Attendances (Multiple Merged Threads)

[Eddie]

15 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Except that rugby league is a national sport. International, even. There's a World Cup this year and everything.

Hull, Newcastle, Toulouse and Whitehaven aren't in the same region, however much you need them to be to make your point.

We do well, sometimes. Could do better, most of the time. 

Even for the sake of a debate on an Internet forum I don’t know how Rugby League could be defined as a national sport in the UK. It is a regional sport (parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria) with a handful of outposts dotted around the rest of the country. 

[gingerjon]

1 minute ago, Eddie said:

Even for the sake of a debate on an Internet forum I don’t know how Rugby League could be defined as a national sport in the UK. It is a regional sport (parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria) with a handful of outposts dotted around the rest of the country. 

How many regions do you need to have before you become national?

Whitehaven is not in the same region as Sheffield.

How many outposts before you accept that the game is played in multiple locations around England and Wales?

(Granted, not as many as 20 years ago but then that's because we've had too many people in charge who want the game to be a regional oddity).

[gingerjon]

13 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

In terms of profile, tv value and attendances, I tend to liken RL to Scottish football (without the behemoths of Celtic and Rangers on the attendances side).

That is pretty alright, but we should be targeting a far larger (potential) fanbase than Scottish football to capitalise on.

We've compared RL to Scottish football quite a bit on this forum - not least in the similarities in both sports' ability to not have clear leadership when three committees can fudge the job instead.

[Wanderer]

15 hours ago, Jill Halfpenny fan said:

Not official but seen 3,442 mentioned as the Widnes v Barrow game.

 

 

 

Good effort. The next home game is v. Leigh on Good Friday so hopefully will be pushing towards 6,000.

Looking at the Widnes website seems like hospitality packages in the South Stand are selling well too for this game. Not sure who gets the benefit of this though - the club or the council. Anyway, onwards & upwards...

[Eddie]

38 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

How many regions do you need to have before you become national?

Whitehaven is not in the same region as Sheffield.

How many outposts before you accept that the game is played in multiple locations around England and Wales?

(Granted, not as many as 20 years ago but then that's because we've had too many people in charge who want the game to be a regional oddity).

Regional doesn’t mean one region, the game is popular in a number of small regions that are dwarfed by the rest of the UK. Namely west Cumbria, West Yorkshire, Hull and a small part of Lancashire / north Cheshire in between  Manchester and Liverpool. That is regional in my opinion, if you disagree that’s fine. 

[Tubby]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

How many regions do you need to have before you become national?

Whitehaven is not in the same region as Sheffield.

How many outposts before you accept that the game is played in multiple locations around England and Wales?

(Granted, not as many as 20 years ago but then that's because we've had too many people in charge who want the game to be a regional oddity).

I'd say considerably more than we have now. And outposts are a start, but truly national sports have geographical coverage far far greater than we have.  Look at a map of england and draw lines around our coverage.  I'm not trying to talk the sport down, but being realistic.

[Moove]

11 hours ago, Josef K said:

This news has surprised me i didn’t think there would only be 350 tickets left in the West Stand. I’ll have to get there earlyish so i can mingle with the drunkards and the other undesirables.
I speak to people who say “no wonder fan’s are turning away from the game”, but the gates in the top tier have held up quite well so far. Some RL fans just love sticking the boot in to the game, a lot of them would love the game to completely fold and then they can say to everyone “TOLD YOU THE GAME WAS DEAD”. But then if it did they’d have nothing to watch or moan about. 

Saints have said those 350 have all sold this morning. Even more drunkards and undesirables for you to mingle with 

With fewer season ticket holders than pre-covid there must be more people paying full whack than normal... kerching kerching £££££! Lovely stuff.

[Eddie]

13 minutes ago, Moove said:

Saints have said those 350 have all sold this morning. Even more drunkards and undesirables for you to mingle with 

With fewer season ticket holders than pre-covid there must be more people paying full whack than normal... kerching kerching £££££! Lovely stuff.

Excellent, should be a great spectacle for us watching on TV, I hope Wire turn up and give us a good game. 

[Tommygilf]

Going to be busy in Leeds tonight. LUFC and Rhinos at home - suspect that with it being yet another Thursday game Rhinos home attendance will dip.

[Eddie]

10 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Going to be busy in Leeds tonight. LUFC and Rhinos at home - suspect that with it being yet another Thursday game Rhinos home attendance will dip.

Why are there premier league games tonight? Norwich are at home too, I can’t remember us ever playing a league game on a Thursday before.  Shame for the Rhinos though as you say. 

[Tommygilf]

10 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Why are there premier league games tonight? Norwich are at home too, I can’t remember us ever playing a league game on a Thursday before.  Shame for the Rhinos though as you say. 

