Elstone talks TV deal, Private Equity and next season (ish)

[Oxford]

PE turns the forum into Total ru, nuw there's a turn up for the books!

[Cerulean]

3 hours ago, Big Picture said:

Being a member of the younger generation so to speak, what do you think is the reason why so many others of your generation aren't as interested in the sport as their parents and grandparents were?

A really intriguing  and important question, particularly if applied to playing the game as well as watching it. I’m decades away from suggesting a relevant answer, but I hope there are some who do.

[gingerjon]

9 hours ago, M j M said:

Let's not whitewash the past. Wembley wasn't full for those 1990s test matches. In fact international crowds are at a relative high right now.

There's a bunch of old Grandstand opening credits on YouTube. On one of them there's quite a bit of RL footage interspersed with the horse racing, darts etc. One moment is Great Britain scoring a try and you can clearly read all the letters of WEMBLEY in the stand behind.

[JohnM]

That's where I miss the crowd stats for internationals from the old Rothmans. Might dig one out and post some figs on here. 

[gingerjon]

28 minutes ago, JohnM said:

That's where I miss the crowd stats for internationals from the old Rothmans. Might dig one out and post some figs on here. 

54,659 saw Great Britain beat Australia 19-12 at Wembley in 1990. The capacity was 80,000.

Many RL fans would have been horrified by the 25,000 empty seats despite the fact that I think (note: think) that was our highest home attendance for an international.

Three years later, Great Britain played New Zealand at Wembley in front of ... 36,131 - itself a higher total than the combined attendances of the other two tests in that series.

[Tommygilf]

4 hours ago, Big Picture said:

Being a member of the younger generation so to speak, what do you think is the reason why so many others of your generation aren't as interested in the sport as their parents and grandparents were?

Growing up Leeds Rhinos were reasonably popular and worked a lot in schools like my primary school. They have certainly been aided by a sort of "lost generation" of Leeds United fans too - though I was not one of them as my parents were fans of both.

That said, football was and still remains far more accessible. It is almost omnipresent and growing up the Fifa games have been a near constant in mine and my generations' lives, increasing that accessibility. It grows in popularity because it is popular. I remember growing up thinking Wigan were the Man United of rugby for me for example. A few more kids were rugby focussed when I moved to Wakefield, but not an overwhelming majority. At my union playing public school, the divide was more stark as plenty of lads preferred union (or claimed to) but didn't have a team they watched regularly - a few watched Huddersfield Giants or Trin on occasion (obviously a lot for Leeds too).

At university it became very prominent as lads I'd grown up with having no interest in club football started to claim they were big Leeds, Sheffield United, Chelsea, Man United etc fans. Tuesday and Wednesday nights watching Champions League football was a massive event in the student union pub. RU had a bit of that feeling from the six nations but otherwise nothing came close. There was an element of social pressure to "have a team" that even penetrated the posh boy cliques.

In that environment its quite easy to just have RL fall off the radar as football is on in the pubs instead in most places on Thursdays and Fridays. I think that is the major concern, that RL easily can slip from prominence by virtue of not being relevant to enough people simply because of the tiny geographical and cultural impetus it (and its locations) has. RL crowds are remarkably diverse in many aspects, but one of the leading ways it is not is the drop off in 18-30 age group. 

I've posted on here before that some of what RL has to offer, say Castleford away, requires a certain maturity and appreciation most teenagers and young adults don't have. There are simply other things to do that seem more appealing. RL suffers a bit from just not being very cool.

At least one positive though, growing up in inner city Leeds, I didn't even know there were two types of rugby till I went to high school!

[GUBRATS]

It must just be me , but I really don't see where PE is going to be used in RL , other than Big Picture's , MEGA League 

[Tommygilf]

12 hours ago, M j M said:

Let's not whitewash the past. Wembley wasn't full for those 1990s test matches. In fact international crowds are at a relative high right now.

I agree, but in the collective memory of RL they are held in higher regard and with greater reverance in the most part.

[gingerjon]

1 hour ago, GUBRATS said:

It must just be me , but I really don't see where PE is going to be used in RL , other than Big Picture's , MEGA League 

I think it only works - in the PE, not RL, sense - when everything is controlled in pursuit solely of profit for the PE investors. Finance doesn't like jeopardy and it doesn't much respect non commercial grassroots. The only way PE works is to take a select and closed-off group and invest in them for return.

[gingerjon]

3 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I agree, but in the collective memory of RL they are held in higher regard and with greater reverance in the most part.

When I was growing up people used to wax lyrical about the immediate post war boom in attendances and wonder why there were no fans any more.

[M j M]

1 minute ago, gingerjon said:

When I was growing up people used to wax lyrical about the immediate post war boom in attendances and wonder why there were no fans any more.

