Jon Dutton

[Jughead]

Has taken a role as CEO with British Cycling following his tenure with the RLWC.

 

[daz39]

Cool.......

[ATLANTISMAN]

When are the accounts out?

The whole lot of them were nothing more than professional sports functioneers overstaffed overpaid and mainly useless

[Hull Kingston Bronco]

1 hour ago, Jughead said:

Has taken a role as CEO with British Cycling following his tenure with the RLWC.

 

I wanted him to get on his bike a year ago, shame it took a bit longer 

[Just Browny]

1 hour ago, ATLANTISMAN said:

When are the accounts out?

The whole lot of them were nothing more than professional sports functioneers overstaffed overpaid and mainly useless

Didn't sell many LED packages then?

I think Dutton did a decent job. Not electrifying, not terrible. The event had to put up with a serious setback in the postponement and Dutton handled that as well as he could have. Some of the logistics, like the ticketing, were a bit rubbish and Dutton took responsibility when things went wrong (mostly).

Presumably if the RLWC21 had bankrupted the game as you have claimed we would start to be seeing the evidence by now, nearly five months after it finished..?

Edited April 13, 2023 by Just Browny

[ATLANTISMAN]

8 minutes ago, Just Browny said:

Didn't sell many LED packages then?

I think Dutton did a decent job. Not electrifying, not terrible. The event had to put up with a serious setback in the postponement and Dutton handled that as well as he could have. Some of the logistics, like the ticketing, were a bit rubbish and Dutton took responsibility when things went wrong (mostly).

Presumably if the RLWC21 had bankrupted the game as you have claimed we would start to be seeing the evidence by now, nearly five months after it finished..?

Dutton did a decent job sorting out the cancelation.

Ticketing was a disaster.

Lets see how the accounts pan out i fear the worse.

 

 

[Dunbar]

1 hour ago, ATLANTISMAN said:

When are the accounts out?

The whole lot of them were nothing more than professional sports functioneers overstaffed overpaid and mainly useless

I see you are in practice for that non-Exec role!

[IM2]

3 hours ago, ATLANTISMAN said:

When are the accounts out?

The whole lot of them were nothing more than professional sports functioneers overstaffed overpaid and mainly useless

rubbish they did the best job ever done in a RLWC

[Dave T]

The vast majority of the men's World Cup was underwhelming really. 

There was a lot to like about the whole concept of RLWC 2021 in its entirety though, and Dutton was a major part of that obviously. 

Good luck to him. 

[daz39]

Did we all enjoy the WC? 

[Just Browny]

31 minutes ago, daz39 said:

Did we all enjoy the WC? 

I did although I would generally thank the players for that rather than any particular administrators.

[Toby Chopra]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

The vast majority of the men's World Cup was underwhelming really. 

There was a lot to like about the whole concept of RLWC 2021 in its entirety though, and Dutton was a major part of that obviously. 

Good luck to him. 

Agreed, the mens opening game and the semis were epic, but much of the rest of that tournament didn't quite catch fire. And ticketing miscalculations played a big part in that. 

But the women's and wheelchair tournaments were revelations that transformed the prospects of those two parts of the sport and he deserves credit for that. 

Perhaps his best achievement was keeping the BBC on board with wall to wall coverage even after the 1 year delay. Once that was done, every thing else positive was possible.

[Dave T]

38 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:

Agreed, the mens opening game and the semis were epic, but much of the rest of that tournament didn't quite catch fire. And ticketing miscalculations played a big part in that. 

But the women's and wheelchair tournaments were revelations that transformed the prospects of those two parts of the sport and he deserves credit for that. 

Perhaps his best achievement was keeping the BBC on board with wall to wall coverage even after the 1 year delay. Once that was done, every thing else positive was possible.

The men's tournament looked far more like the 2000 version than the 2013 or 1995 version. The majority of games were played in front of poor crowds with library-type atmospheres. 

But as you say, wheelchair and women versions were great, PDRL very enjoyable, and positives like TV coverage and government funding on legacy projects were great. 

[Welshleaguelover]

I loved the World Cup. Just think we got a few of the venues wrong.

