Venue switch - World Cup QF

[Archie Gordon]

11 minutes ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

It was only true in 2013 with dirt cheap tickets. We secured government funding for a Northern tournament, it makes sense to hold most games in Rugby League stadiums if the World Cup is to have a positive longer term legacy. Some of the worst attendances from the 2000 tournament were outside the heartlands.

New Zealand v Lebanon Gloucester 2500

New Zealand v Cook Islands Reading 4000

QF Australia v Samoa Watford 5400

This is my issue. I too can quote rubbish crowds from 2000 at Hull, Cas, Saints, Huddersfield, Widnes.

 

[Dave T]

1 minute ago, Archie Gordon said:

This is my issue. I too can quote rubbish crowds from 2000 at Hull, Cas, Saints, Huddersfield, Widnes.

 

But we learnt from that tournament and reined it in for 2013 and it was better. Now we need to learn again and be better this time. There are no games in these areas with poor crowds, suggesting they have learnt. 

[Archie Gordon]

Just now, Dave T said:

But we learnt from that tournament and reined it in for 2013 and it was better. Now we need to learn again and be better this time. There are no games in these areas with poor crowds, suggesting they have learnt. 

But what did we learn?

[Dave T]

6 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

But what did we learn?

Using too many grounds, spreading ourselves too thin and going to random towns without a footprint is often a waste of time with poor returns. 

There is an argument that they have concentrated the fixtures too much this time, but the above learning was from the mouth of Sally Bolton following 2013.

[Archie Gordon]

1 minute ago, Dave T said:

Using too many grounds, spreading ourselves too thin and going to random towns without a footprint is often a waste of time with poor returns. 

There is an argument that they have concentrated the fixtures too much this time, but the above learning was from the mouth of Sally Bolton following 2013.

Too many grounds? No counterfactual and so impossible to learn anything.

The random grounds also did as well (badly) as the traditional grounds. There was no regional variation in 2000 - or in 2013.

Whatever the lessons learned from 2000, they had nothing to do with the venues. They couldn't have because the data didn't support the claims made.

 

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

Too many grounds? No counterfactual and so impossible to learn anything.

The random grounds also did as well (badly) as the traditional grounds. There was no regional variation in 2000 - or in 2013.

Whatever the lessons learned from 2000, they had nothing to do with the venues. They couldn't have because the data didn't support the claims made.

 

I'm not interested in 2000. It was a disaster of a World Cup with the main learning to be to do almost everything differently. 

2013 was a successful tournament and any improvement on that would lead to a successful version this year. 

I'm not sure what data you refer to tbh. 

Bolton's point was that we used too many grounds in 2013, more than most other tournaments, she highlighted football tournaments that stage multiple games at each ground.

An example. In 2013, Saints delivered a good crowd, yet all the promotion from the host town and effort and ready-made crowd you had there was worth only 14.1k fans as they had only one game. By moving two games from say, Wrexham and Neath you are likely to move your cumulative crowd from 25k in 2013 to c45k in 2022, and reduce the costs of staging across three venues. 

In 2013 we had 21 venues for 26 events.

In 2022 we are going to 18 venues for 31 events. 

The Uefa Euros for comparison used 11 venues for 51 events. 

The Japan RUWC used 12 venues for 45 games. 

 

[Archie Gordon]

5 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I'm not interested in 2000. 

...

Ok, you've lost me.

We were talking about 2000.

[Damien]

2000 was 22 years ago, the game was in a vastly different place back then. It was a failure for a whole host of reasons ranging from poor planning and poor promotion to atrocious weather and train strikes. Some of the venues may not have helped but they were far from the biggest problems. Crowds for England matches at St Helens and Australia and Hull were 5K and 3k respectively so the heartland crowds were as bad. 2000 was just a disaster all round, to the extent that the World Cup was binned for 8 years. As such I think it should be treated as such and few lessons can be learned by focusing on isolated parts of it.

The World Cup has grown immensely since then and we have had very good World Cups in 2008 and 2013, that each lifted the bar on what we had seen before. 2008 revitalised the World Cup concept and the Aussies did a great job. 2013 took that on and raised it another level. 2017 was also good, mainly due to games in PNG and the rise of Tonga and their crowds, but a bit of a wasted opportunity due to the indifference of the Aussies and we didn't see the same growth as we had in the two previous World Cups.

We should be looking to build with each World Cup and looking at isolated parts of previous World Cups from two decades ago doesn't really prove or disprove anything in my opinion. Far more relevant are lessons from 2013 and 2017 and undoubtedly for me the key is getting the investment, marketing and promotion right. If no one knows about it and there is no buzz and must see feeling then the rest becomes irrelevant. The 2021 RLWC team were doing a damn fine job on that front before the cancellation and there is still 6 months to get that back.

[Dave T]

33 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

Ok, you've lost me.

We were talking about 2000.

All my posts were about 2013. SKS discussed 2000.

[Dave T]

I'm not sure why you are confused @Archie Gordon.

2000 is not relevant any more. It was a disaster. But we moved on from that and have staged three better tournaments since then. The new benchmark is 2013, that is the baseline that we need to improve on. 

My last post on this is perfectly relevant.

1. Sally Bolton highlighted the challenges around number of grounds meaning we spread ourselves too thinly with our limited resources - we have adjusted our schedule and reduced the number of venues and geographical spread despite more games. 

2. We also saw that the more experimental venues like Neath, Cork and Bristol delivering lower crowds (although Bristol was a good crowd relatively speaking). We've trimmed those out this time. 

3. Heartlands delivered the crowds. Hudds, Hull, Wire, Wigan, Saints, Leeds - crowds showed up. These have even more this time. 

4. Marquee events in big grounds. We've continued this. Newcastle is likely to be bigger than Cardiff, Arsenal is the marquee London game and the two semis should exceed Wembley's amazing crowd, and hopefully Old Trafford sells put again. 

So in general we have shown we have learnt from some of the things that weren't great in 2013. There is a real risk we have gone too far (4 at Wire is a lot for example), and the pricing is a huge increase from 2013, but the proof will be in the pudding. 

[fieldofclothofgold]

Wigan is nearby