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Posted

This RU account was impressed by at least one aspect

 

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Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)


Posted
22 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

 

I get the point @Dave T is making about whether or not free tickets should be something we discuss, but I think it is fair to question whether international RL has the sort of "value" to make it commercially viable. Last year we had elite athletes being told that they had to fly economy class from Sydney to play in an international series to keep costs low, and this year we had a whole "will they? won't they?" saga around Samoa that I'm sure wouldn't have happened if the series was financially viable and lucrative. 

 

I think the point about freebies and the Wigan approach is well worthy of discussion, but in the post-mortem where we assess and benchmark versus other games I don't think it works. 

Wigan using tickets as a reward for season ticket holders is a weird one,  a little unorthodox, but it is similar in reality to a commercial partner giving tickets away to staff, guests or customers. But I don't think it's a particularly impressive tactic tbh and does leave us open to criticism.

But we shouldn't mark today's crowd with an asterisk in the same way as we wouldn't call other games out where people have had free tickets from BetFred or similar.

My main challenge around the crowd size tbh is that we do seem unable to matrrially grow an event. I often make the point that our Magic Weekends are broadly in line with where we started, and today's crowd was broadly in line with last year. I can't believe that we always hit our potential market in year one of every event. 

Wigan generally does better than St Helens, yet the crowd wasn't significantly higher, in reality no growth was delivered.

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Posted

It was a really good enjoyable game with good reason to hope next week's might be even better. We definitely don't get enough international RL so I'm going to enjoy when we do get something decent. 

 

Oh and Farnworth's pass to get Radley over...

  • Like 2
Posted (edited)
15 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Wigan using tickets as a reward for season ticket holders is a weird one,  a little unorthodox, but it is similar in reality to a commercial partner giving tickets away to staff, guests or customers. But I don't think it's a particularly impressive tactic tbh and does leave us open to criticism.

But we shouldn't mark today's crowd with an asterisk in the same way as we wouldn't call other games out where people have had free tickets from BetFred or similar.

My main challenge around the crowd size tbh is that we do seem unable to matrrially grow an event. I often make the point that our Magic Weekends are broadly in line with where we started, and today's crowd was broadly in line with last year. I can't believe that we always hit our potential market in year one of every event. 

Wigan generally does better than St Helens, yet the crowd wasn't significantly higher, in reality no growth was delivered.

I'd generally agree with this. I think the issue for me is that when we have ticket offers that go into more of a "mainstream" channel (essentially anyone willing to buy a Wigan ticket, rather than, to use your example, Betfred's top customers), then it keeps feeding this treadmill of discounting that RL seems incapable of coming off. That cheapens the product and creates a fan culture that doesn't really encourage advance purchasing - because there's no real downside, and potentially an upside, to waiting until the last minute. RL has created that problem for itself with these sorts of tactics. 

But the growth point is absolutely right and we see this across RLC's big events. 

Edited by whatmichaelsays
  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, fighting irish said:

Here's something novel, for a thread like this.

I loved it. The game was great and I can't wait for next weeks match. 

And that is what many people said on the match thread.

  • Haha 1
Posted
25 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

Should have been a 3 games test series. 

With both teams playing at its peak after a month together.

The frustrations that it isn't only grow when you read rumours that a game was cut due to Stephen Crichton's wedding, which would ensure as strong a Samoan team as possible only for him and a couple of his pals not to bother. I noted Luai in the week saying people will be blown away with the side they'll put out in the 2026 World Cup due other players who are committing to them but why are they waiting until then? if it means so much to them, why are they not in the UK now? They either want to play for Samoa or they don't and it shouldn't take certain tournaments and host countries to tempt them out. 

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Posted
35 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

Should have been a 3 games test series. 

With both teams playing at its peak after a month together.

That's not going to happen with the NRL.

Posted
18 minutes ago, WN83 said:

The frustrations that it isn't only grow when you read rumours that a game was cut due to Stephen Crichton's wedding, which would ensure as strong a Samoan team as possible only for him and a couple of his pals not to bother. I noted Luai in the week saying people will be blown away with the side they'll put out in the 2026 World Cup due other players who are committing to them but why are they waiting until then? if it means so much to them, why are they not in the UK now? They either want to play for Samoa or they don't and it shouldn't take certain tournaments and host countries to tempt them out. 

A lot of those players are out injured one of them is Payne Haas. The only one that's not injured is Stephen Critchon.

