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Selling The Drama


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2 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

It’s not the responsibility of some person producing a list of events coming up on sky, to push RL. If they feel it is of minimal interest or it completely passes them by, why would they include it?

But it does illustrate the lack of profile.

 

Then if the interest isn't there maybe it's time to find somebody else who is willing to search out and indeed create that interest 

It's a 2 way thing , both should be challenging each other 

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2 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

It’s not the responsibility of some person producing a list of events coming up on sky, to push RL. If they feel it is of minimal interest or it completely passes them by, why would they include it?

But it does illustrate the lack of profile.

 

It doesn't really, it shows a poor recruitment policy or poor recruits to the policy or both.

Or it's simply a complete product of this or all three ....

image.png.29d86b409ab0f8d3d51bbf3b79eff5e3.png That's Sky HQ marked on the map and Brentford's in Essex

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1 minute ago, Johnoco said:

Yeah, broadcasters are fighting over the rights to show RL. You can see that by the latest sky offer. 
And generally , broadcasters broadcast popular sports, they generally don’t create them. It’s not up to Sky to generate growth in RL.

Then we truly are stuffed then 🤔

Looks like I'll be watching the football from now on instead 

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1 minute ago, Johnoco said:

It’s not up to Sky to generate growth in RL

But it is their job to create interest in their product which they have no trouble doing for other sports.

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I do wonder that if you have to ask what there is to look forward to, whether the sport is actually for you. Like every year, there is multiple things to look forward to, with this year having the added bonus of a World Cup. It’s just very “Rugby League fan” to question it or claim there isn’t much to look forward to. 

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1 hour ago, Oxford said:

It doesn't really, it shows a poor recruitment policy or poor recruits to the policy or both.

Or it's simply a complete product of this or all three ....

image.png.29d86b409ab0f8d3d51bbf3b79eff5e3.png That's Sky HQ marked on the map and Brentford's in Essex

Brentford is in West London. Brentwood, which I’m guessing you’re getting mixed up with, is in Essex. 

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13 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

I do wonder that if you have to ask what there is to look forward to, whether the sport is actually for you. Like every year, there is multiple things to look forward to, with this year having the added bonus of a World Cup. It’s just very “Rugby League fan” to question it or claim there isn’t much to look forward to. 

Yup. Its sort of my point, the stories are not the issue here. We always have stories and things to talk about. 

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1 hour ago, Oxford said:

But it is their job to create interest in their product which they have no trouble doing for other sports.

Especially if they demand exclusivety , in that scenario they do have a responsibility 

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26 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

Brentford is in West London. Brentwood, which I’m guessing you’re getting mixed up with, is in Essex. 

Yes the muddle between them is confusing, don't you think?

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1 hour ago, Johnoco said:

Right.

and that’s exactly my point. RL is not being talked about or noticed much. Let’s be honest, the only real RL story this year in the mainstream has been the Rob Burrow story - and that’s for tragic reasons.

I think we need to be clear and realistic on what we talk about when we say things like 'mainstream', because tbh not many sports get mainstream coverage if we are talking about the national population. The majority of our sport coverage is tucked away and very easy to ignore for the vast majority of the population. So we need to forget about whether my Mum and Aunty Marg are discussing that last second try in the Grand Final, it isn't realistic, or worth much for them to be doing so. And they certainly won't be discussing the RU Prem or Basketball, or Ice Hockey, or Athletics either. 

If we are talking about the mainstream sports market, then I completely disagree that we only have the Rob Burrow story out there. We had the whole TWP saga being a huge story, we had SBW joining the league, we had Folau being a huge story, Mose Masoe's injury, the whole response to Covid, a classic Cup Final, followed by a historic Grand Final. All of these things (on top of the regular action) are covered by Sky Sports, plus SSNews, Sky News, BBC and BBC News, the Cup Final is probably the most watched club Rugby game in the UK each year, the Grand Final was the 2nd highest in the last decade, higher than the RU Prem, and also covered by BBC with highlights. 

Obviously we would have had the Ashes to look forward to as well. We aren't as invisible as people like to make out - but we don't capitalise on that visibility IMHO. 

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4 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

Especially if they demand exclusivety , in that scenario they do have a responsibility 

Exactly half the money for exclusivity ? And then showing off the rest of their folder.

It's their job to sell the product and it's SL's to hold them to account.

 

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13 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Yup. Its sort of my point, the stories are not the issue here. We always have stories and things to talk about. 

Bingo.

Narratives are the kind of thing you'll find in League Express. Getting people to watch games - for rugby league - would usually involve selling just how exciting rugby league is, even for a casual fan who has no real interest( 

No mention in there about which game is the bigger, which countries are the bigger, just a real drive to the event ...

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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11 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

But your mum and aunty Marg are unlikely to be talking about the Premier League or F1 either so that’s no measure of whether something is relevant or not. I’d use the metric of a pub or workplace. And that’s not very often in my experience. You mention the SBW story as something that generated news, yet what was the RL response to this? To get rid. 
 

Your use of classic and historic is subjective too. Yes they might have been good games but I very much doubt anyone outside the current band of RL fans would remember them or regard them the same way you do. I hate to say it but RL *is* pretty invisible. Look at the ‘shoot the messenger’ response when Eddie Hearn pointed out the fact that nobody could name a star player.....they’d possibly *still* say Offiah today, yet the reaction is ‘shut up Hearn’ rather than addressing the issue. 
 

