RLWC Attendance-O-Meter

[Big Picture]

2 minutes ago, Jim from Oz said:

So with 6 out of 8 games of week 2 completed, we are tracking at about 65,000 - 70,000 for the week.

If week 3 also gets 70,000, that will be approx. 235,000 after the group games.

If we take a reasonably optimistic prospect of 225,000 for the Q/Fs onwards, we are tracking at JUST hitting the 2013 RLWC target of 458,483.

However, the total possible ticket sales for the Q/Fs onwards is more or less 260,000, so at an absolute best-case scenario we all looking at a RLWC 2021(22) total attendance of 495,000.

(This of course is for the men's tournament only)

That total would produce an average of 15,967 which is below the 2013 average of 16,374.

[Archie Gordon]

4 hours ago, Jim from Oz said:

So with 6 out of 8 games of week 2 completed, we are tracking at about 65,000 - 70,000 for the week.

If week 3 also gets 70,000, that will be approx. 235,000 after the group games.

If we take a reasonably optimistic prospect of 225,000 for the Q/Fs onwards, we are tracking at JUST hitting the 2013 RLWC target of 458,483.

However, the total possible ticket sales for the Q/Fs onwards is more or less 260,000, so at an absolute best-case scenario we are looking at a RLWC 2021(22) total attendance of 495,000.

(This of course is for the men's tournament only)

My fingers remain crossed !  

I've moved to a slightly more pessimistic position after this weekend. I'm not feeling much love from people for Bramall Lane or the AUS or NZL QFs. I think the men's tournament could be looking at 425k, even with ENG making the final. 

[Northern Eel]

19 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

I've moved to a slightly more pessimistic position after this weekend. I'm not feeling much love from people for Bramall Lane or the AUS or NZL QFs. I think the men's tournament could be looking at 425k, even with ENG making the final. 

We will just about struggle over 400k, I think. 
 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Northern Eel

[thehullram]

35 minutes ago, Northern Eel said:

We will just about struggle over 400k, I think. 
 

Unless they do something asap to sort prices 

[Archie Gordon]

42 minutes ago, Northern Eel said:

We will just about struggle over 400k, I think. 
 

You could be right. I'm working on noises that 20k, 35k and 55k already sold for the last 3 games. But that could be spin.

[Toby Chopra]

37 minutes ago, Northern Eel said:

We will just about struggle over 400k, I think. 
 

I have a similar view of the posters above - the group games will continue on the current trajectory which will put us on about 235k at the start of the knockouts. 

Then, I think we'll add another 200,000, based on 10k each for the non England q/fs and 20k for the Leeds s/f. The final will sell out. 

For me, the entire target basically depends on how the Emirates semi does. If we can sell a bunch of those expensive tickets and get 50k+ then it'll all turn out ok, both numbers and revenue wise. And if there's one game I think we might manage that is for a World Cup semi final featuring England at a major London venue. 

But all our eggs are in the Emirates basket now... 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:

I have a similar view of the posters above - the group games will continue on the current trajectory which will put us on about 235k at the start of the knockouts. 

Then, I think we'll add another 200,000, based on 10k each for the non England q/fs and 20k for the Leeds s/f. The final will sell out. 

For me, the entire target basically depends on how the Emirates semi does. If we can sell a bunch of those expensive tickets and get 50k+ then it'll all turn out ok, both numbers and revenue wise. And if there's one game I think we might manage that is for a World Cup semi final featuring England at a major London venue. 

But all our eggs are in the Emirates basket now... 

Not quite money wise. They have already said the final is the largest grossing game in NH history - and that is before England might get there and the inevitable increase in sales up to the final.

Add in a probable decent Emirates crowd, if England beat PNG, and then money wise it should be fine.

Again - comes down to definitions of "success".

[Northern Eel]

19 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

You could be right. I'm working on noises that 20k, 35k and 55k already sold for the last 3 games. But that could be spin.

Oz v NZ semi would deserve better, but 25k max

If England get there, The Emirates should get 50k; if not 40k

If England reach the final, we’re looking at 70k; 60k if not.

So, 125-145k

I think the QFs will struggle to muster more than 65k, unfortunately. 

