zylya

New Zealand Rugby Union have the highest winning percentage of any professional team across all sports in history and are one of the biggest sports brands going. This idea that winning all the time is bad for business just doesn't hold up. As you say - even if England are likely to beat Wales 9/10 times there's still lots of highlights to come out of these games, plus the story of Wales and France improving year on year etc. Imagine the feeling when they finally do pick up that high profile win. Plus, sitting around hoping that France or Wales are going to magically get good enough to beat Eng

Thanks for this, there are some good points in there and things I hadn't thought much of - you're definitely right that Super League, as its own brand, needs pushing. To clarify, I'm from the South (about 2 hours away from London) and have lived here all my life, except for Uni which is where I took up Rugby League and I've played (on and off as availability allows) for the last 15 years now. I find it hard to identify with any of the Super League teams (even Broncos when they were in) because they're all so far away and there's no clear "branding" that would appeal to me - your example o

You're essentially suggesting that Super League clubs spend more time thinking about their "customer persona" and I think you're right - I'd be surprised if many (or any) of the Super League clubs had a good idea who their target audience really is. However, given that Rugby clubs are traditionally very rooted in their communities, it becomes very difficult to separate the geographically-specific part out of the club's offer. For example, I'm based in the South of England and right now, despite being someone who works in marketing (relevant only in as much as I like to think about

Again, I've never seen any actual research on the effect of a blackout or lack of blackout on attendances - it may be out there but it's not something I've looked for. Would be interested in seeing the data. That said, there's a big difference between instituting a specific blackout time and suggesting that streaming all the games would cause the demise of the game, which is what the previous poster was suggesting.

I'd love to see some data that shows it either way - I rather suspect your doom and gloom prediction wouldn't be borne out by the numbers. It shouldn't have to be said (although maybe for Rugby League at the moment it does need to be said) that market research and consumer analysis has to happen BEFORE making changes. There will likely be some optimum point where streaming will boost attendances rather than ruin them. That said, live Super League attendances have trended downwards for the last four years (excluding the 2020 season). Attendances are already dropping - it's not going to be

I didn't clarify well enough in my initial post, but my comments were more aimed at what RL should do AFTER the pandemic is over and people are back in stadia. Obviously it's a bit different at the moment, and streaming is a way to minimise losses, but going forward, especially with the apparent lack of a TV deal for Champ/League 1, there should be some research done into how they can build a streaming platform going forward. I did a post in a different topic about a model that combined a paid membership with a certain number of games per round provided free. The free

I think this highlights some of the common Rugby League complaints - namely a lack of strategic thinking and planning. I read the article and I agree that streaming isn't a magical solution to remove the problems of the pandemic, nor is it a golden goose that's going to make Champ and League 1 clubs flush with cash. Instead, it has to be seen as a growth project - especially if regular TV networks aren't interested in picking it up. If they wanted streaming to be a viable substitute to live attendance for the pandemic, then unfortunately they should have started around 3 years ago -

Whether you do creeping expansion or not, think it's outside the remit of the RFL to build professional clubs. Instead, they should be laying the groundwork for RL in a particular area, so tasks such as: Market Research into the local area to identify RL demand & opportunities Coaches into local schools + festivals for those schools to compete against each other, plus teacher training Some sort of "Club Starter Kit" with some equipment (balls, cones, bibs etc) + targeted support (volunteer training, best practice guides, mentoring by RFL staff) to enable people to

The Championship has 189 regular season games and 6 playoff games for a total of 195 games. At £1250 per game, you're looking at less than £250k to film/broadcast every single game (£243,750 to be precise). Now, depending on how you look at it, you have several choices. I want to put aside the issue of the pandemic - so imagine that this is for the 2022 season so there's no "we have to give something for season ticket holders" angle. 1. Swallow the £250k as a marketing cost and make these games available on OurLeague. If you go down this route, it's probably also worth having some av

The format this year means that Championship and League 1 sides will play for 4 spots in the round of 16 with the 12 Super League clubs. There's no way for more than four to get past there - those 4 teams will then also be semi-finallists for the 1895.

I'm so happy that it's a simple format. I REALLY hated the 14 team format. One thing that they could have done, rather than a separate emerging nations, is just rankings games. So the top 2 from each group go into a Quarter Final, and the bottom 2 from each group go into a separate set of Quarter Finals. If you did winners vs winners and losers vs losers from each round you could actually have a final ranking for the World Cup (1-16). It would mean that the emerging nations would get extra games in a system where quality games are hard to come by, as well as allowing the weaker teams