG's support, RL really isn't equiped to launch. It's a whole different business model, it's very tech-dependent (which means a lot of up-front cash burn) and then it's a very hard trick to get the finances to balance - what impact does streaming have on other media deals, is there enough of a core audience to support it and at what price point, and does that price point open up new audiences? Personally, I think the better approach in the short-mid term would be to keep the broadcast arrangements as they largely are, ensure that every game is recorded to broadcast standard, and use that audience to build the audience across social media platforms, which can then be packaged to advertisers.