Hearns should take over RL- look now!

[Eddie]

16 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

I still think most people would struggle to name three active darts players or tell you who the current world champion is.

Which is normally the starting point for lambasting RL.

Eric Bristow is probably still well more known than Phil Taylor, if you take the UK population as a whole. 

[westlondonfan]

I have no doubt that the Hearns are very good at what they do but can’t the leaders of RL in the northern hemisphere get together and work out the answers for themselves?

The problem to me is there is no consistent long term plan . We start one thing then drop it soon after. Four Nations, Celtic Crusaders , Toronto Wolfpack , licensing, promotion and relegation, the list goes on…

[whatmichaelsays]

38 minutes ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

costs money to properly market an event, and unfortunately at the minute the RFL ain't got none !

This comes at it from the wrong perspective. It's not a cost, it's an investment and like all investments, you do your research, take on the right advice, and make the decision that you think will yield the right return. 

If the sport is so confident in the quality of its product, why isn't it prepared to make that investment? Why would we want to palm of the risk onto the Hearns, or anyone else? Doesn't that show a lack of confidence in the product? 

There's a lot of chatter online about the Man of Steel awards last night and when you look at that, you see that the sport is just gripped by "that'll do-ism". There's no concept of image, of how things are perceived and little-to-no appreciation of experience in so much of what the sport does. Even if the RFL/SL didn't want to have an in-person event for their awards, we can do a lot better than Brian Carney on a Zoom call in his back bedroom. 

The problem I keep coming to with RL is that the challenge of what is needed seems insurmountably expensive because, for much of the 23 years we've had the Grand Final, everything has been done to the lowest possible cost, and measured against short-term metrics. There's no sense of long-term planning to build the Grand Final, the pinnacle of our sport, played on a weekend with no top-flight football, into the hottest ticket in town. My view is this comes down to the background of so many senior figures in the game. We're a game run by accountants, lawyers and salesmen, not people with experience of the entertainment industry.

Being cheap today makes the problem more expensive tomorrow - and the sport has multiplied that issue for the thick end of two decades. 

[Scubby]

4 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

This comes at it from the wrong perspective. It's not a cost, it's an investment and like all investments, you do your research, take on the right advice, and make the decision that you think will yield the right return. 

If the sport is so confident in the quality of its product, why isn't it prepared to make that investment? Why would we want to palm of the risk onto the Hearns, or anyone else? Doesn't that show a lack of confidence in the product? 

There's a lot of chatter online about the Man of Steel awards last night and when you look at that, you see that the sport is just gripped by "that'll do-ism". There's no concept of image, of how things are perceived and no sense of experience in so much of what the sport does. Even if the RFL/SL didn't want to have an in-person event for their awards, we can do a lot better than Brian Carney on a Zoom call in his back bedroom. 

The problem I keep coming to with RL is that the challenge of what is needed seems insurmountably expensive because, for much of the 23 years we've had the Grand Final, everything has been done to the lowest possible cost, and measured against short-term metrics. There's no sense of long-term planning to build the Grand Final, the pinnacle of our sport, played on a weekend with no top-flight football, into the hottest ticket in town. Being cheap today makes the problem more expensive tomorrow - and the sport has multiplied that issue for the thick end of two decades. 

What Michael says..

[Vambo]

2 hours ago, zorquif said:

Of course it did...

Yep right down the front as well and live on Sky. It was now't to do with me though... I was up in the balcony.

There was plenty of Burnley and Rovers rivalry going on that evening in the very raucous crowd so that might have had something to do with it.

 

[DavidM]

49 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

I still think most people would struggle to name three active darts players or tell you who the current world champion is.

Which is normally the starting point for lambasting RL.

Gerwyn Price and I reckon Price , MVG , Snakebite Wright

[gingerjon]

16 minutes ago, DavidM said:

Gerwyn Price and I reckon Price , MVG , Snakebite Wright

I reckon you'd get more people going, "Y'know, the one who looks like Uncle Fester" than getting MVG's name right but it probably would be those three, if any.

[DavidM]

1 minute ago, gingerjon said:

I reckon you'd get more people going, "Y'know, the one who looks like Uncle Fester" than getting MVG's name right but it probably would be those three, if any.

I’m just glad you didn’t go on snooker…

[Josef K]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

I still think most people would struggle to name three active darts players or tell you who the current world champion is.

Which is normally the starting point for lambasting RL.

The only two darts player’s i know alive or dead are Griff Rhys Jones & Mel Smith. 

[Maximus Decimus]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

In what way? 

There were huge swathes of tickets in every section that was available, which were all lower tier.

[Maximus Decimus]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

I still think most people would struggle to name three active darts players or tell you who the current world champion is.

Which is normally the starting point for lambasting RL.

As someone who has recently got into darts after watching none for 20 years, I can still remember what I knew.

I knew of MVG, Peter Wright and a couple of older darts players like Barney.

However, darts is obviously a sport with a ceiling. It's never going to challenge Football etc but it does remarkably well for what is effectively a pub game. It's the second most watched sport on Sky and the Darts final gets more than double the number of viewers of any RL game I've ever seen on Sky.

[Rugbyleaguesupporter]

3 hours ago, Dave T said:

Isn't that the RL way though. Ignore the positives... 

Yes- that's why I set the thread up. 

Grand final I think will be around 40k- not a disaster given circumstances. 

But expectant knee jerk will be give it to Hearns- but i think they'd struggle and as you can see by darts last night it's not all roses their end. 