At least that was a genuine boom. Current international attendances in the UK are at a relative high and we've not tested a Kangaroo tour for nearly 20 years.

[Rupert Prince]

13 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Quite, the scenarios could be that PE will secure its major assets and promote others where they see fit. Because they will own the sport they could quite literally decide who's in and who's out, or who is vulnerable to relegation and who isn't.

You have made a fair point elsewhere, but, as I repeat,  why do Premiership Rugby and Pro14 go down that route?  (It is for Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Italian teams. The whole country, not just wealthy England)    Why are Serie A, and others getting involved?   Are they stupid??

Isn't it obvious we are going down a dead end? Well worse than that... aren't we staring at the edge of a precipice.   If that does not paint the picture then I suggest we are up to our necks in quicksand.

Notice the "Pro" bit...?  We are not professional we are amateurish.  Too many are clingng on to the 'class divide' and politics of rugby league. Well, yes some people want to take us kicking and screaming into the real world of the 21st century, but many... many as exampled on this blog and who even organise it... want to hark back to before even the time of Divisions1&2,  back to the happy times of the magic sponge and bonus money...

[Hela Wigmen]

5 minutes ago, Rupert Prince said:

You have made a fair point elsewhere, but, as I repeat,  why do Premiership Rugby and Pro14 go down that route?  (It is for Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Italian teams. The whole country, not just wealthy England)    Why are Serie A, and others getting involved?   Are they stupid??

Isn't it obvious we are going down a dead end? Well worse than that... aren't we staring at the edge of a precipice.   If that does not paint the picture then I suggest we are up to our necks in quicksand.

Notice the "Pro" bit...?  We are not professional we are amateurish.  Too many are clingng on to the 'class divide' and politics of rugby league. Well, yes some people want to take us kicking and screaming into the real world of the 21st century, but many... many as exampled on this blog and who even organise it... want to hark back to before even the time of Divisions1&2,  back to the happy times of the magic sponge and bonus money...

I just don’t trust Rugby League to spend the money wisely.

[M j M]

9 minutes ago, Rupert Prince said:

You have made a fair point elsewhere, but, as I repeat,  why do Premiership Rugby and Pro14 go down that route?  (It is for Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Italian teams. The whole country, not just wealthy England)    Why are Serie A, and others getting involved?   Are they stupid??

Isn't it obvious we are going down a dead end? Well worse than that... aren't we staring at the edge of a precipice.   If that does not paint the picture then I suggest we are up to our necks in quicksand.

Notice the "Pro" bit...?  We are not professional we are amateurish.  Too many are clingng on to the 'class divide' and politics of rugby league. Well, yes some people want to take us kicking and screaming into the real world of the 21st century, but many... many as exampled on this blog and who even organise it... want to hark back to before even the time of Divisions1&2,  back to the happy times of the magic sponge and bonus money...

Have you come up with a good reason why SL should go for this yet?

[gingerjon]

Private Equity enthusiasts might want to have a read about the fun, fun, fun that happened to Debenhams under their time under PE control - and note that 12,000 people have just lost their jobs in the lingering aftermath.

[Dave T]

38 minutes ago, M j M said:

At least that was a genuine boom. Current international attendances in the UK are at a relative high and we've not tested a Kangaroo tour for nearly 20 years.

2013 was a bit of a sample of what we can get. 67k for England v NZ at Wembley piddle on anything from the 1990s. Iirc we got 36k the previous time we played the Kiwis at Wembley during that golden era. 

To get 74k for Aus v NZ at Old Trafford was world class. 

[M j M]

54 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Private Equity enthusiasts might want to have a read about the fun, fun, fun that happened to Debenhams under their time under PE control - and note that 12,000 people have just lost their jobs in the lingering aftermath.

Company I worked for sold to PE in 2015. We were family owned and were punching the air when we got that deal over the line after putting years of work into it.

We were a decent sized company with 5,000+ employees but with a very lean head office cost base with a lot of the value tied up inside the heads of the management team. 

The PE guys installed new senior management with experience that would have looked appropriate from a quick cv review but was effectively putting guys from Tesco in charge of an over grown market trader. They didn't have a clue how this sort of business really worked. Sales went down, margins went down, overheads rocketed. We went into administration and then liquidation in 2018 with all jobs lost.

My learning from dealing with the PE guys was that they were earnest enough, were happy to throw resource at things when there were problems but simply didn't have the nuance to understand anything which deviated from textbook business.

We were a company which sometimes lived on the margins legally and ethically and where quick decisions were needed from the top to buy or spend or to sack people; but that wasn't well suited to the PE approach. They effectively put a straightjacket on us which made it corporately acceptable but which took away a chunk of what made the business successful and put in place management who never got to grips with a very specific sort of trading.

