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Rugby League told to play to its strengths ... but World Cup still waiting for sponsors


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Well living in Norwich I would ;) Actually there are quite a few casual rugby league fans in Norwich and East Anglia, aparently a team in Kings Lynn started up not long ago made up soley from armchair league fans ( none had any previous playing experience). I even saw a bloke in Lidl wearing a Hull Fc shirt at the weekend!

 

Given that we have wheelchair RL, could it be that this armchair RL variant is the answer to the sports participation numbers issue? 

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the whole outlook from red hall is somewhat parochial, we need to sell the product to the entire country not just lancashire and yorkshire, we need to get big players involved in the game such as the stobart sponsorship of widnes (the league deal was a farce) whereby an internationally renowned company sponsored the club and the ground for 5 years. why not look at companies like tesco and sainsbury's who are nationally recognised brands? and bite the bullet and get a major gambling company like william hills on board? methinks that rimmer amd wood are not the men to take the game forward which is apparent with the current botch up over re-structuring. someone like martyn sadler would be an ideal person to run the game as he has a wealth of knowledge and plain good old common sense.

"Why is Napoleon crying ?" said one sailor to the other, "poor ###### thinks he's being exiled to st helens" came the reply.

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 I am managing a £13m marketing budget this year. This budget is not attributed to specific activity. There is always £1-200k available for initiatives minimum. We are not talking about £10-15m per year sponsorship deals.

 

As we are based in Edinburgh and RL has zero presence here, it would be nigh on impossible for me to get something like this signed off even if I wanted to fund RLWC sponsorship.

 

 

I can well understand the difficulties of persuading senior management to sponsor a sport which has zero profile in your country.

 

But surely there has to be some lateral thinking here. For example, Yorkshire Bank is ultimately owned by National Australia Bank Group (so financial services organisations in two parts of the world where RL matters). Now I don't know whether the latter has any involvement with RL in Australia but has someone at the RFL asked a colleague at the ARL whether it is worth contacting NABG?

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I can well understand the difficulties of persuading senior management to sponsor a sport which has zero profile in your country.

But surely there has to be some lateral thinking here. For example, Yorkshire Bank is ultimately owned by National Australia Bank Group (so financial services organisations in two parts of the world where RL matters). Now I don't know whether the latter has any involvement with RL in Australia but has someone at the RFL asked a colleague at the ARL whether it is worth contacting NABG?

i think the difficulty i'd have is that sponsorship is often a fun and exciting thing for staff and management. At times we struggle to offload Man City or Utd Europe tickets to staff so I cant see us shifting seats to a Warrington or Hull game to our head office staff - apart from maybe me!

Whilst there may be a sound business case for sponsoring Rugby League - Scottish football or RU would always trump this for a company like ours. RU having presence in Londo, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Dublin should not be underestimated.

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Well living in Norwich I would ;) Actually there are quite a few casual rugby league fans in Norwich and East Anglia, aparently a team in Kings Lynn started up not long ago made up soley from armchair league fans ( none had any previous playing experience). I even saw a bloke in Lidl wearing a Hull Fc shirt at the weekend!

 

Nothing apparent about it; the club are in the second season at West Lynn Rugby Club and I play for them! :) Half the team are Lithanuians and they bloody love it! There is also a team in Stowmarket in Suffolk and of course St Ives in Huntingdon.

 

I think it is criminal that the International TV rights are not in place; in fact they should have been in place a year ago along with the UK deal. If the League Express has got its information correct and that large companies are waiting for these rights to be granted before getting involved in the competition, then it shows how poorly run and organised the game is. That is shocking! They are potentially throwing away a lot of money, prestige and advertising potential out of the window for not having their house in order. The game severely lacks having a credible international governing body and in the UK, a board who are actually capable of running this great game effectively.  

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Nothing apparent about it; the club are in the second season at West Lynn Rugby Club and I play for them! :) Half the team are Lithanuians and they bloody love it! There is also a team in Stowmarket in Suffolk and of course St Ives in Huntingdon.

 

I think it is criminal that the International TV rights are not in place; in fact they should have been in place a year ago along with the UK deal. If the League Express has got its information correct and that large companies are waiting for these rights to be granted before getting involved in the competition, then it shows how poorly run and organised the game is. That is shocking! They are potentially throwing away a lot of money, prestige and advertising potential out of the window for not having their house in order. The game severely lacks having a credible international governing body and in the UK, a board who are actually capable of running this great game effectively.  

 

Part of the problem seems to be the way the TV rights were handled. They were sold to IMG who then presumably flog them on, but I guess had some criteria they had to meet. So RLWC2013 had some guaranteed income from selling the TV rights early, but as a result lost control of some of the timing. Though I suspect if we'd sold the TV rights direct, we'd have got shafted even more.

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Last thing we need is another Lewis, we need somebody who understands our culture and the commercial strengths this report identifies. There are sufficient benefits to buy into without entering Fairyland again if we employ the right person to sell them.

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2 games of SL a week on TV is the problem, get another game or two a week on TV and the sponsors will come and anyway

2 games a week is ridiculous at this time in history esp for an entrenched sport with over 100 years of professionalism behind it with millions of fans.

 

Pump it up, it deserves to be because it's a great bloody sport. 

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 I am managing a £13m marketing budget this year. This budget is not attributed to specific activity. There is always £1-200k available for initiatives minimum. We are not talking about £10-15m per year sponsorship deals.

