RLWC Attendance-O-Meter

[Mr Frisky]

6 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

Getting these casual punters seems to largely evade RL. Although at the 2013 RLWC semi at Wembley, I was sat with first time attendees (southerners) and they seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, so it can be done. 

That was some game though - still remember how the atmosphere went from party time to numbness in seconds when NZ scored- never seen a stadium and a massive crowd like that react like that before, no one could belive it - still pleased I went though as its something ill always remember.

[The Masked Poster]

Just now, GUBRATS said:

Things don't just happen , it comes down to individual clubs to work harder 

Right. But what do individual clubs have to do with a discussion about international attendances? 

During things like a World Cup, we should be getting thousands of people attending a RL game for their first (and possibly only) time. This is not really down to Wigan or Leeds having a good marketing department. It's supposed to have been planned for several years now. 

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Dave T said:

What your analysis fails to highlight is that the vast majority of RLWC games have included Eng, Aus, NZ or PNG. So if you strip those out, of course all you will be left with are the lower crowds. 

But the actual point of my post that you quoted was to highlight that despite it being billed as a must-see event, it likely to be an epic battle, it still attracted lower than some games that were going to be walkovers. Similarly, the NZ v Fiji attractive QF performed poorly versus many walkovers. 

My point is that whilst the on field battles clearly have an impact, in a World Cup we need to be careful not to make it all about that. If we just keep changing structure and think staging tight games will be the saviour, we will be disappointed in 3 years, then 4 years later and so on. 

You cannot ' engineer ' tight games in RL , some people just don't seem to understand this simple fact , sometimes hey happen , sometimes they don't 

[Chris22]

I do think we are in danger of becoming too entrenched in our views of either 'everything is good' or 'everything is bad', with an inability to see the other side.

Some on here seemed horrified at an announced crowd of over 23,000 for Wigan. I thought I was going to need to offer a counselling service such was the horror amongst some!

There are some obvious downsides and probably less, but certainly some positives.

The quarter finals at Wigan and Warrington looked ace on TV. The fact that we have posted a record crowd for an England match not against Aus or New Zealand is great. It's a step in the right direction that we have got the highest ever crowd for an England v France match. The highest ever quarter final crowd. The highest ever crowd for a match in Sheffield. Breaking attendance records in the women's and wheelchair tournaments.

That's progress. Slower than we would like, but progress. Evidence of an appetite for England matches when they are treated with the seriousness they deserve and not against non-entities or at venues that lack ambition.

The non-England matches have largely been let downs. And I think 2013 has shown that this is due to mismanagement rather than apathy. There are difficulties we didn't face in 2013. Train strikes. A worse economic situation. Yet the organisers policies amplified those. The New Zealand v Fiji attendance was particularly disappointing. That match deserved a big crowd. But we made things harder with £55 tickets behind the posts. The realisation of the error and revision of pricing for Samoa v Tonga filled the South Stand at Warrington.

These poor crowds will have a knock on effect too. We attracted some big sponsors for this tournament and secured major government funding. The organisers will have questions to answer about this if our funders don't feel we delivered what we promised more widely. And that will make things harder in the future.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Chris22

[The Masked Poster]

Just now, Mr Frisky said:

That was some game though - still remember how the atmosphere went from party time to numbness in seconds when NZ scored- never seen a stadium and a massive crowd like that react like that before, no one could belive it - still pleased I went though as its something ill always remember.

Very true. Even seconds before *that* try, Wembley was ringing to the cries of "Eng-er-land".... totally gutting and deflating.

[Dave T]

1 minute ago, GUBRATS said:

You cannot ' engineer ' tight games in RL , some people just don't seem to understand this simple fact , sometimes hey happen , sometimes they don't 

I think in league comps I understand the desire to tweak and improve competitiveness. In World Cups, I think attending the event should be brilliant irrespective of what happens on the field. If the games are one sided I think they can still be enjoyable, but I understand why some don't like them. 

Nobody came away from Newcastle disappointed that the game was a walkover, people were buzzing. 

Make the event interesting, then even if people come away having had a great day despite the match being poor, it can be a success. 

[The Masked Poster]

2 minutes ago, Chris22 said:

I do think we are in danger of becoming too entrenched in our views of either 'everything is good' or 'everything is bad', with an inability to see the other side.

Some on here seemed horrified at an announced crowd of over 23,000 for Wigan. I thought I was going to need to offer a counselling service such was the horror amongst some!

There are some obvious downsides and probably less, but certainly some positives.

The quarter finals at Wigan and Warrington looked ace on TV. The fact that we have posted a record crowd for an England match not against Aus or New Zealand is great. It's a step in the right direction that we have got the highest ever crowd for an England v France match. The highest ever quarter final crowd. The highest ever crowd for a match in Sheffield. Breaking attendance records in the women's and wheelchair tournaments.