 

Good win by the English. Samoans looked sloppy but showed a lot of potential for the next game. I wish there was a 3rd game

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Posted
32 minutes ago, Mojo said:

A lot of those players are out injured one of them is Payne Haas. The only one that's not injured is Stephen Critchon.

 

Good win by the English. Samoans looked sloppy but showed a lot of potential for the next game. I wish there was a 3rd game

Haas will be immense if he's on board. When you see the talent spreading as it is, it just makes you hope we can get regular internationals planned well in advance and build it. We've never had as many good teams, yet we used to have series and four Nations comps that would now be so much better due to that spread of talent. 

Next week should be a good tussle and quite intense from the off after the late dust up. It'll be a bit of a damp squib if Samoa win and we're left at 1-1 mind. 

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Posted

10 years ago, we would never have dreamed about having a test series against Tonga or Samoa because it would have been a no contest. On the field, we have taken massive strides forward. And had we tried, I think we would have got sub 10K crowds.

Now, we have reasonably competitive matches against a wider range of teams. But playing Samoa or Tonga doesn't have the same appeal to some as a New Zealand or an Australia. Personally, test series' don't grab me as much as competition, apart from when we face Australia but that's another point.

We have to face reality rather than the situation we want. In the 2000's, we played Australia at places like Wigan and that did not always sell out. If that is the case, Samoa will not sell out.

If we can get bigger crowds for this series than last year, which looks likely, that is progress. Next, it's where we go from here. And my worry is nowhere because we won't play a competitive international in this country for at least 3 years.

 

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Posted
10 hours ago, Dunbar said:

I'm not talking about my preferred option, I am talking about the culture of the entire sport and the prestige of England Australia as both a sporting and a Rugby League contest.

 

9 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Not to mention, England/GB tours down under, those in my lifetime at least, haven't appeared to have been particularly well attended, and since they were mostly on Sky, weren't watched by loads either.

That famous win in 2006 in the Tri Nations was watched by 24k, in a 44k capacity ground, in Sydney...

 

8 hours ago, Big Picture said:

 

That's why series like this one and last year's won't likely do anything to boost the game and are more likely to knock it back instead.

This tour has been getting decent publicity in Oz. It wasn`t going to be even televised until fans kicked up a stink and Fox put it on.

You beat Samoa again next week and I`ll guarantee you if the first game is played in Brisbane they`ll get 35k plus, win up there and the other games will be near sell-outs if not sold out.

 

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Posted

I think we should have expected a better crowd today, 1500 more than the Saints game isn't really good enough and as has been said we should be looking to grow the number of people watching England play, the aggregate figure of last years series was beatable but no longer is. I can see however, lots of good reasons to watch the game on TV for free, if you are't selling the cheapest tickets in an all seater stadium then pricing is clearly not an issue, so there must be other reasons for people deciding not to come. 

Other than seeing the game and war dance in person, and seeing things the crappy BBC director misses then what reason was there to go today. Nothing in the ground to make the event bigger, even the wheelchair game had the national anthem singer provide halftime entertainment, why are we doing community dancing (that is exactly the same as last year) when we don't have pro dance teams/cheerleaders at events anymore? The big screen was absolutely useless again for an England game, and the fanzone made my ears bleed as the speakers were so loud. Nothing to get the crowd going and the stifled atmosphere we always get at England games isn't attracting people either.

I think the free ticket issue is a problem, I mentioned last year it was annoying to see so many of the seats around me filled by little kids there to dance at half time who got in for free. That was at least under the radar freebies, like when you let junior teams come along and play on the pitch at half time or competitions and sponsor tickets. If it is very visible to your core audience that free tickets are available for premium events that is a disincentive to pay full price in advance for tickets, the same can be said for the levels of discounts we consistently see for all RL "events".

Next week could be the last Tier 1 international in this country for some time (or it might not, depends what the NRL decide) and our entire international season in this country across Men's Women's and Wheelchair versions of the game is four fixtures across 8 days in 2 locations, I really hope this is the bottom of the curve, as we really need to see an improvement in this aspect of the game. 

 

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Posted
5 hours ago, WN83 said:

Haas will be immense if he's on board. When you see the talent spreading as it is, it just makes you hope we can get regular internationals planned well in advance and build it. We've never had as many good teams, yet we used to have series and four Nations comps that would now be so much better due to that spread of talent. 

Next week should be a good tussle and quite intense from the off after the late dust up. It'll be a bit of a damp squib if Samoa win and we're left at 1-1 mind. 

