whatmichaelsays

What The Hundred has done is get a new type of supporter watching domestic cricket. There are so many more kids, families and casual viewers watching The Hundred than other forms of the game. Whatever the cost and merits of doing that may be, what we can't hide from is that RL is crying out for someone to achieve the same thing - to broaden the audience, to make it much more diverse, to appeal to different tastes and to reduce the reliance the sport has on the same people buying the same product over and over again. It wasn't an accident that The Hundred rubbed the cricket purists up the wrong way - it was never meant for them. Cricket has plenty of products that they like already and I think RL often falls into the trap of thinking that, whatever it tries to do, we have to make sure that Derek, the 65-year-old from Cas who has had a season ticket for 50 years, likes it. That makes it hard to appeal to different generations and demographics who might want different things from a sporting event. There's no reason why, for example, events like Magic Weekend or the Grand Final could not learn and benefit from some of the experiential and branding tactics that have been applied in The Hundred.

Brilliant event to be at - this is a form of RL we really should be proud of. Thought Leeds were very good even in the first half - had more of the ball but Halifax were incredibly quick and made the possession they had count. I think in the second half, Leeds just starved them of any ball and just seemed to have more energy in the final 20, but some of the skill from Collins and Butler (who seemed to have his tags glued on at times) was brilliant. A really good final.

If we're going to start going down the route of judging what individual clubs bring to the TV deal (essentially, how much Sky TV value relies on certain clubs, or how many Sky subscriptions rely on certain clubs), then we're probably looking at a 6-team league. "Catalans" shouldn't be doing a TV deal. If RLC secure a TV deal in France, then it should be part of the wider distribution pool.

The more I think about this, the more I get frustrated about the inaction of RL Commercial, and SLE before it. I work in a UK marketing role for a French-owned company. Indeed, we're one of the biggest employers in France and a member of the CAC40. We're also partnered with a UK rugby league club, and have a very good partnership with them . In the time I've been here, I haven't received a single phone call, email, flyer, LinkedIn message or anything else from RL Commercial. Nor have my counterparts in France. Now, I'm not sure what the approach is from RL Commercial to securing partnerships in France, but it strikes me that a French-owned business with a presence in both the UK and France, and one that is already partnered with RL in some form, would be at least worth a phone call, an email or an invite to be schmoozed at an RL event. But maybe that's just me? Maybe it's just too easy to call in another favour from Fred Done and allow stakeholders of what was SLE to think up cheap gags about pies and make snide remarks about the number of Betfred branches in Perpignan?

Whilst that's the case, I don't see any justification being made for why it should be Catalans who should pay for the failures of RL Commercial or Super League Europe to address that. They're the ones responsible for not securing sufficient broadcasting and commercial revenue - both in the UK and mainland Europe, not the Catalans club. Every SL club has historically been a stakeholder in SLE, so why should it be Catalans footing the bill for that collective failure?

Leeds have done this from the start of Catalans being in SL. The official club travel to Perpignan has always been advertised as a "corporate" trip, rather than a supporter trip. The club charters a flight for the players and staff, the club sells the remaining seats at a rate that means the players and staff are effectively paid for and when the plane lands, guests are taken off to a nice restaurant where the commercial team fills them with steak and wine before the game. Leeds can do that because they have a wide mix of sponsors and they also have a lot of goodwill from their sponsors - the club treats them like gods and it's one of the reasons why, when you look at Leeds shirts over many years, the logos stay the same every year. They don't have the revolving door of sponsors that other clubs have. Do other clubs have that same market? I don't know, but it would be interesting to see how many do try it.

Agree with this - when you look the presence of Catalans pragmatically, it is an enormously successful club and one that brings a lot of intangible benefits to the Super League but when you look at the business case (and I think Guasch himself accepts this), it's a less convincing argument - certainly a less measurable one. The history of RL geographic expansion just feels like the analogy of a dog chasing a car - we don't know why we're doing it, we're unlikely to actually catch it and, even if we did, we've no idea what we're going to do with it. With the Catalans, we achieved a degree of expansion but, whether it is through a lack of effort, resource, talent, willing or product, the sport has failed to capitalise. My issue with this particular situation is whether it should be Catalans who are forced to pay for that failure. The failure to secure commercial and broadcast contracts from Europe is a collective failure on each and every stakeholder of RL Commercial or Super League Europe before it, not just Catalans. That includes some very vocal club chairmen who are very happy to throw that failure at the Catalan's door, rather than having the self-awareness or stones to be "humble" about their role in that failure.