That's progress. Slower than we would like, but progress. Evidence of an appetite for England matches when they are treated with the seriousness they deserve and not against non-entities or at venues that lack ambition.

The non-England matches have largely been let downs. And I think 2013 has shown that this is due to mismanagement rather than apathy. There are difficulties we didn't face in 2013. Train strikes. A worse economic situation. Yet the organisers policies amplified those. The New Zealand v Fiji attendance was particularly disappointing. That match deserved a big crowd. But we made things harder with £55 tickets behind the posts. The realisation of the error and revision of pricing for Samoa v Tonga filled the South Stand at Warrington.

These poor crowds will have a knock on effect too. We attracted some big sponsors for this tournament and secured major government funding. The organisers will have questions to answer about this is our funders don't feel we delivered what we promised more widely.

Brother, I appreciate your post and aren't trying to rain on your parade, genuinely. 

But 23k (and even that is up for debate but let's go with it) in Wigan for such a fantastic England side, is not that great an achievement in reality. People should have been fighting in lumps for a ticket. 

It's certainly not all doom and gloom, the England team being one good point, but let's not lower the bar so much that we are happy with 'not bad ' or 'could be worse '. 

[Dave T]

5 minutes ago, Chris22 said:

I do think we are in danger of becoming too entrenched in our views of either 'everything is good' or 'everything is bad', with an inability to see the other side.

Some on here seemed horrified at an announced crowd of over 23,000 for Wigan. I thought I was going to need to offer a counselling service such was the horror amongst some!

There are some obvious downsides and probably less, but certainly some positives.

The quarter finals at Wigan and Warrington looked ace on TV. The fact that we have posted a record crowd for an England match not against Aus or New Zealand is great. It's a step in the right direction that we have got the highest ever crowd for an England v France match. The highest ever quarter final crowd. The highest ever crowd for a match in Sheffield. Breaking attendance records in the women's and wheelchair tournaments.

That's progress. Slower than we would like, but progress. Evidence of an appetite for England matches when they are treated with the seriousness they deserve and not against non-entities or at venues that lack ambition.

The non-England matches have largely been let downs. And I think 2013 has shown that this is due to mismanagement rather than apathy. There are difficulties we didn't face in 2013. Train strikes. A worse economic situation. Yet the organisers policies amplified those. The New Zealand v Fiji attendance was particularly disappointing. That match deserved a big crowd. But we made things harder with £55 tickets behind the posts. The realisation of the error and revision of pricing for Samoa v Tonga filled the South Stand at Warrington.

These poor crowds will have a knock on effect too. We attracted some big sponsors for this tournament and secured major government funding. The organisers will have questions to answer about this if our funders don't feel we delivered what we promised more widely. And that will make things harder in the future.

I'd say every positive you highlight has been acknowledged as positive by even the most downbeat posters on this thread. 

In fact, most negative people are saying pretty much the same as you. 

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, The Masked Poster said:

Right. But what do individual clubs have to do with a discussion about international attendances? 

During things like a World Cup, we should be getting thousands of people attending a RL game for their first (and possibly only) time. This is not really down to Wigan or Leeds having a good marketing department. It's supposed to have been planned for several years now. 

We have around 100,000 people who attend RL games on a regular basis in this country , they are the core support we start with , many of them are very club centric and don't really spend outside of buying a ST , we then have a smaller number that don't necessarily follow one club but do follow the sport and the International game , overall that number isn't large 

So yes we need overall bigger numbers to become interested in the game at all levels , how exactly ? , That's the difficult one to answer 

[The Masked Poster]

1 minute ago, GUBRATS said:

We have around 100,000 people who attend RL games on a regular basis in this country , they are the core support we start with , many of them are very club centric and don't really spend outside of buying a ST , we then have a smaller number that don't necessarily follow one club but do follow the sport and the International game , overall that number isn't large 

So yes we need overall bigger numbers to become interested in the game at all levels , how exactly ? , That's the difficult one to answer 

Boris from Borehamwood doesn't need to know anything about RL or what team is good or bad. All he needs to be made aware of is that "England are playing in the RLWC at X Stadium, here's why you want to be there...." 

Many of the crowd at the opener were Geordies who possibly think Martin Offiah is still playing for Wigan. Not a criticism, it's these people we need to get on board. 

[Dave T]

1 minute ago, GUBRATS said:

We have around 100,000 people who attend RL games on a regular basis in this country , they are the core support we start with , many of them are very club centric and don't really spend outside of buying a ST , we then have a smaller number that don't necessarily follow one club but do follow the sport and the International game , overall that number isn't large 

So yes we need overall bigger numbers to become interested in the game at all levels , how exactly ? , That's the difficult one to answer 

We possibly have something like (a lot of guesswork below!) :

100k regulars - week in week out

300k 'glory hunters' for want of a better phrase. 