I've always said from the start the English would be too good for this samoan team but I was also hoping the samoans would make it a contest so the series would be a joy to watch. And the first game showed glimpses of that. Hopefully the 2nd game is better. The scuffle at the end was good because I want that rivalry between samoa and England to be taken to another level because fans from both nations can get excited and start turning up to games. Also creating a big rivalry will make the star players in the samoan team commit to the future games. 

 

The samoan coach confirmed that Haas was very keen to go on tour before he got injured. I follow Haas on social media and he's been posting about the samoan team for the last month. So it's pretty obvious he's playing for samoa.

I hope in the future England comes over to this side of the world and play samoa. It would definitely sell out because of the rivalry that samoa and England have now. This is awesome for the international game and awesome for England to play another nation and not rely on nz and aus. 

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Posted

Standing tickets in the South Stand at Headingley now showing as unavailable. Not sure if that's right or if they are just making people stand in the tv arc. A handful of seats keep coming available in different sections.

If it's correct and they're not just messing around, all seats + South Stand standing have a total capacity of 13,327, plus whatever is sold on the eastern and western terraces we're maybe looking at around 14,000 to 14,500 sold. But we know these people like to play games with availability.

Posted
4 minutes ago, M j M said:

Standing tickets in the South Stand at Headingley now showing as unavailable. Not sure if that's right or if they are just making people stand in the tv arc. A handful of seats keep coming available in different sections.

If it's correct and they're not just messing around, all seats + South Stand standing have a total capacity of 13,327, plus whatever is sold on the eastern and western terraces we're maybe looking at around 14,000 to 14,500 sold. But we know these people like to play games with availability.

South stand terrace had less than 100 available last night and shows sold out this morning.

45 seats in south stand have come on sale in last hour or so, all seats previously having been unavailable (returns from a sponsor?)

Currently 1120 on west terrace and 860 on east terrace available.

What we have no indication of is hospitality sales.

Posted
Just now, Barley Mow said:

South stand terrace had less than 100 available last night and shows sold out this morning.

45 seats in south stand have come on sale in last hour or so, all seats previously having been unavailable (returns from a sponsor?)

Currently 1120 on west terrace and 860 on east terrace available.

What we have no indication of is hospitality sales.

I'm not sure they've put everything on sale. Those figures would imply 2,800 people have bought tickets for the western terrace. For all its balmy pleasures I find that hard to believe; people generally prefer to be protected from the sun in East and South stands.

Posted
2 minutes ago, M j M said:

I'm not sure they've put everything on sale. Those figures would imply 2,800 people have bought tickets for the western terrace. For all its balmy pleasures I find that hard to believe; people generally prefer to be protected from the sun in East and South stands.

Yeah, that's a possibility. I was a little surprised when I first checked about a week ago and there were only about 2,250 available on WT.

I've heard of people buying (cheaper) tickets there in the hope that there will be unused seats in the middle of the north stand and stewards won't check their tickets - but still hopeful the numbers are right rather than expectant.

  • Like 1
Posted
On 27/10/2024 at 10:24, Damien said:

I think we desperately need Australia to tour as a big bang reset like the cancelled 2020 Ashes would have been.

We need that buzz and big stadium vibe to get things going and sell England matches and the international game again. I think matches against Tonga, Samoa etc can be elevated on the back of that but at the moment we are stuck in a rut and I don't think the game has the tools to change that. Neither do I think the interest is there with the current approach beyond what we are seeing.

Well that was quick. The Lord works in mysterious ways 🤣

  • Haha 2
Posted

The NRL YouTube channel posted England v Samoa highlights 19 hours ago. Currently running at 218k views. This is high by the standard of NRL Premiership games. Also higher than Kiwis v Kangaroos, currently at 191k.

No comparable package from a UK source appears to be available yet. Attempts to find one bring forth a deluge of Union. Raises a few questions. For instance, should we swallow our pride and use some kind of "UK NRL" tagline for social media?

  • Like 2
Posted
1 minute ago, unapologetic pedant said:

No comparable package from a UK source appears to be available yet. 

BBC Sport website has highlights (looks like went up around the same time as NRL's YouTube) and the England Rugby League YouTube channel does as well.

  • Like 1

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

Posted
3 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

England Rugby League YouTube channel does as well.

Is that the channel name?

There's nothing on the RFL channel. Most recent video there is Wakefield v Toulouse.

I'm curious to know how many views a UK outlet have for the same footage vis-a-vis NRL on YouTube.

Posted
1 hour ago, Barley Mow said:

They really are playing the same old tricks - 1,500 new tickets just gone on sale for the south stand terrace for Headingley!

How can you get that information? Can you see how many are left in the other stands? 

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