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Super League attendances 2017


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9 hours ago, westlondonfan said:

I think if London had only played one season and had virtually beat everyone they played they would have higher attendances too.

Good point - they should try that! :D

The point of my post was to give some North American perspective.  Even the most marginal of sports in Toronto can count on drawing a good sized crowd, and one with any sort of panache, exotic flare or public recognition can do better then a couple of k attendance.  I think Perez was not certain of RL via-a-vis those criteria, or at least low balled conservatively his assessment of them when he launched with his publicly stated goal of 2-3k attendance per game. 

And the Toronto public was by no means convinced that this team was going to win initially, and still over 6k showed up for the first couple of games.  There are at least 10x that many transplants from the UK in the Toronto area so I myself was not so skeptical but that is now water under the bridge.

Anyways, I had just wanted to relay an impression of the SL club attendances from neophytes on the other side of the pond.  The game seems bigger then it actually is, at the pro level (my daughter's exact words to me).  I can assure you from my own past experience that any potential investor for one of the new clubs here in NA will be desiring much higher attendance levels in order to keep their interest.   I really have to think that most would be wanting to see their new clubs hit 15k plus within a 3-5 yr time frame. IF that was not the TWP goal I would be gobsmacked.

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59 minutes ago, Captain Survival said:

Good point - they should try that! :D

The point of my post was to give some North American perspective.  Even the most marginal of sports in Toronto can count on drawing a good sized crowd, and one with any sort of panache, exotic flare or public recognition can do better then a couple of k attendance.  I think Perez was not certain of RL via-a-vis those criteria, or at least low balled conservatively his assessment of them when he launched with his publicly stated goal of 2-3k attendance per game. 

And the Toronto public was by no means convinced that this team was going to win initially, and still over 6k showed up for the first couple of games.  There are at least 10x that many transplants from the UK in the Toronto area so I myself was not so skeptical but that is now water under the bridge.

Anyways, I had just wanted to relay an impression of the SL club attendances from neophytes on the other side of the pond.  The game seems bigger then it actually is, at the pro level (my daughter's exact words to me).  I can assure you from my own past experience that any potential investor for one of the new clubs here in NA will be desiring much higher attendance levels in order to keep their interest.   I really have to think that most would be wanting to see their new clubs hit 15k plus within a 3-5 yr time frame. IF that was not the TWP goal I would be gobsmacked.

Perez already said that they will be looking at getting a new venue for SL or doing upgrades to the Den as it is expected to be sold out at some point next season. 10k is a low figure in NA eyes like you mentioned. 

 

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On 08/10/2017 at 8:29 AM, Hvy wg said:

Leeds 14 418
Wigan 13 671
Hull 11 418
St Helens 10 947
Warrington 10 164
Castleford 8 779
Catalans 8610
Leigh 6331
Huddersfield 5890
Wakefield 5676
Widnes 5592
Salford 3842

What are the average crowds in the NRL by chance, are they that low too?

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The lowest NRL home crowd averages are near 11000 for South Sydney, and the highest home average being Brisbane by a fair way at just over 31000. The lowest crowd of the season was around 4200 on a terrible night at Lottoland (Probably the worst facilities for a stadium in the league). In saying that by having a quick look through some of the SL stadiums the capacities are generally much smaller than the stadiums utilised for the NRL

 

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On 09/10/2017 at 11:15 PM, Captain Survival said:

Seeing these figures (my first time to the forum in about a week or more I think) my first thought is that Toronto WolfPack would have landed right in the middle of the pack given their avg this year  I think landed a bit over 7k I believe?

And I would be willing to place bets with anyone that next year being in Championship TWP attendance is going to go up, significantly.

Bit surprised by the Salford figures as to my recollection they were looking strong at the start of the season club wise before the wheels starting coming off at the midway.

Some of these clubs and their stadiums I do not really know, but I am left with an overwhelming impression of a under performance for this sport  - it seems to me all the top tier clubs need to be drawing 15k and more for long term survivability of the game.

This isn't the case at all.

"Long term survivability" is based on developing the quantity and quality players needed to build the grass roots of the game, and the best players to play the game to a high level and ultimately to compete at International level. You will find that throughout Superleague's history developing the local game itself is a criteria that has had far more importance than attendances. 

Bradford Bulls have topped a 15,000 average three times and where did that go?

What keeps Superleague financially viable as a professional sport is also the TV contract. When the cracks showed in the finances, SKY simply upped the contract to balance the books, why would they let it financially fail? Another great criteria is the "rich owner" and so you see Superleague chosen on private financial backing and player development not attendances. 

Throughout the games history attendances are heavily influenced by on field success. To believe all 12 clubs can hit the same attendance figure is with respect naive. A winning club puts thousands on the gate and a losing club loses thousands off the gate

It is also wrong to pick out what is the best club level attendance for SL and announce that somehow all eleven other clubs are failures and must come up to that level, otherwise what? For Widnes to come up to Leeds it needs growth of something like 250%.