So 205k + c.210k group stages. 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Northern Eel

[Archie Gordon]

One thing that continues to bother me about the Emirates semi is that you can buy a £110 ticket for a front row seat or a £70 ticket for the very back row. I wanted to buy tickets in the £70-85 range but wasn't prepared to risk getting a seat I hadn't chosen. At those prices, leaving it to the organisers to put you where they want is madness. I hope it doesn't put others off.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

One thing that continues to bother me about the Emirates semi is that you can buy a £110 ticket for a front row seat or a £70 ticket for the very back row. I wanted to buy tickets in the £70-85 range but wasn't prepared to risk getting a seat I hadn't chosen. At those prices, leaving it to the organisers to put you where they want is madness. I hope it doesn't put others off.

Definitely a risk and what happened to me for a £110 ticket at SJP.

I would have been better off paying £35.

And I had booked as soon as tickets went on sale - so clearly not first come first served.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Leonard

[pahars]

6 hours ago, Big Picture said:

The tournament was apparently awarded to England on the basis of a bid which guaranteed a set fee for IRL, which was presumably paid out of the Northern Powerhouse funding.  That means the organizers need to bring in enough revenue to cover all their other expenses, minus whatever part of the NP funding they still have in the bank.

I hope it is that. I’m worried part of the government funding is more of a loan then a donation. 

[Dave T]

9 hours ago, pahars said:

Dave (and indeed Damien) I get that it is the Union model and I am not disapproving of it. My point is that it has not been mentioned til slap bang in the middle of the World Cup with nobody actually knowing what terms the next one is agreed on. 
 

I’m glad that we are moving from a kind of sale or return strategy to this is a quality product it costs this much.

I might be being simple (it’s highly possible after the week I’ve had) but has the government paid this tournaments staging fee? 

The commercials never tend to be known about this stuff - what journos actually try and dig into this kind of thing? 

In terms of whether the government has paid this, I don't think it's as simple as that. I expect RLWC put some commercials in front of the government when bidding for funding. That P&L will have had a cost line of £xm for staging rights. It will also have had millions of quid in other costs. It is just a cost of staging the tournament, and that wouldn't be unusual to a government reviewing this kind of thing. 

So, say total costs are £40m (including the fee), I expect RLWC are saying they can drive revenues of £25m themselves and therefore have a potential gap of £15m - which the government funded. And for that £15m the government gets a return of £xxm economic benefits for the country. 

So I don't think the government will have directly just written a cheque to IRL, but they will fund the RLWC business which pays IRL. 

And I suppose the other question, and I think this is where @Big Picture has a point about cost of tickets and the government demands. I note that the government are paying up to £15m, I expect there is pressure to make that cost £10m - so there is a chance that RLWC never see the benefit of a profit, the government just pays less. I don't believe the government gets involved in the mechanics of the financials, but I do think they'd rather pay £10m than £15m.

But, this is a lot of guesswork based on filling some gaps. 

[Dave T]

13 minutes ago, pahars said:

I hope it is that. I’m worried part of the government funding is more of a loan then a donation. 

It isn't a loan. 

[Dave T]

6 hours ago, Jim from Oz said:

That is a VERY odd figure … it looked like there were way more people at SAM v GRE last night than at the previous game at Doncaster (FRA v GRE) but the figure for that later game was 4182  !

I'm not sure it looked much more. People were more spread out be ause they had different price bands for this one, hence people behind sticks. 

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Archie Gordon said:

I've moved to a slightly more pessimistic position after this weekend. I'm not feeling much love from people for Bramall Lane or the AUS or NZL QFs. I think the men's tournament could be looking at 425k, even with ENG making the final. 

 

1 hour ago, Northern Eel said:

We will just about struggle over 400k, I think. 
 

To reduce the total attendance from 458k for 26 events to 400-425k for 31 would not be a success at all. 

[Gomersall]

22 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

One thing that continues to bother me about the Emirates semi is that you can buy a £110 ticket for a front row seat or a £70 ticket for the very back row. I wanted to buy tickets in the £70-85 range but wasn't prepared to risk getting a seat I hadn't chosen. At those prices, leaving it to the organisers to put you where they want is madness. I hope it doesn't put others off.

