What do SL execs think about Catalan making OT

[Eddie]

8 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Belgian football deal annually:

€103,000,000 (£88,500,000)

They will be fine.

Scotland's deal is massively undervalued at about £27m p.a. - but that is on honking management by the SFL.

 

Fair enough I hadn’t appreciated their tv deal would be so enormous (though incidentally their domestic game is still in the merde financially, and the Belgian FA don’t get all of that). Still my point will stand in some countries, if not Belgium. 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Eddie

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Eddie said:

Fair enough I hadn’t appreciated their tv deal would be so enormous (though incidentally their domestic game is still in the merde financially, and the Belgian FA don’t get all of that). Still my point will stand in some countries, if not Belgium. 

yes - that is true.

But you would be surprised at some of the rights deals.

Norway

NKr 750,000,000
(£55,000,000)

 

[Eddie]

13 minutes ago, Leonard said:

yes - that is true.

But you would be surprised at some of the rights deals.

Norway

NKr 750,000,000
(£55,000,000)

 

That’s phenomenal, in a country of 5 million and the 16th ranked league with an average attendance of 5,700. Shows what a behemoth football is.  

Edited October 9, 2023 by Eddie

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Eddie said:

That’s phenomenal, in a country of 5 million and the 16th ranked league with an average attendance of 5,700. Shows what a behemoth football is.  

Yup. Scotland by contrast has the best attendances per capita in Europe and one of the worst deals. 

I guess the relevance to RL is it shows the difference competent management at the top level can make. 

[Dave T]

2 hours ago, gingerjon said:

I just picked a snapshot year. 1987-88 as it was my first full season properly following RL.

Here are the final attendances:

Lancashire Cup - 20,237; Yorkshire Cup - 10,947; John Player Trophy - 16,669; Challenge Cup - 94,723; Premiership - 35,252

So if we compare games that are 'weekend' events... 

1988 - 95k

 

2022 - Cup Final 51k

Catalans away 6k

Magic Weekend 62k

Clearly this ain't a perfect like-for-like, but it is the hypothesis IMG have here too. 

[Hull Kingston Bronco]

1 hour ago, Leonard said:

Yup. Scotland by contrast has the best attendances per capita in Europe and one of the worst deals. 

I guess the relevance to RL is it shows the difference competent management at the top level can make. 

Exactly. From this sort of low base, with competent leadership and effective stakeholder management it's more than possible to double Super League TV rights. That's probably why IMG have taken the "slice of upside" commercial model.

But whether the complex, counter-productive politics of rugby league will allow anything anywhere near that is the real question eh. Personally I doubt it very much. 

[Dave T]

I thought Id take a quick look at a similar sport to ours. 

Last Grand Final, they got 61k. This was 11k down on the previous year which got 72k. That was down from 75k just a few years ago, which was down from 80k just a few years earlier. 

They saw a 25% drop in attendance in the space of a decade purely based on who was in the final. And they were still an English team. 

I wonder why they didn't just market and fill those seats.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Dave T

[Dave T]

On 07/10/2023 at 09:26, Toby Chopra said:

I'm not saying clubs shouldn't include distributions from finals, they certainly should, I'm just saying they should ensure that they don't budget for something that isn't guaranteed to happen and is completely out of their control. If the distribution ends up being higher, add it to reserves or the season after's budget.

(Also, as an aside, I'd say only having turnstile income shouldn't be an aim for any sport, it's a sign of weakness in the modern world. Our aim should be TV deals and international revenues that dwarf our spectator income.)

Couldn't agree more with your last para. One of the big challenges is diversification of income. TO me it appears that we have failed to grow our commercial income, merchandise etc. to sufficient levels to cover fluctuations on certain lines.

In reality, when we are talking a few grand, these are minor variances that to budget that could happen simply because the weather is bad. Surely we are stronger than that?

[Leyther_Matt]

3 hours ago, Dave T said:

I thought Id take a quick look at a similar sport to ours. 

Last Grand Final, they got 61k. This was 11k down on the previous year which got 72k. That was down from 75k just a few years ago, which was down from 80k just a few years earlier. 

They saw a 25% drop in attendance in the space of a decade purely based on who was in the final. And they were still an English team. 

I wonder why they didn't just market and fill those seats.

They really do have too many days out tbf (although a much bigger base to work from, and one where they aren’t even bothered about watching the game)