Wimbledon - Sally Bolton

[dealwithit]

Proudly watching Ash Barty win Wimbledon and I notice Sally Bolton on my TV.
I knew she became the CEO back in 2019, but all I could think about was the amazing job she did for the 2013 RLWC. It goes to show that when the sport can attract quality administrators, we get quality output and a strong financial result. 

My question for you all, who else has rugby league been fortunate to have from an administration perspective?

I know he divided people, but Richard Lewis was outstanding IMO and I wish he stayed for longer. 

[M j M]

25 minutes ago, dealwithit said:

I know he divided people, but Richard Lewis was outstanding IMO and I wish he stayed for longer. 

The guy that brought in the Stobart deal.

Meanwhile who was the actual Tournament Director of the 2013 World Cup?

[Damien]

I think people forget that Sally Bolton was around RL for far longer than the 2013 World Cup with little to show for it. Sacrilege on here I know. 

I think the 2013, and 2021, World Cups show that a lot can be achieved when you think big and devote resources to being successful. That to me is more important than who is the administrator, for much of the time anyway.

[The Future is League]

1 hour ago, M j M said:

The guy that brought in the Stobart deal.

Meanwhile who was the actual Tournament Director of the 2013 World Cup?

I thought it was Big Nige who brought in the Stobart deal, but i bow to your superior knowledge. Anyway who ever brought it in the whole thing was a total disaster and a total embarrassment for our game and didn't bring in single penny to the game.

[The Future is League]

1 hour ago, dealwithit said:

Proudly watching Ash Barty win Wimbledon and I notice Sally Bolton on my TV.
I knew she became the CEO back in 2019, but all I could think about was the amazing job she did for the 2013 RLWC. It goes to show that when the sport can attract quality administrators, we get quality output and a strong financial result. 

My question for you all, who else has rugby league been fortunate to have from an administration perspective?

I know he divided people, but Richard Lewis was outstanding IMO and I wish he stayed for longer. 

Sally Bolton has been ridiculed on here for offering cheap world cup tickets and cheap sponsorship deals to firms at the 2013 world cup.

I just thought we was a stepping stone for Richard Lewis to get back into tennis which he has done

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, The Future is League said:

I thought it was Big Nige who brought in the Stobart deal, but i bow to your superior knowledge. Anyway who ever brought it in the whole thing was a total disaster and a total embarrassment for our game and didn't bring in single penny to the game.

The strange thing that got me about that deal was the ' strapline ' , " it's all about following your local team " , which was then displayed on trucks the length and breadth of the country , so in 95% of the country without a ' local ' team

[The Future is League]

2 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

The strange thing that got me about that deal was the ' strapline ' , " it's all about following your local team " , which was then displayed on trucks the length and breadth of the country , so in 95% of the country without a ' local ' team

Indeed. A deal that didn't bring a single penny to the game or a single new fan

[ATLANTISMAN]

As I said earlier another Champagne socialist sports administrator

[JohnM]

23 minutes ago, The Future is League said:

Indeed. A deal that didn't bring a single penny to the game or a single new fan

How do you know, though?. How do you measure something like that? 

[The Future is League]

7 minutes ago, JohnM said:

How do you know, though?. How do you measure something like that? 

I'm sure if it brought money into the game we would have heard about it and the contract renewed. That it wasn't in either case which supports my point

[M j M]

48 minutes ago, The Future is League said:

I thought it was Big Nige who brought in the Stobart deal, but i bow to your superior knowledge. Anyway who ever brought it in the whole thing was a total disaster and a total embarrassment for our game and didn't bring in single penny to the game.

The Stobart deal was controversial from the start... only the strong support of the RFL chairman, Richard Lewis, persuading a small majority of them to vote for it ahead of an alternative offer from Betfair

 

[M j M]

50 minutes ago, The Future is League said:

I thought it was Big Nige who brought in the Stobart deal, but i bow to your superior knowledge. Anyway who ever brought it in the whole thing was a total disaster and a total embarrassment for our game and didn't bring in single penny to the game.

Your post, unwittingly probably, does highlight a remarkable trend in recent times of ascribing everything unfortunate that has happened in Rugby League over the past 20 years to Nigel Wood and praising people like Bolton and Lewis for things Wood actually did. But having a single pantomime villain somehow makes things easier I think.

[Johnoco]

The WC semi final at Wembley in 2013 had a considerable amount of southerners there. It’s not her fault that it wasn’t followed up and capitalised on. Of course now you can say ‘what did she do anyway?’ but the opportunity was there after the 2013WC

[Futtocks]

5 minutes ago, M j M said:

The Stobart deal was controversial from the start... only the strong support of the RFL chairman, Richard Lewis, persuading a small majority of them to vote for it ahead of an alternative offer from Betfair

Betfair offered £20k. Not £20k per club, or even £20k per annum. Just a one-off payment of £20k for the game as a whole; an amount that would have been frittered away within a seconds of the multi-year deal commencing.

Mobile billboards on every motorway and major road in the country would probably have cost at least that for just a month or two.

Both deals were pitiful, but if that's all the game could attract back then, I'm not convinced the wrong decision was made.

[GUBRATS]

6 minutes ago, Futtocks said:

Betfair offered £20k. Not £20k per club, or even £20k per annum. Just a one-off payment of £20k for the game as a whole; an amount that would have been frittered away within a seconds of the multi-year deal commencing.

Mobile billboards on every motorway and major road in the country would probably have cost at least that for just a month or two.

Both deals were pitiful, but if that's all the game could attract back then, I'm not convinced the wrong decision was made.