[iffleyox]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

I reckon you'd get more people going, "Y'know, the one who looks like Uncle Fester" than getting MVG's name right but it probably would be those three, if any.

Fallon Sherrock has cut through to people who've never even watched darts - don't underestimate the power of 'woman in a man's world' angled news coverage.

[gingerjon]

5 minutes ago, iffleyox said:

Fallon Sherrock has cut through to people who've never even watched darts - don't underestimate the power of 'woman in a man's world' angled news coverage.

Right now, I think she's at the, "That woman, you know the one I mean, glasses ..." stage but she could easily be the next one to get some kind of wider recognition.

[Eddie]

2 hours ago, Maximus Decimus said:

As someone who has recently got into darts after watching none for 20 years, I can still remember what I knew.

I knew of MVG, Peter Wright and a couple of older darts players like Barney.

However, darts is obviously a sport with a ceiling. It's never going to challenge Football etc but it does remarkably well for what is effectively a pub game. It's the second most watched sport on Sky and the Darts final gets more than double the number of viewers of any RL game I've ever seen on Sky.

Partly because it’s played all over the UK, and not just on a small area with > 10% of the population. 

[Dave T]

2 hours ago, Rugbyleaguesupporter said:

Yes- that's why I set the thread up. 

Grand final I think will be around 40k- not a disaster given circumstances. 

But expectant knee jerk will be give it to Hearns- but i think they'd struggle and as you can see by darts last night it's not all roses their end. 

I do think 40k would be as close to a disaster as you could get, although people should be more fogiving of empty seats this year. But we normally get 64-70k and to lose 24k off that isn't just explained by Catalans' presence. I think we should be aiming for a minimum of 50k as OK. 

[Martyn Sadler]

Unfortunately, and unless I'm mistaken, there is very little noise in the media generally about Saturday's Grand Final, even though it will be a historic occasion.

What I would suggest is that Rugby League needs a team of people whose sole function throughout the year is to sell out big games, including the Challenge Cup Final , the Magic Weekend and the Grand Final, with no other responsibilities impinging on those duties.

The Hearns are great at promoting the sports they are involved with, and there are some elements of what they do that wouldn't be difficult to adapt, but all those sports involve individual sportsmen or women and there are a limited number of them each year. I don't think their formula is easily transferable to a team sport.

The organisation that we should look at more closely is the NFL, who have two games over the next two weekends at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and both are sold out, save for a few individual seats dotted around the stadium. The seat prices look ridiculously high by Rugby League standards.

Rugby League audiences on Sky exceed those for NFL, as far as i'm aware, but when it comes to selling games, we are way behind in their slipstream.

Unless and until we arrive at a situation in which marketing the game is seen as even more important than the game on the field, then I'm afraid we will continue to be sport's poor relation in this country.

At the moment we don't seem to be making progress.

[whatmichaelsays]

30 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

What I would suggest is that Rugby League needs a team of people whose sole function throughout the year is to sell out big games, including the Challenge Cup Final , the Magic Weekend and the Grand Final,

It does. Both the RFL and SLE have a marketing team. 

The problem is that those teams are under-resourced and lacking the direction from a senior leadership team that either doesn't know, or can't agree, on who they actually want to attract to this sport, what those audiences want, and what it takes to deliver them.

That's what the NFL did. It identified an audience that it wanted to attract, spent year after year trying to build relevance and salience with those audiences and, when it came to hosting events at Wembley, the audience was already there, knowing exactly who the teams were, who the superstars are and what the whole "NFL experience" was about, credit cards in hand. The NFL didn't just show up one day with a big advertising budget saying "look at us!" and that's why you need to be careful not to confuse marketing with advertising, because RL can't advertise it's way out of these problems. 

You might call this year's Grand Final an historic occasion, but that doesn't mean that it's relevant. 

[Rugbyleaguesupporter]

@Martyn Sadlerbig issue is NFL have 2 games to sell. 

I've not looked but I'm presuming from what you say they've sold around 55k tickets 

Considering close to 55k people every week go to RL, it's very different. 

[Martyn Sadler]

1 hour ago, whatmichaelsays said:

It does. Both the RFL and SLE have a marketing team. 

They do, but they appear to have a wider brief than just marketing the season's biggest games. Their briefs are more general than that.

And their marketing teams are too small and limited for the task in hand.

[Martyn Sadler]

7 minutes ago, Rugbyleaguesupporter said:

@Martyn Sadlerbig issue is NFL have 2 games to sell. 

I've not looked but I'm presuming from what you say they've sold around 55k tickets 

Considering close to 55k people every week go to RL, it's very different. 

The NFL has two games to sell.

Rugby League has three big events to sell.

If the game invested its money wisely it wouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle to fill those stadiums.                                                

[GUBRATS]

7 hours ago, DavidM said:

Gerwyn Price and I reckon Price , MVG , Snakebite Wright

Who ? 

Now if it was Eric ,John ,Jocky and him in the fancy shirts

Bobby ,that's him Bobby George

[DavidM]

17 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

Who ? 

Now if it was Eric ,John ,Jocky and him in the fancy shirts

Bobby ,that's him Bobby George

All while drinking a pint and holding a fag 

[graveyard johnny]

darts is an easy watch - for some reason our game is tying its self up with technicalities lately - stop start - nit picking - going over and over rules this and that interpretations of rules old and new - we have become like ru with this trend - it was never like that when the game was great - its a turn off in that respect - people know what they are getting with darts no matter who the promoters are 

[Scubby]

Tommy Hearns would be better promoting the game than Wreck it Ralph.