Toulouse having a poor deal "for a good number of years" is not / should not be a justification on imposing a poor deal on Catalans. The justification for Toulouse is, at the very list, somewhat more justifiable given the range of finances at Championship clubs. But we're supposedly dealing with elite clubs here, who should be generating sufficient revenues for a relatively straightforward overseas trip. These same clubs seem to have little trouble financing warm-weather camps at La Santa or Browns each January. There was previously a collective purchasing method to address this. Essentially the clubs contributed equally to a pot and their travel was arranged from an RFL-appointed travel agent. It meant that those clubs who only played in France once, or only played in the cheaper winter months, paid a little bit more to subsidise those who travelled twice or travelled in peak season. Over time, clubs dropped out of this arrangement to do their own thing. Some clubs now charter their own flights and run an "in and out" approach, rather than staying overnight and travelling on scheduled flights, as they feel that is best. Leeds, for example, do that as a corporate trip where the sponsors essentially pay to cover the costs. There should be pressure on RLC to increase the value of the broadcast and commercial deal - and that includes the broadcast and commercial deals in France. That's their responsibility. We need to drop this notion that the onus is on Catalans to bring a TV deal and commercial partners - that is the responsibility of RLC and Catalans are a club, not a branch office of RLC.

The crowds at Leeds this season have been fairly consistent - they certainly don't suffer the drop-off that other clubs do when they play the sort of teams where people scream "tHeY bRiNg No AwAy FaNs!" - they're good at running tactical offers on that front. I do wonder how much influence the club has had on the number of Saturday games this year. I'm convinced the club would love every game to be on Friday nights because that packs out the corporate suites, although I know they do like one annual game in the summer on weekends as a "family day" themed event. But losing those big local games is a killer. The Leeds-Bulls games at a packed Headingley were hard to beat. Wigan and St Helens games at Headingley can also be great atmospheres, but I think it relies on Leeds having a good team to make that happen as well (and this is also where I think loop fixtures have diluted those fixtures somewhat). But when your local rival is a club as uninteresting as Huddersfield, it's not going to get the adrenalin going.

Leeds have lost their two biggest crowd-drawing fixtures in recent years. Obviously Bradford have been gone for a number of years, but Wakefield was also consistently one of the club's biggest gates - a fixture that hasn't been held this year. The lack of a "derby" for Leeds beyond Castleford is a shame. It's also hard to pin down how much of this is down to the poor on-field performance, but not playing Wigan at home until so late in the season wasn't helpful (the attendance for that was lower than both vs London). Five home games on a Saturday also doesn't really suit a club that has built its audience around Friday nights.

To be honest, I don't think it does keep him "relevant". The "well, you're taking about it so its working" argument is the sort of argument that the likes of Just Stop Oil use to justify their antics. Yes, we're talking about them, but not for the reason they want us to be. We're just talking about how they're all a set of pricks. But the people who like Beaumont will like this and the people who don't will think differently. It's his trainset at the end of the day.

I think there is something in the psychological "effort" (and I use the term loosely) involved in buying a cup or play-off ticket. The idea that you have to hand over cash at the turnstile, or log on and buy a ticket, is a barrier that we could easily remove. To be honest, I think if you offered season ticket holders an "opt-in" box for cup and play-off games at the time they're renewing, as many football clubs do, I imagine a good proportion would just tick it. Not all would, but I bet enough would for a decent conversion rate. Any decent club now is running on an e-ticketing system and can simply hold a card on file to charge and add to the customer's pass card. It's so easy to remove that behavioural barrier.

I think it's less about Kirklees handing over cash (they don't have any), but if the Giants can help solve a problem for the council (eg, a crumbling leisure centre that needs repairing), then that can make the land acquisition / planning process a lot easier.

What would be a suitable site for Huddersfield? One thing that could play into Davy's hands here is that Kirklees Council are under a lot of pressure with their leisure budget. KAL earmarked several centres for closure last year due to repair and refurbishment costs, as well as operating losses (the centre at the John Smiths did eventually close). It wouldn't be a terrible proposition for the council to work with the Giants in exchange for the club's support in modernising council leisure facilities.

I think the challenge I have with that mindset is why does there have to be a "shortfall"? I have nothing against someone with Carter's skillset - again, I think there are places for prudence - but Wakefield were never going to grow under his stewardship because he was never someone who struck me as willing to invest in anything that could grow the business. For me, there has to be a balance of approaches because if you just always do what is logical, sensible and prudent, you just end up doing the same as everthing else. I sometimes quip that if accounts had planned the D-Day landings, they'd have forced everyone to go from Dover to Calais - everyone would have ended up dead (because that's the Germans would have expected them to do), but the accountants back home would congratulate themselves on the fuel savings they made.