150k event fans

So probably around half a million people who have attended RL in recent history. 

We also know that we have a pot of maybe 2-4m who have watched RL games on TV, probably more. 

So before you even go and have to start looking at pots of customers who have never been to RL, we are probably talking around half a million warm/hot prospects. Then we look at sports fans in the area and we really are into millions of people who attend live sport, or play, or watch on TV. 

The size of the pot is not an issue for RL, it's failure to engage with them and offer them something compelling. 

 

 

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, The Masked Poster said:

Boris from Borehamwood doesn't need to know anything about RL or what team is good or bad. All he needs to be made aware of is that "England are playing in the RLWC at X Stadium, here's why you want to be there...." 

Many of the crowd at the opener were Geordies who possibly think Martin Offiah is still playing for Wigan. Not a criticism, it's these people we need to get on board. 

So essentially playing games outside the heartlands ? , Some yes , some no , we need to find the right balance , then market and most importantly price them realistically, to me we need to fill before we charge , especially if all the games are televised 

[redjonn]

4 hours ago, Big Picture said:

The problem IMG will face is that Sean McGuire was correct when he said that the fundamental reason behind the game's problems is that with the possible exception of Leeds the traditional clubs are all based in smallish, economically disadvantaged towns.  As this World Cup has shown, those towns are too small and too poor to give the game the sort of popularity and money it needs.  In addition there's no evidence that clubs in those towns can appeal to the broader public, so suggest that IMG will really struggle to boost the game's popularity and revenues.

I think it more the nature of the game that doesn't appeal to the wider population of those towns and easy travel areas around those towns... or to put another way the game or sport only appeals to a small percentage of the available population of the town and surrounding area.

The game needs to be more attractive to watch with better stadium experiences to have the wider appeal. Even in the bigger city or towns.

[WN83]

Just saw a report in the Hull Daily Mail saying sales are around 43,000 to date for Saturday. A reasonable figure and it would be nice if we could get that up to 47/48k come the game. Maybe wishful thinking but there are plenty of reasonably priced tickets left. What sort of work they’re doing to get people there from the local areas around London I have no idea. 

Edited November 7, 2022 by WN83

[Mr Frisky]

21 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

Brother, I appreciate your post and aren't trying to rain on your parade, genuinely. 

But 23k (and even that is up for debate but let's go with it) in Wigan for such a fantastic England side, is not that great an achievement in reality. People should have been fighting in lumps for a ticket. 

It's certainly not all doom and gloom, the England team being one good point, but let's not lower the bar so much that we are happy with 'not bad ' or 'could be worse '. 

I think the low bar was the 2017 final attendance of just 40,000 in Australia- what ever happens this WC will at least beat that and hopefully match the 2013 figure. 

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Dave T said:

We possibly have something like (a lot of guesswork below!) :

100k regulars - week in week out

300k 'glory hunters' for want of a better phrase. 

150k event fans

So probably around half a million people who have attended RL in recent history. 

We also know that we have a pot of maybe 2-4m who have watched RL games on TV, probably more. 

So before you even go and have to start looking at pots of customers who have never been to RL, we are probably talking around half a million warm/hot prospects. Then we look at sports fans in the area and we really are into millions of people who attend live sport, or play, or watch on TV. 

The size of the pot is not an issue for RL, it's failure to engage with them and offer them something compelling. 

 

 

I've long had the arguments on here of how you make RL games ( or any sport ) interesting enough for people to become fans , I've often used the away fan argument as one of our primary weapons ( which then gets attacked by people comparing mostly US based sports and arguing about " not budgeting for away support " who completely miss the point being made that it is the atmosphere they create ) , now obviously in International RL it really isn't relevant , and in fact I'd not want it as there can be negatives to it as we see in football 

Ultimately to create events that ' feel ' good we need to have stadiums that are 60/70% full , so for me more important than chasing the money , is to chase the numbers , not by retrospectively discounting , but with sensible pricing and as has been discussed on here not compressing the games 

[The Masked Poster]

4 minutes ago, Mr Frisky said:

I think the low bar was the 2017 final attendance of just 40,000 in Australia- what ever happens this WC will at least beat that and hopefully match the 2013 figure. 

Yeah granted but I don't think 23K in Wigan is that great in reality. That's all

[GUBRATS]

15 minutes ago, Dave T said:

We possibly have something like (a lot of guesswork below!) :

100k regulars - week in week out

300k 'glory hunters' for want of a better phrase. 

150k event fans

So probably around half a million people who have attended RL in recent history. 

We also know that we have a pot of maybe 2-4m who have watched RL games on TV, probably more. 