In Super League I see 12 little businesses like that, but on steroids. At least the company I worked for had rational customers. 

There's no expertise you could deploy that tells you how to run a niche regional sport more effectively. We see this with Elstone tinkering with logos and social media strategies. Yes it's helpful but it's so marginal. You need to understand why people are rugby league fans and why people aren't rugby league fans. You need to deal with emotion and resentment of your product from inside and outside your customer base. 

Ultimately it comes back to the same thing - what would rugby league get from PE involvement, what demands (including extra overhead spend on regular reporting to them) would they have for being involved and what happens when if we as a sport don't deliver what they want? We'd need to be very clear on all that before getting close to going to bed with them.

[DI Keith Fowler]

9 minutes ago, M j M said:

We were a company which sometimes lived on the margins legally and ethically

Oh go on you're going to have to give more detail than that. 

[M j M]

Just now, DI Keith Fowler said:

Oh go on you're going to have to give more detail than that. 

On the margins doesn't mean over them.

But we did a lot of buying from the grey market, didn't really care too much about health and safety and had a tradition of voluntarily opting out of several taxes.

The former head of finance had the idea that he'd just never disclose any company cars for tax or p11d purposes and when someone from HMRC came to visit they arranged for all the expensive cars to be parked round the back rather than up front in the directors parking spots.

I also remember our head of legal complaining about some "fake news" local media coverage: "they said we had a dead fox amongst the fresh food. Rubbish, It was very much alive."

 

[Rupert Prince]

1 hour ago, M j M said:

Have you come up with a good reason why SL should go for this yet?

Yet?  How long do you want to wait to save a drowning man?

[Lowdesert]

46 minutes ago, M j M said:

Company I worked for sold to PE in 2015. We were family owned and were punching the air when we got that deal over the line after putting years of work into it.

We were a decent sized company with 5,000+ employees but with a very lean head office cost base with a lot of the value tied up inside the heads of the management team. 

The PE guys installed new senior management with experience that would have looked appropriate from a quick cv review but was effectively putting guys from Tesco in charge of an over grown market trader. They didn't have a clue how this sort of business really worked. Sales went down, margins went down, overheads rocketed. We went into administration and then liquidation in 2018 with all jobs lost.

My learning from dealing with the PE guys was that they were earnest enough, were happy to throw resource at things when there were problems but simply didn't have the nuance to understand anything which deviated from textbook business.

We were a company which sometimes lived on the margins legally and ethically and where quick decisions were needed from the top to buy or spend or to sack people; but that wasn't well suited to the PE approach. They effectively put a straightjacket on us which made it corporately acceptable but which took away a chunk of what made the business successful and put in place management who never got to grips with a very specific sort of trading.

In Super League I see 12 little businesses like that, but on steroids. At least the company I worked for had rational customers. 

There's no expertise you could deploy that tells you how to run a niche regional sport more effectively. We see this with Elstone tinkering with logos and social media strategies. Yes it's helpful but it's so marginal. You need to understand why people are rugby league fans and why people aren't rugby league fans. You need to deal with emotion and resentment of your product from inside and outside your customer base. 

Ultimately it comes back to the same thing - what would rugby league get from PE involvement, what demands (including extra overhead spend on regular reporting to them) would they have for being involved and what happens when if we as a sport don't deliver what they want? We'd need to be very clear on all that before getting close to going to bed with them.

Cracking post mate.

[Rupert Prince]

41 minutes ago, M j M said:

Company I worked for sold to PE in 2015. We were family owned and were punching the air when we got that deal over the line after putting years of work into it.

We were a decent sized company with 5,000+ employees but with a very lean head office cost base with a lot of the value tied up inside the heads of the management team. 

The PE guys installed new senior management with experience that would have looked appropriate from a quick cv review but was effectively putting guys from Tesco in charge of an over grown market trader. They didn't have a clue how this sort of business really worked. Sales went down, margins went down, overheads rocketed. We went into administration and then liquidation in 2018 with all jobs lost.

My learning from dealing with the PE guys was that they were earnest enough, were happy to throw resource at things when there were problems but simply didn't have the nuance to understand anything which deviated from textbook business.

We were a company which sometimes lived on the margins legally and ethically and where quick decisions were needed from the top to buy or spend or to sack people; but that wasn't well suited to the PE approach. They effectively put a straightjacket on us which made it corporately acceptable but which took away a chunk of what made the business successful and put in place management who never got to grips with a very specific sort of trading.

In Super League I see 12 little businesses like that, but on steroids. At least the company I worked for had rational customers. 