The Josh Warrington fight was in 2021, so would have been in the 2022 accounts. I suspect that the Leeds 2023 concert wouldn't have brought in that much, given local authority budgets.

Not sure. At the time that the East Stand was built, a big thing was made about the partnership with Carnegie, so I suspect there may have been a contribution to some of the costs made by Leeds Met in exchange use of the facilities. The university was deeply embedded with the club at that time.

The geography is an issue, but I think it's important not to hang any conversation on the geography argument because we ultimately end up looking at it as a problem which the game can't realistically solve. The clubs aren't interested in fixing the geography problem (some are even hostile to it and see it as a threat), the governing body has no funds to fix it, and even if there were a queue of potential investors willing to fund it, RL simply doesn't offer the returns on investment. Look at it as an audience problem first - where people live is largely immaterial.

Again, I don't agree. There is nobody in a well-healed town like Harrogate, well within our heartland region and with two "city" clubs to choose from, who isn't going to a Rhinos or York game because of towns like Castleford and Leigh. They're not going because neither the Rhinos nor York have either offered them something that they want, or got through to them with a message that they do have something they want. We have so many more tools and platforms to reach people with our content. If we can't reach people on our doorstep with that, swapping out small-town teams for "pins in map" city clubs doesn't change that.

I think the critique of Carter, and I think it's a fair one, is that he was excessively prudent - he seemed to approach things with a "zero growth" mindset. There's a place for people with those skills and mindset within sport, but there's equally a place for people who want to grow and expand their business with some calculated risks. Carter, I would argue, was too far on one end of the spectrum. Eventually, a strategy of "try to stay in SL as cheaply as possible" was always going to catch up with him.

Office space in the East Stand that is being rented out. These were previously university classrooms for Leeds Met/Carnegie/Beckett.

I disagree with this. I don't see "expansion" as a geography problem - it's an audience problem. We currently cater to a very small number of demographic segments within our own heartland areas. We don't cater well to people looking for more premium experiences. We don't cater well to younger audiences. We don't cater well to students and graduates. We don't cater well to people from heartland areas who move around the country for work or study. We don't cater well to people who want to buy good quality merchandise. We don't cater well to people who want to consumer RL content online. None of those issues are issues of geography. They're issues that we're not even addressing with the people on our doorstep. As a sport we produce a lot of content - even more of it now that IMG are a partner - and we need to spread that content. We need to stop seeing success simply through the metrics of attendances, and around much broader metrics of reach and engagement - because if we can build an audience for people who like our stuff, we can sell that audience to commercial partners. I don't think having teams in Leigh, Wigan or Castleford stops us from doing that.

The game in the UK needs to expand its audience and its appeal to new markets. We're stuck in a loop of trying to sell more of the same thing to more of the same people. We're not really seeing much innovation in the products we offer, we're still trying to sell it and promote it in the same way and, when that doesn't work, the only tool we have left is to cheapen the price of the product - that's a spiral the game has to pull out of. We've reached a ceiling in appealing to the "core" market - they have little more to spend and they are an ageing cohort and the sport can't just rely on those dads to drag their reluctant kids along.

It is a little sneaky of St Helens to lump in central funding cuts with reductions in other revenues. I get the point is that they're generating more revenue from streams with a higher cost of sale, but it arguably does leave the door open for the reader to blame Sky / IMG / RFL. There is mention further in the accounts of the NHS no longer renting space, so I assume that is what a large part of the rental income drop relates to. The Leeds accounts explicitly shows the reduction of central funding to be £200k (£1.8m to £1.6m), so it's fair to assume a similar level across the board. One big cost factor appears to be energy costs - Leeds show an increase in energy of £275k per year, which isn't a small chunk of change.

It's not really a case of "I know he's right", rather a case of "I know he's trolling". And it's certainly not "cowardly hiding behind a keyboard" to disagree with and point out the flaws in his point. Blow-outs like that happen. I probably don't have to look back to suggest that Beamont's Leigh team have been on the receiving end of similar hidings and indeed, some similar remarks. I was at Headingley last night in a role of a sponsor of the Leeds disability rugby teams and I can tell you that I came across many people at Hull that are very proud and committed to what they're trying to achieve on that front. Yes, if the first team had that same level of pride and commitment, Hull may not be where they are now, but the people I came across at the Hull club were far less of a disgrace that I could argue DB has shown himself to be on occasion. As for DB himself, he's an RL guy that puts his money into the sport and his club - one that has developed well over recent years. That's to be applauded. However, I also don't think it's unfair to hold the view that he can be a crass, boorish individual with an outlook on the sport that I think is small-minded.