My £85 ticket for the Emirates was on the front row. I contacted Jon Dutton via Twitter and a few days later Jason (I didn’t catch his surname) from RLWC ticketing rang me and moved me to a seat further back.

[Dave T]

35 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Not quite money wise. They have already said the final is the largest grossing game in NH history - and that is before England might get there and the inevitable increase in sales up to the final.

Add in a probable decent Emirates crowd, if England beat PNG, and then money wise it should be fine.

Again - comes down to definitions of "success".

Well they had a target of 750k at these prices. Coming in 300k under that is not success in the slightest. 

We can move the goalposts and just look at other measures to say its a success, but an extra 300k ticket sales with an average of say, £30 income is a £9m hit to your P&L. 

It may wash its face, but it isn't living up to promises. 

[Toby Chopra]

31 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Not quite money wise. They have already said the final is the largest grossing game in NH history - and that is before England might get there and the inevitable increase in sales up to the final.

Add in a probable decent Emirates crowd, if England beat PNG, and then money wise it should be fine.

Again - comes down to definitions of "success".

Oh, I'm sure it will be the biggest revenue generator ever by a clear margin, wherever the attendances come in. 

But as we've been uncovering over the last few days, that doesn't necessarily mean the RFL won't take a hit, given the costs of staging. 

If the knockouts fall short and we barely clear 400k then there might be a few worried heads at HQ. 

But the tournament is being very well received on TV, online, and even in usually uninterested parts of the media, so I'm still hopeful we can close well. 

Every week we can tweet out video of Dom Young scoring a blinder we're on a winner, he's media gold dust. 

[Odsal Outlaw]

9 hours ago, Dave T said:

I do agree with the principle of reducing reliance on flash sales. I think the problem is that I'm not convinced we needed to use the RLWC as the vehicle to do that. Especially as RLWC is technically not the RFL or SLE and I wouldn't be surprised to see discounting continue into next year and beyond. 

I think this is a cultural change that may take a few years, and I'd rather we had done that with our CUP finals, Grand Finals and regular internationals etc. rather than limiting what actions we are prepared to take. 

We are where we are now, we've made our bed, I think they've been a bit silly tbh, I don't think you should ever take any option off the table, and I think it has shown real naivity, but that's their prerogative, and we are seeing the results of that. 

And this isn't to say pricing is necessarily the biggest problem, but it is the one thing you can do something with quickly - we can't move a game from HJ Stadium and hope to fill Wimbledon instead. 

Yeah, although you expect they knew of an issue long before the tournament started and in that respect a change in strategy shouldn’t have needed to be ‘in tournament’ if there was to be one. We could and should still get 3 big crowds for the 2x semi and final and hopefully a 20k+ for Eng QF.

I had been really impressed with the World Cup pre tournament, especially Dutton. I now have some reservations on reality vs. the ‘talk’. Still, I’m willing to wait until the end of the tournament to form a full view on the approach.

[Damien]

5 minutes ago, Gomersall said:

My £85 ticket for the Emirates was on the front row. I contacted Jon Dutton via Twitter and a few days later Jason (I didn’t catch his surname) from RLWC ticketing rang me and moved me to a seat further back.

£85 for a front row seat is ridiculous. It is just ludicrous that you can't pick your seat at a tournament with these prices.

[crashmon]

On 22/10/2022 at 19:33, EssexRL said:

I’m interested to know why people who’ve posted on this thread and who could go to a game haven’t. I live in London and went to Newcastle. I would have gone to Bolton today but couldn’t because of family commitments. I will be at the SF (train strike will stop me going to QF), but what is stopping other people here attending? Being down south I’d love the chance to have games nearby. 

For me its 1) Travel time and 2) Ticket cost then look at hotel and fuel costs added to it. 

I live near heathrow (Egham), so combining the fact that most games are at least 4 hours drive away (8 hour round trip), then combine that with the ticket costs, plus the travel costs and the fact some games ike the ones in north east I'd need probably to book a hotel, its worked out to be not worth it.

It is what it is, the three of us went to 10 games in 2013, but the games was more spread, and tickets much cheaper which meant we could offset the travel costs for the games we attended in the north.