There's no expertise you could deploy that tells you how to run a niche regional sport more effectively. We see this with Elstone tinkering with logos and social media strategies. Yes it's helpful but it's so marginal. You need to understand why people are rugby league fans and why people aren't rugby league fans. You need to deal with emotion and resentment of your product from inside and outside your customer base. 

Ultimately it comes back to the same thing - what would rugby league get from PE involvement, what demands (including extra overhead spend on regular reporting to them) would they have for being involved and what happens when if we as a sport don't deliver what they want? We'd need to be very clear on all that before getting close to going to bed with them.

As an example, Pro14 sold 28%, not a total take over.

But get the investment and expertise from elsewhere.   We need to do it quickly because our little nich is so small now it's going to dissipate altogether soon.  Isn't South Africa going to become the Seven Nations ?  

From the moment RU went professional our game went down hill... or more to the point theirs went higher.  All the Welshman going north stopped, as did they from elsewhere and our players went South. Money will talk and if the RU fraternity become more wealthy then our best players will go.  

Too many Canutes on this board.

[RP London]

1 hour ago, Rupert Prince said:

As an example, Pro14 sold 28%, not a total take over.

But get the investment and expertise from elsewhere.   We need to do it quickly because our little nich is so small now it's going to dissipate altogether soon.  Isn't South Africa going to become the Seven Nations ?  

From the moment RU went professional our game went down hill... or more to the point theirs went higher.  All the Welshman going north stopped, as did they from elsewhere and our players went South. Money will talk and if the RU fraternity become more wealthy then our best players will go.  

Too many Canutes on this board.

Not unless they renege on the agreement they signed early November to stay in the Rugby Championship until 2030. Their 4 clubs sides look likely to sign for the Pro12 to make it the Pro16 though

[ATLANTISMAN]

6 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Growing up Leeds Rhinos were reasonably popular and worked a lot in schools like my primary school. They have certainly been aided by a sort of "lost generation" of Leeds United fans too - though I was not one of them as my parents were fans of both.

That said, football was and still remains far more accessible. It is almost omnipresent and growing up the Fifa games have been a near constant in mine and my generations' lives, increasing that accessibility. It grows in popularity because it is popular. I remember growing up thinking Wigan were the Man United of rugby for me for example. A few more kids were rugby focussed when I moved to Wakefield, but not an overwhelming majority. At my union playing public school, the divide was more stark as plenty of lads preferred union (or claimed to) but didn't have a team they watched regularly - a few watched Huddersfield Giants or Trin on occasion (obviously a lot for Leeds too).

At university it became very prominent as lads I'd grown up with having no interest in club football started to claim they were big Leeds, Sheffield United, Chelsea, Man United etc fans. Tuesday and Wednesday nights watching Champions League football was a massive event in the student union pub. RU had a bit of that feeling from the six nations but otherwise nothing came close. There was an element of social pressure to "have a team" that even penetrated the posh boy cliques.

In that environment its quite easy to just have RL fall off the radar as football is on in the pubs instead in most places on Thursdays and Fridays. I think that is the major concern, that RL easily can slip from prominence by virtue of not being relevant to enough people simply because of the tiny geographical and cultural impetus it (and its locations) has. RL crowds are remarkably diverse in many aspects, but one of the leading ways it is not is the drop off in 18-30 age group. 

I've posted on here before that some of what RL has to offer, say Castleford away, requires a certain maturity and appreciation most teenagers and young adults don't have. There are simply other things to do that seem more appealing. RL suffers a bit from just not being very cool.

At least one positive though, growing up in inner city Leeds, I didn't even know there were two types of rugby till I went to high school!

Total agree we also started to suffer when SKY started to have more channels 15 years ago we would all de-camp to the pub in Chiswick after work and watch a SL match as soon as SKY SPORTS 2/3/4/5 etc started football ruled even a League 1/2 match.

When RL is on TV from places like Castleford and Wakefield where the stadiums look like a toilet its a turn off as well for the casual fan.

 

P 

[Tommygilf]

42 minutes ago, ATLANTISMAN said:

Total agree we also started to suffer when SKY started to have more channels 15 years ago we would all de-camp to the pub in Chiswick after work and watch a SL match as soon as SKY SPORTS 2/3/4/5 etc started football ruled even a League 1/2 match.

When RL is on TV from places like Castleford and Wakefield where the stadiums look like a toilet its a turn off as well for the casual fan.

 

P 

I think that has been exacerbated even more by the move to new channels on Sky with us essentially now being on Sky sports 8.

Its telling that despite being Super League club venues, in the UK, without any ground share arrangements, Super League and Sky didn't show a single game from Cas, Wakefield or Hull KR since the restart (only on OuRLeague) iirc. They're not great visually when full, they're worse empty. Slightly different for Wheldon road in person tbf, but not really relevant with no attendees.