The Jamaica, NZ, Ireland, Lebanon group should have been based in London for me.

[JohnM]

13 hours ago, daz39 said:

Did we all enjoy the WC? 

I did. It all seems so long ago, though.

[Hull Kingston Bronco]

It was a great tournament in many ways, with the inclusive structure shining a great light on rugby league's women and disability developments, and yes the impressive management of the last-minute rescheduling. He deserves credit for that. But at the end of the day tournament organiser's primary metric is how many people are engaged enough to attend. Dutton and his team failed miserably on that score by any measure.

Some of that was down to decisions on structure/location (it must have forever killed the myth of the "heartlands" as a generator of audience and commercial growth), and some of it on the terrible pricing and marketing activation plans. Dutton is responsible for all of that, and like Atlantisman I'm certain that has had a huge impact on the sports finances. It certainly had a huge impact on our ability to use the tournament to create new fans of the sport.

Massive opportunity missed.   

[Dave T]

3 minutes ago, Hull Kingston Bronco said:

It was a great tournament in many ways, with the inclusive structure shining a great light on rugby league's women and disability developments, and yes the impressive management of the last-minute rescheduling. He deserves credit for that. But at the end of the day tournament organiser's primary metric is how many people are engaged enough to attend. Dutton and his team failed miserably on that score by any measure.

Some of that was down to decisions on structure/location (it must have forever killed the myth of the "heartlands" as a generator of audience and commercial growth), and some of it on the terrible pricing and marketing activation plans. Dutton is responsible for all of that, and like Atlantisman I'm certain that has had a huge impact on the sports finances. It certainly had a huge impact on our ability to use the tournament to create new fans of the sport.

Massive opportunity missed.   

I'm not sure I agree with the bit on proving the heartlands can't be a generator of audiences and commercial growth. I think what it proved is that it needs to be done well and we don't just have a load of people sitting around waiting for RL to be staged. 

I think a lot of the organisation was very arrogant and was a clear case of looking to run before we could walk. I think they looked at good crowds in places like Warrington in 2013, then thought they could double the amount of games, and quadruple the price and it'd go well. There is literally nothing to back that up as an approach! It really was the strategic stuff that was wrong, and this is why I think a lot of it does fall back to Dutton. It was style over substance. 

But as we are seeing this year, there is an audience in the heartlands, we just didn't tap into it. I expect that even if we'd have taken some of the games to London, our strategies behind it would have seen those fail too.

we're all RL tragics and will find plenty to enjoy - but in reality, the mens tournament was largely forgettable. Even the real highs were laced with disappointing elements.

I think had we organised it well and the Heartlands hadn't responded, I'd agree with your point, but I think the poor organisation overshadowed every element of it and makes it difficult to form conclusions on that.

[Hull Kingston Bronco]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

I'm not sure I agree with the bit on proving the heartlands can't be a generator of audiences and commercial growth. I think what it proved is that it needs to be done well and we don't just have a load of people sitting around waiting for RL to be staged. 

 

Yes, fair point and happy to accept, my comment was over-simplistic. Better to say people have in the past looked to "the heartlands" as some sort of magical panacea, whereas really our issue has always been the organisation's inability to build and deliver an effective sales and marketing strategy. In new markets, and in old ones. The WC proved that.

But I do think it also showed that with internationals you are selling a new product (rather than "local club"), and so there's little advantage in over-saturating one geography just because more people buy the "local club" product there. We had far too many games in close proximity to each other, many of which were a hard sell. In fact I reckon it's easier to sell marginal games in areas where the audience has a less (well informed) cynical view of the product on offer. 

[Jughead]

16 hours ago, daz39 said:

Did we all enjoy the WC? 

The men’s, not really. I got bored of heavily one sided games very quickly. I knew what to expect but when you added in the library like atmospheres at massively empty stadiums, it got boring very quickly and I ended up picking the games I wanted to see whereas in 2013 I watched as much as I physically could. 

I didn’t watch the women’s game barring the final. I enjoyed the final though. I didn’t watch the PDRL tournament but it seemed positive. 