At the time I was not too critical of the deal , as you say , a billboard countrywide would have had considerable cost , which is why I was so surprised with that strapline , to go with a local ' message ' when your doing a nationwide ' campaign ' just seems stupid , surely they could have actually come up with something better which would have been more relevant to essentially pushing SKYs coverage of the sport 

[The Future is League]

25 minutes ago, M j M said:

Your post, unwittingly probably, does highlight a remarkable trend in recent times of ascribing everything unfortunate that has happened in Rugby League over the past 20 years to Nigel Wood and praising people like Bolton and Lewis for things Wood actually did. But having a single pantomime villain somehow makes things easier I think.

Where did i praise Lewis and Bolton?

[Futtocks]

3 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

At the time I was not too critical of the deal , as you say , a billboard countrywide would have had considerable cost , which is why I was so surprised with that strapline , to go with a local ' message ' when your doing a nationwide ' campaign ' just seems stupid , surely they could have actually come up with something better which would have been more relevant to essentially pushing SKYs coverage of the sport 

They took the message nationwide, which is what the game needed then and needs now. If they'd stuck to the "local" theme of the strapline, it would have been even more ineffective.

Anyway, that was then and let's hope we never end up back there.

[The Future is League]

33 minutes ago, M j M said:

The Stobart deal was controversial from the start... only the strong support of the RFL chairman, Richard Lewis, persuading a small majority of them to vote for it ahead of an alternative offer from Betfair

 

I did say i bow to your superior knowledge on the matter didn't i?

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Futtocks said:

They took the message nationwide, which is what the game needed then and needs now. If they'd stuck to the "local" theme of the strapline, it would have been even more ineffective.

Anyway, that was then and let's hope we never end up back there.

That's what I'm saying , which came first , the strapline ( in which case it should have been a local campaign , with localised trucks in the areas we have teams ) , or the idea of having a nationwide campaign of mobile billboards ( which is what it was as I saw them all over the country ) ? , As it was the latter surely they should have realised the message was all wrong and indeed pointless , doubtful somebody in Milton Keynes would be looking out for Widnes as following their local team

[Padge]

Isn't rugby league played in every English county and a few in Scotland and Wales.

So local is relevant wherever you are.

As a game we underestimate the power of advertising, always have and it appears we always will.

TV contracts usually come as (made up numbers but I hope you get the drift), here is £20m/year, you can have it all in cash or you can split it as £18m cash and £2m as publicity, i.e. advertising etc. RL always goes for give us the cash. Then everyone complains we don't get a mention in the plugs/adverts for up and coming events.

 

Edited July 10, 2021 by Padge

[M j M]

1 hour ago, The Future is League said:

Where did i praise Lewis and Bolton?

I don't believe I claimed you had.

[The Future is League]

1 minute ago, M j M said:

I don't believe I claimed you had.

Check your post i was replying to

[JohnM]

13 hours ago, The Future is League said:

I'm sure if it brought money into the game we would have heard about it and the contract renewed. That it wasn't in either case which supports my point

That doesn't answer the question though, in my view. Lots of this sort of stuff goes on in all sorts of enterprises as part of the marketing mix. 

Over 100 years ago, John Wanamaker reportedly said "50 % of marketing is wasted - but nobody knows which 50%." 

Im sure that there are markeing professionals on here who can give chapter and verse on the measurement of the effectiveness of campaigns, especially digital campaigns. They'd also say, I'm fairly certain, that in the very complex marketing mix in RL, it's next to impossible to pin down the effectiveness of an individual element - or at least very expensive, time consuming and not that accurate. I'd hazard a guess (and yes, a guess) that a large number of the businesses (e.g F. Bloggs, your local timber merchant) that advertise around our stadiums have no idea if their placards bring in any business, nor do they care. They do it to support the game. Move up a scale and I recall the boss of Stobart at the time being linked in some way to Widnes. It's a very different Stobart now. 

Of course, it may be that the RFL, its marketing agency, and Stobart and their agency will have done their best to measure the effectiveness using a number of techniques... or maybe not. 

Edited July 11, 2021 by JohnM

[The Future is League]

6 minutes ago, JohnM said:

That doesn't answer the question though, in my view. Lots of this sort of stuff goes on in all sorts of enterprises as part of the marketing mix. 

Over 100 years ago, John Wanamaker reportedly said "50 % of marketing is wasted - but nobody knows which 50%." 

Im sure that there are markeing professionals on here who can give chapter and verse on the measurement of the effectiveness of campaigns, especially digital campaigns. They'd also say, I'm fairly certain, that in the very complex marketing mix in RL, it's next to impossible to pin down the effectiveness of an individual element - or at least very expensive, time consuming and not that accurate. I'd hazard a guess (and yes, a guess) that a large number of the businesses (e.g F. Bloggs, your local timber merchant) that advertise around our stadiums have no idea if their placards bring in any business, nor do they care. They do it to support the game. Move up a scale and I recall the boss of Stobart at the time being linked in some way to Widnes. It's a very different Stobart now. 

Of course, it may be that the RFL, its marketing agency, and Stobart and their agency will have done their best to measure the effectiveness using a number of techniques... or maybe not. 

I still maintain rightly or wrongly that if the deal had brought money into the game we would have heard about it and renewed the contract

[GUBRATS]

49 minutes ago, The Future is League said:

I still maintain rightly or wrongly that if the deal had brought money into the game we would have heard about it and renewed the contract

The only way the Stobart deal would have brought money into the game was via viewing figures on SKY , if they saw more people tuning in nationwide then it could be seen as a success