Think its to allow for the space in the calendar for the winter break teams have. Possibly also some rescheduled matches?

[Barley Mow]

4 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Think its to allow for the space in the calendar for the winter break teams have. Possibly also some rescheduled matches?

The Leeds Utd fixture is rearranged from December when there was that group of Premier League fixtures cancelled because of COVID cases.

[Tommygilf]

3 minutes ago, Barley Mow said:

The Leeds Utd fixture is rearranged from December when there was that group of Premier League fixtures cancelled because of COVID cases.

I thought that was the game we played against them a month or so ago at Villa park tbh.

[Barley Mow]

5 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I thought that was the game we played against them a month or so ago at Villa park tbh.

https://www.leedsunited.com/news/team-news/29506/aston-villa-norwich-city-matches-rearranged

It's a shame there isn't more coordination between the clubs/sports in cases like this. Other major cities have 2 association football teams who would be unable to play at home on the same day. The second club in Leeds just happens to play a different code, so they end up playing on the same night.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Barley Mow

[Scubby]

1 hour ago, Moove said:

Saints have said those 350 have all sold this morning. Even more drunkards and undesirables for you to mingle with 

With fewer season ticket holders than pre-covid there must be more people paying full whack than normal... kerching kerching £££££! Lovely stuff.

Amazing effort from Saints looks like they will get 17,000-17,500 for this.

Such a shame Saints didn't build a 12k stadium as it would look good on TV every week? 

[Scubby]

4 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:

Good job for Bradford there is already a 25k stadium that exists in the city then. 

Yep it makes complete financial sense to play your attractive fixtures away from your purpose built stadium - giving up hospitality and concession revenues and paying money to a football club.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Scubby

[Eddie]

8 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:

Good job for Bradford there is already a 25k stadium that exists in the city then. 

Do you also think Leeds should downsize Headingley to 11,000 so it looks packed on tv, and play any big games at Elland Road? 

[Tommygilf]

13 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Do you also think Leeds should downsize Headingley to 11,000 so it looks packed on tv, and play any big games at Elland Road? 

In fairness, I do think if we are playing loop fixtures, then 1 of those games should be a "big game" event. Say Leeds vs Cas at Elland Road or Wigan v Saints at the Etihad or something like that.

If anything it will force clubs to up their efforts. The Rhinos games at ER during the rebuild were really good too.

[Eddie]

3 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

In fairness, I do think if we are playing loop fixtures, then 1 of those games should be a "big game" event. Say Leeds vs Cas at Elland Road or Wigan v Saints at the Etihad or something like that.

If anything it will force clubs to up their efforts. The Rhinos games at ER during the rebuild were really good too.

Did you get bigger crowds at Elland Road than you would have if those games had been at Headingley?

Agreed if we have to have loop fixtures it would be good if each team has to take one game on the road each year, like the Barcelona game a few years ago. There could also be double headers; a Saints v Wigan and Leeds v Hull double header in Amsterdam or Prague would be superb.

 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Eddie

[Scubby]

1 minute ago, Tommygilf said:

In fairness, I do think if we are playing loop fixtures, then 1 of those games should be a "big game" event. Say Leeds vs Cas at Elland Road or Wigan v Saints at the Etihad or something like that.

If anything it will force clubs to up their efforts. The Rhinos games at ER during the rebuild were really good too.

Loop fixtures are a whole new ball game and thread of their own. They arguably have a counter effect on attendance growth.

[Tommygilf]

2 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Did you get bigger crowds at Elland Road than you would have if those games had been at Headingley?

Agreed if we have to have loop fixtures it would be good if each team has to take one game on the road each year, like the Barcelona game a few years ago. There could also be double headers; a Saints v Wigan and Leeds v Hull double header in Amsterdam or Prague would be superb.

I believe we did yes, even the construction capacity limitation aside.

Just checked: over 23,200 for Cas and couldn't find the KR crowd. The Cas crowd wouldn't fit inside Headingley now.

[Tommygilf]

6 minutes ago, Scubby said:

Loop fixtures are a whole new ball game and thread of their own. They arguably have a counter effect on attendance growth.

Indeed, which is why if we are to have them, some of them should be made into something.

[Jill Halfpenny fan]

For the statto's out there the official Widnes/Barrow attendance was 3,422

[Scubby]

2 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Indeed, which is why if we are to have them, some of them should be made into something.

The only loop fixtures should be magic. 

[Eddie]

6 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I believe we did yes, even the construction capacity limitation aside.

Just checked: over 23,200 for Cas and couldn't find the KR crowd. The Cas crowd wouldn't fit inside Headingley now.

Incredible isn’t it, that circa 10k more people would go because it was at Elland Rd. Cas must have taken more away fans for the occasion too.