The wheelchair tournament was enthralling, physical and entertaining and even better in person at the venue when you could see, hear and feel the collisions. The crowds were very good too. I’m really hoping there’s more at the end of the this year. Even if England hadn’t won, it would have still been a successful tournament. 

[Tommygilf]

The womens and wheelchair world cups were excellent throughout. Coping with the Covid delay and NRL intransigence was also admirable.

The mens started well(ish) but really struggled till the semi finals. Part of that was an overloading of marquee fixtures in round 1 imo. The pace of the tournament was poorer because of it. Add in the ticketing platform and odd pricing and you can see the entirely predicted problems starting to emerge. 

There also appeared to be significantly less engagement with host stadium clubs with ticketing and marketing to their membership etc compared with 2013. That seemed foolish and proved to be so.

What then ultimately did for it was hosting the vast majority of games within an hour and a half drive of eachother. That was simply far too many tickets to squeeze out of the same audience.

He seems a very competent behind the scenes networking man, which is probably exactly what British Cycling want. Unfortunately in RL we need more bang for buck on every single penny spent on administrators.

[Dave T]

26 minutes ago, Hull Kingston Bronco said:

Yes, fair point and happy to accept, my comment was over-simplistic. Better to say people have in the past looked to "the heartlands" as some sort of magical panacea, whereas really our issue has always been the organisation's inability to build and deliver an effective sales and marketing strategy. In new markets, and in old ones. The WC proved that.

But I do think it also showed that with internationals you are selling a new product (rather than "local club"), and so there's little advantage in over-saturating one geography just because more people buy the "local club" product there. We had far too many games in close proximity to each other, many of which were a hard sell. In fact I reckon it's easier to sell marginal games in areas where the audience has a less (well informed) cynical view of the product on offer. 

Yup - agreed with all of that. 

[Dave T]

1 minute ago, Tommygilf said:

 

There also appeared to be significantly less engagement with host stadium clubs with ticketing and marketing to their membership etc compared with 2013. That seemed foolish and proved to be so.

What then ultimately did for it was hosting the vast majority of games within an hour and a half drive of eachother. That was simply far too many tickets to squeeze out of the same audience.

 

This is exactly the kind of arrogance I refer to. They almost ignored everything that made 2013 a success (and it can't be ignored that that included cheap pricing, bundle discounts etc.).

We tried to move from bargain basement to premium, without doing anything in between. Increasing the prices and reducing reliance on giveaways was absolutely the right approach. What we delivered was bizarre. 

It should be acknowledged too that by going with the more traditional format, there would be fewer compelling games on show. So we had to focus on the event and narrative around it. To an extent, the BBC really helped with the narrative, and we had some really nice stuff around Greece and other nations, but the events themselves very much had a feel of pre-season friendly with poor presentation. 

It all felt very half-assed. I think in 2013 people enjoyed the first games they took in, and momentum built from there - I went to plenty early on, and tailed off as I found the events (not the sport) a touch boring.

[Tommygilf]

7 minutes ago, Dave T said:

This is exactly the kind of arrogance I refer to. They almost ignored everything that made 2013 a success (and it can't be ignored that that included cheap pricing, bundle discounts etc.).

We tried to move from bargain basement to premium, without doing anything in between. Increasing the prices and reducing reliance on giveaways was absolutely the right approach. What we delivered was bizarre. 

It should be acknowledged too that by going with the more traditional format, there would be fewer compelling games on show. So we had to focus on the event and narrative around it. To an extent, the BBC really helped with the narrative, and we had some really nice stuff around Greece and other nations, but the events themselves very much had a feel of pre-season friendly with poor presentation. 

It all felt very half-assed. I think in 2013 people enjoyed the first games they took in, and momentum built from there - I went to plenty early on, and tailed off as I found the events (not the sport) a touch boring.

I agree, and whilst my emotions are less raw than they were at the time, I'm still not sure if it was arrogance or incompetence.

I agree that the "events" felt half baked. No singers for anthems etc. It was all a bit cheap but not cheerful. The number of good events could probably be counted with your fingers comfortably.

Too many assumptions were made. And ultimately those assumptions caught up with the tournament very visibly.

What is most annoying for me is that the problems were entirely predictable and obvious from the start.