So before you even go and have to start looking at pots of customers who have never been to RL, we are probably talking around half a million warm/hot prospects. Then we look at sports fans in the area and we really are into millions of people who attend live sport, or play, or watch on TV. 

The size of the pot is not an issue for RL, it's failure to engage with them and offer them something compelling. 

 

 

I'd argue Dave that while your numbers are correct , the biggest category are the ones who won't really be attending Internationals , a reasonable % of your hard core will , and obviously your event numbers , the ' glory hunter ' is a more difficult sell IMO 

[The Masked Poster]

16 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

So essentially playing games outside the heartlands ? , Some yes , some no , we need to find the right balance , then market and most importantly price them realistically, to me we need to fill before we charge , especially if all the games are televised 

Well given that most of the heartlands games haven't been a resounding success, why not? Club affiliations are clearly not translated into international interest in RL places. 

[N2022]

2 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

I've long had the arguments on here of how you make RL games ( or any sport ) interesting enough for people to become fans , I've often used the away fan argument as one of our primary weapons ( which then gets attacked by people comparing mostly US based sports and arguing about " not budgeting for away support " who completely miss the point being made that it is the atmosphere they create ) , now obviously in International RL it really isn't relevant , and in fact I'd not want it as there can be negatives to it as we see in football 

Ultimately to create events that ' feel ' good we need to have stadiums that are 60/70% full , so for me more important than chasing the money , is to chase the numbers , not by retrospectively discounting , but with sensible pricing and as has been discussed on here not compressing the games 

As someone who's spent much more of his life following football than RL, I can genuinely say that somehow the risk of league crowds getting as hostile as football seems to be at present (mindless in some quarters) is minimal. Attended 3 Eng games at this RLWC and I've barely heard a rude word. Two guys at Bolton faced up to each other for about 3 minutes but I've seen little drunkenness and only observed friendly banter between fans wearing different club colours.

[N2022]

4 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

Well given that most of the heartlands games haven't been a resounding success, why not? Club affiliations are clearly not translated into international interest in RL places. 

I think that's mainly because there is so little regular competition between countries in RL. England football fans go to Euro / WC qualifiers, cricket fans have test matches each summer and may (Barmy Army) travel for a series, RU fans know every spring is 6 nations with the traditional close rivalries that involves. RL fans watch a SL team and know that Aus have NRL, then every 4 yrs there's a World Cup. Tours to Aus or Eng v Fra tests are so infrequent people get no sense of being an 'England fan'.

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, N2022 said:

As someone who's spent much more of his life following football than RL, I can genuinely say that somehow the risk of league crowds getting as hostile as football seems to be at present (mindless in some quarters) is minimal. Attended 3 Eng games at this RLWC and I've barely heard a rude word. Two guys at Bolton faced up to each other for about 3 minutes but I've seen little drunkenness and only observed friendly banter between fans wearing different club colours.

You've missed my point , we don't really get any ' away ' fans numbers anyway due to the distances involved anyway , my argument for away fans in the club game is to create atmosphere , in the International game we need the numbers , once you get to 60/70% at virtually any stadium the ' feel ' is much better , it seems in this WC we've chased the money rather than the numbers IMO 

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, N2022 said:

I think that's mainly because there is so little regular competition between countries in RL. England football fans go to Euro / WC qualifiers, cricket fans have test matches each summer and may (Barmy Army) travel for a series, RU fans know every spring is 6 nations with the traditional close rivalries that involves. RL fans watch a SL team and know that Aus have NRL, then every 4 yrs there's a World Cup. Tours to Aus or Eng v Fra tests are so infrequent people get no sense of being an 'England fan'.

Correct , but our problem is competitive ( at least a bit ) opposition , if we don't see SH teams travelling 

[Dave T]

14 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

I'd argue Dave that while your numbers are correct , the biggest category are the ones who won't really be attending Internationals , a reasonable % of your hard core will , and obviously your event numbers , the ' glory hunter ' is a more difficult sell IMO 

Absolutely. I'm not saying all these are there for the taking, in reality it will be a modest % we'll convert. Its sort of my point, because I think the starting point is larger than we sometimes think, but it does soon dwindle. 

[Dave T]

5 minutes ago, N2022 said:

I think that's mainly because there is so little regular competition between countries in RL. England football fans go to Euro / WC qualifiers, cricket fans have test matches each summer and may (Barmy Army) travel for a series, RU fans know every spring is 6 nations with the traditional close rivalries that involves. RL fans watch a SL team and know that Aus have NRL, then every 4 yrs there's a World Cup. Tours to Aus or Eng v Fra tests are so infrequent people get no sense of being an 'England fan'.

I agree. I'm absolutely an international fan, but I dont really feel any great sense of belonging to any kind of England RL 'club'. 

The atmosphere can be challenging at England games for many games, and I do think it's lack of regular games.