[HawkMan]

All this talk of ticket prices is a bit of a red herring. It plays a part but I believe that's not the main reason for poor attendance figures. I'm just guessing,  but it's reasonable to suppose 90% of the tickets have been purchased by RL fans who know the game. You'll notice that poor attendances are really evident at games that are obvious mismatches, that's because RL fans are not mugs, they know the game and know what's worth going to. The general public wouldn't have a clue that say Samoa vs Greece would be one sided or even Australia vs Scotland. Why would people who know naff all about the sport know what's a mismatch and what's not? The answer is that the excitement of hosting this tournament has not percolated through beyond the confines of the already converted out to the great masses. 

I'm possibly not best placed to know what the street buzz is about RLWC because I live on the London/Essex border,  but there's no sign of the tournament going on round these parts. During the summer I saw almost daily fans from the women's euros visiting London. Outside of the Northern powerhouse area, the rest of the country is merrily carrying on in ignorance about the World Cup,  okay I'll rephrase that, not merrily at all, but angst ridden due to the economic and political chaos engulfing us!

[Odsal Outlaw]

6 minutes ago, Damien said:

£85 for a front row seat is ridiculous. It is just ludicrous that you can't pick your seat at a tournament with these prices.

Totally agree and so out of step with other major events. I hate sitting near the front but in this tournament it feels left to chance. 

[redjonn]

22 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

All this talk of ticket prices is a bit of a red herring. It plays a part but I believe that's not the main reason for poor attendance figures. I'm just guessing,  but it's reasonable to suppose 90% of the tickets have been purchased by RL fans who know the game. You'll notice that poor attendances are really evident at games that are obvious mismatches, that's because RL fans are not mugs, they know the game and know what's worth going to. The general public wouldn't have a clue that say Samoa vs Greece would be one sided or even Australia vs Scotland. Why would people who know naff all about the sport know what's a mismatch and what's not? The answer is that the excitement of hosting this tournament has not percolated through beyond the confines of the already converted out to the great masses. 

I'm possibly not best placed to know what the street buzz is about RLWC because I live on the London/Essex border,  but there's no sign of the tournament going on round these parts. During the summer I saw almost daily fans from the women's euros visiting London. Outside of the Northern powerhouse area, the rest of the country is merrily carrying on in ignorance about the World Cup,  okay I'll rephrase that, not merrily at all, but angst ridden due to the economic and political chaos engulfing us!

you make some good points for debate.

With regard to street Buzz, to be honest their wasn't anything around my area regarding the women's euro's until the later games of England. Just the same with regard to RLWC and we are 15 mile from Leeds. 

Given it is/was meant to focus on the Norther Powerhouse I think reliance on the BBC spreading the word further and wider and hence key to creating some sort of buzz wider was a key component of the strategy. 

I have no problem with the Northern Powerhouse approach but that should have translated to pricing, chose of stadium and shoe leather as well as glossier promotional activities. I am not sure that the organisers got that right.

To add - I have no idea what wc organiser promotional efforts have been. What I wonder is how much selling to business has gone on, how many visits to community and league clubs has their been, how many schools and colleges/universities visited, how many workplaces visited, local radio, newspapers, magazines etc... that  is selling gone on as well as wider promotional efforts.  We ain't soccer which sells itself, we are currently more a niche sport that needs to get out their and sell ourselves.

Edited October 24, 2022 by redjonn

[JonM]

18 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

 I'm just guessing,  but it's reasonable to suppose 90% of the tickets have been purchased by RL fans who know the game. 

That's not been my experience at all - pretty much the opposite in fact. Certainly the two games at Kingston Park (Scotland v Italy and Fiji v Italy) and the game at Doncaster (France v Greece) I would say a large majority of the spectators were not regular RL fans in the sense of knowing the rules and players, or supporting a specific club.

St. James Park I was surrounded by locals who were watching the game live for the first time, but there were clearly a lot of regular RL fans too. Definitely nowhere near 90% though.

Even at Leigh yesterday, the only "heartland" game I've been to, there were pretty significant numbers of people who were not regular RL fans. The group of lads next to me had one of them explaining the rules to the others. The family in front of me had never been to a 'rugby match' before. The couple behind me, the man was taking his girlfriend to her first match, but he was obviously a RL fan.