Superleague isn't an island either. They compete directly alongside the worlds strongest code of football in soccer. The pro soccer game was born in Lancashire which contains three giant world class clubs, the M62 has as many if not more pro-soccer clubs along it than pro-RL clubs. For a small regional alternative code of football to survive against that and still give Aussie/NZ a game and  build their club average crowds from less than 6.000 pre- Superleague up to nearly 10,000 during licensing, was a tremendous achievement. Please do not put our game down by setting unrealistic  targets and then declaring failure.

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49 minutes ago, The Parksider said:

This isn't the case at all.

"Long term survivability" is based on developing the quantity and quality players needed to build the grass roots of the game, and the best players to play the game to a high level and ultimately to compete at International level. You will find that throughout Superleague's history developing the local game itself is a criteria that has had far more importance than attendances. 

Bradford Bulls have topped a 15,000 average three times and where did that go?

What keeps Superleague financially viable as a professional sport is also the TV contract. When the cracks showed in the finances, SKY simply upped the contract to balance the books, why would they let it financially fail? Another great criteria is the "rich owner" and so you see Superleague chosen on private financial backing and player development not attendances. 

Throughout the games history attendances are heavily influenced by on field success. To believe all 12 clubs can hit the same attendance figure is with respect naive. A winning club puts thousands on the gate and a losing club loses thousands off the gate

It is also wrong to pick out what is the best club level attendance for SL and announce that somehow all eleven other clubs are failures and must come up to that level, otherwise what? For Widnes to come up to Leeds it needs growth of something like 250%.

Superleague isn't an island either. They compete directly alongside the worlds strongest code of football in soccer. The pro soccer game was born in Lancashire which contains three giant world class clubs, the M62 has as many if not more pro-soccer clubs along it than pro-RL clubs. For a small regional alternative code of football to survive against that and still give Aussie/NZ a game and  build their club average crowds from less than 6.000 pre- Superleague up to nearly 10,000 during licensing, was a tremendous achievement. Please do not put our game down by setting unrealistic  targets and then declaring failure.

So, roughly translated as "Abandon hope all who enter here".

Expect little, get what you expected, and be thankful.

You make Graveyard Johnny look like the world's most optimistic man.

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On 11/10/2017 at 7:07 AM, UTK said:

The lowest NRL home crowd averages are near 11000 for South Sydney, and the highest home average being Brisbane by a fair way at just over 31000. The lowest crowd of the season was around 4200 on a terrible night at Lottoland (Probably the worst facilities for a stadium in the league). In saying that by having a quick look through some of the SL stadiums the capacities are generally much smaller than the stadiums utilised for the NRL

 

Australia is quite a sparsely populated country that doesn't have the numbers to garner very large crowds week in week out. Think it's population is roughly a third of the UK. A crowd of say 20k is pretty good there.

 

On 11/10/2017 at 7:13 AM, The Parksider said:

This isn't the case at all.

"Long term survivability" is based on developing the quantity and quality players needed to build the grass roots of the game, and the best players to play the game to a high level and ultimately to compete at International level. You will find that throughout Superleague's history developing the local game itself is a criteria that has had far more importance than attendances. 

Bradford Bulls have topped a 15,000 average three times and where did that go?

What keeps Superleague financially viable as a professional sport is also the TV contract. When the cracks showed in the finances, SKY simply upped the contract to balance the books, why would they let it financially fail? Another great criteria is the "rich owner" and so you see Superleague chosen on private financial backing and player development not attendances. 

Throughout the games history attendances are heavily influenced by on field success. To believe all 12 clubs can hit the same attendance figure is with respect naive. A winning club puts thousands on the gate and a losing club loses thousands off the gate

It is also wrong to pick out what is the best club level attendance for SL and announce that somehow all eleven other clubs are failures and must come up to that level, otherwise what? For Widnes to come up to Leeds it needs growth of something like 250%.

Superleague isn't an island either. They compete directly alongside the worlds strongest code of football in soccer. The pro soccer game was born in Lancashire which contains three giant world class clubs, the M62 has as many if not more pro-soccer clubs along it than pro-RL clubs. For a small regional alternative code of football to survive against that and still give Aussie/NZ a game and  build their club average crowds from less than 6.000 pre- Superleague up to nearly 10,000 during licensing, was a tremendous achievement. Please do not put our game down by setting unrealistic  targets and then declaring failure.

Rugby league does very well. Superleague averaging 8500 might not seem like much, but the teams are based in towns (bar Leeds and Hull) where you could get a third of the whole population inside the stadium.

To the Canadian (and others) that were shocked at the attendances, rugby league is not big in northern England, rugby league is big in specific towns (and Leeds/Hull) in a part of northern England. The catchment area of rugby league is very restricted. The big northern cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough..rugby league has no significant presence. Sam Tomkins talked about being able to go on a train and no-one having a clue who he was. These are football dominated cities. Not sure if the UK is unique in this but people here largely onlŷ follow one sport. I don't know too many who have a Manchester United jersey as well as a Wigan Warriors RL jersey and a Sale Sharks RU jersey. Go into northern cities and its predominantly Premier League jerseys. The same applies in the south of England (bar maybe Leicester) where the big cities are dominated by Premier League jerseys (or from further afield namely Barcelona or Real Madrid).

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