It doesn’t matter if you have a list as long as your arm of the good things that have happened in RL lately, if people are not going to hear about it it doesn’t really matter. Lists of what you find good/great is extremely unlikely to interest any other people on its own anyway, there has to be a reason for them to get interested. 
 

I hope I’m wrong and the next SL season is massive and gets regular headlines and the players become well known etc etc. I also think the people organising the WC seem to be doing a decent job too but the proof will be in the pudding.

There are two points here. The evidence is that people outside the band of the regular RL audience are being exposed to this. As in actual facts - viewing figures for both finals were some of the highest of the last decade. 

The second point is really what I said about realistic expectations. Could you tell me anything about the RU Prem Grand Final - or anything else about their season? 

Could you tell me who won the Cricket titles this year? Or anything about their club comps? 

We need to be careful about setting unrealistic expectations of SL - it will never be discussed in mainstream circles to any great extent, just like RU club rugby, or Ice Hockey, or county Cricket won't. 

What we can do though is focus. On growing our share of the market, we should be looking to widen our market, increase our income, get more people playing etc, but that doesn't mean we will become a sport that is discussed all over the country - the only club sport that has that in the UK is football.

If we grew our club comp to what RU now has, which is far richer and bigger than ours, guess what? It'd still be a minor comp that is followed by a few hundred thousand across the country. 

I've kept this about club sport as that is what this thread is about, but only international sport will get into any sort of mainstream audience. 

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5 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

I agree with what you say.

But the reality is that RL will never be like that, it doesn't really want to be.

And when I say mainstream, I aren't referring to whether it is featured on the 10 O'clock news, I'm referring to everyday sports fans who might say in the changing room at work, 'did you see game/event X?' blah blah

As Dave , and just about everybody else who's ever thought about this , it boils down to our lack of International profile , how we change that is our proverbial 64,000 $ question 

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6 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

I agree with what you say.

But the reality is that RL will never be like that, it doesn't really want to be.

And when I say mainstream, I aren't referring to whether it is featured on the 10 O'clock news, I'm referring to everyday sports fans who might say in the changing room at work, 'did you see game/event X?' blah blah

I'm not sure I agree it doesn't want to be, I think the only way it can be is through internationals, and it has some real challenges there. Unfortunately we get a bit of hope every 4 years with a world Cup and then hibernate. 

I get the mainstream point, but even that I think is a bit challenging. As I said earlier, the Leeds v Salford Cup Final was probably the most watched club Rugby game in the UK in 2020, and the GF was watched by more than its RU equivalents. Yet people aren't so negative about the state of Club RU. 

And nobody has ever said to me in all my life "did you watch the Exeter RU game yesterday"?. 

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4 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I'm not sure I agree it doesn't want to be, I think the only way it can be is through internationals, and it has some real challenges there. Unfortunately we get a bit of hope every 4 years with a world Cup and then hibernate. 

I get the mainstream point, but even that I think is a bit challenging. As I said earlier, the Leeds v Salford Cup Final was probably the most watched club Rugby game in the UK in 2020, and the GF was watched by more than its RU equivalents. Yet people aren't so negative about the state of Club RU. 

And nobody has ever said to me in all my life "did you watch the Exeter RU game yesterday"?. 

Because they don't base their game exclusively around their club game. It isn't the pinnacle. Like most of football, its for the hardcore fans.

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3 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I'm not sure I agree it doesn't want to be, I think the only way it can be is through internationals, and it has some real challenges there. Unfortunately we get a bit of hope every 4 years with a world Cup and then hibernate. 

I get the mainstream point, but even that I think is a bit challenging. As I said earlier, the Leeds v Salford Cup Final was probably the most watched club Rugby game in the UK in 2020, and the GF was watched by more than its RU equivalents. Yet people aren't so negative about the state of Club RU. 

And nobody has ever said to me in all my life "did you watch the Exeter RU game yesterday"?. 

No if asked at all it has been by people who don't know me, the differences between the two and have always, always, always asked about international ru.

The conclusions you can draw from this data are several and none of them have anything to do with TGG. But mostly the British are an incredibly ill informed bunch who take pride in their ultimate ignorance.

Your point about the WC followed by hibernation has to do with our invisibility which is not entirely of our own making.

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Because they don't base their game exclusively around their club game. It isn't the pinnacle. Like most of football, its for the hardcore fans.

Neither do we. We have an international game which is our pinnacle. We just haven't nailed delivery of it. 

The point is that 'mainstream' awareness is not an effective measure for club sport. Only football has that, and only then at the top end I would say. 

RU has bigger average crowds, more money, bigger sponsors, plus decent clubs in Scotland and Wales and Ireland, yet in general their club comps aren't mainstream events. Far from it. Which is my point, we could grow SL hugely, but it still won't have mass awareness. Its a poor measure. 

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5 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

Nope. 
Mass awareness would be people knowing of the players without knowing much about them. How many people who know who Jonny Wilkinson is, are even aware what a fly half is? They don’t need to though, they just know he’s a rugby player. These people couldn’t name a RL player if you held a gun to their head.

That’s the difference between having a worthy competition that RL fans might enjoy and Joe Bloggs in the street knowing it even exists.

And the reason they know about Johnny Wilkinson ? , No doubt that he played for ........ , Toulon , and eeeeeer , no idea , but wasn't he that bloke who kicked a drop goal for England in that International ? 

We know what the problem is , everybody does , finding an answer is the problem

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