 

As we are based in Edinburgh and RL has zero presence here, it would be nigh on impossible for me to get something like this signed off even if I wanted to fund RLWC sponsorship.

National side is different though, sponsor them.

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National side is different though, sponsor them.

It's not though - based in Edinburgh I wouldn't be able to give tickets away to watch Scotland in Workington or Salford, or even England in Cardiff, London or Huddersfield.

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the longer we have laurel and hardy running the game in this country then the further into the abyss we are staring.

"Why is Napoleon crying ?" said one sailor to the other, "poor ###### thinks he's being exiled to st helens" came the reply.

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Yeah the last thing we need is someone taking over a bankrupt shambles in 2002 and turning it around. We want an incompetence enthusiast.

It matters not if the game dies through lack of income as long as it is a proper RL man that leads us over the cliff.

+1
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Yeah the last thing we need is someone taking over a bankrupt shambles in 2002 and turning it around. We want an incompetence enthusiast.

It matters not if the game dies through lack of income as long as it is a proper RL man that leads us over the cliff.

 

Circumstance often plays a huge role in the perception of success, 2002-2007 housing market boom and grants like confetti, you had to try not to do better. Benchmarking is the key and when you do that against our primary competitors the results are poor, culminating in the shambolic Franchise concept.

We do not need some northern bloke to lead us over the cliff, we need some bloke able to understand our strengths and sell them for the market rate - I don't give a monkeys if he is a RL man or not but if you believe in your product my experience tells me it is easier to sell for the right price than if you didn't.

We have a great future, its just that we don't know it.......

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Circumstance often plays a huge role in the perception of success, 2002-2007 housing market boom and grants like confetti, you had to try not to do better. Benchmarking is the key and when you do that against our primary competitors the results are poor, culminating in the shambolic Franchise concept.

We do not need some northern bloke to lead us over the cliff, we need some bloke able to understand our strengths and sell them for the market rate - I don't give a monkeys if he is a RL man or not but if you believe in your product my experience tells me it is easier to sell for the right price than if you didn't.

We have a great future, its just that we don't know it.......

 

Yeah, Lewis just struck lucky.

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Yeah the last thing we need is someone taking over a bankrupt shambles in 2002 and turning it around. We want an incompetence enthusiast.

It matters not if the game dies through lack of income as long as it is a proper RL man that leads us over the cliff.

 

You forgot to add:  who will bail out after making changes that look good short term but won't stand the test of time.

 

Maybe you should consider why he didn't stick around to see it through?

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We do not need some northern bloke to lead us over the cliff, we need some bloke able to understand our strengths and sell them for the market rate - I don't give a monkeys if he is a RL man or not but if you believe in your product my experience tells me it is easier to sell for the right price than if you didn't.

We have a great future, its just that we don't know it.......

 The problem with this (and there are plenty of people saying the same) is that it is just bluster. How exactly would you sell the game to people who are not interested?

 

Sky haven't been able to sell the rights to sponsor their RL coverage. I'm sure they believe in the viewing figures that it pulls in (they don;t need to love the game, just the pure numbers it pulls in). IMG surely believe in their vieiwing figures when selling their rights.

 

It is just bluster when people keep saying we sell the game short - what exactly do people mean?

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 Because he'd done 10 years and got the chance to run Sport England instead?

 

 

I agree with you. and now the LTA.   Sometimes I think too many in our fanbase just don't want, like or deserve success and would rather see the game return to the primordial swamp where they can only be happy when things go wrong.

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If you don't care whether he is a RL man or not, why did you argue we needed someone passionate about RL? Perhaps someone not steeped in RL might not appreciate the importance of every aspect of the game but that sometimes isn't a bad thing. Sometimes an outsider can see where exactly it is that you are going wrong.

You are playing down Lewis's achievements from those post 2000 WC days. Mo Lindsay had to ring the Aussies up and beg them not to cancel their 2001 tour or there could have been real trouble. Things were sailing seriously close to the wind back then. We wouldn't be here arguing about licensing if that situation had not been turned round.

If you are not passionate about what you sell you will never get value for it an example of how a united sport could use the findings - we probably have a fan base of 300k who attend a game more than once a season, that equates to an annual spend at the supermarket of £1.5 billion pa, £300m on insurances, £1b at pubs/restaurants, gas/ electric/phones etc

Now unite that spend behind a united game and you have something to really sell

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Enjoying this between SC & J, honestly, really good - one point he OR she 

 

I was personally hoping Brian Barwick would have had more input, or indeed a bigger role

 

anyway, carry on , as you were

Edited by amh

Whilst I do not suffer fools gladly, I will always gladly make fools suffer

A man is getting along on the road of wisdom when he realises that his opinion is just an opinion

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the 2008 RLWC did'nt have a main sponsor...just lots of "other" sponsors...like "official airline" , "offical beer" etc......thats the same policy the 2013 RLWC has followed....and plenty have come on board already...

Edited by roughyedspud

OLDHAM RLFC

the 8TH most successful team in british RL

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the 2008 RLWC did'nt have a main sponsor...just lots of "other" sponsors...like "official airline" , "offical beer" etc......thats the same policy the 2013 RLWC has followed....and plenty have come on board already...

 

Other than Hertz, Marriott and Steeden, who are the others? I've not seen anything.

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