Aaron Bower interviews IMG boss Matt Dwyer

[Chrispmartha]

32 minutes ago, marklaspalmas said:

I disagree.

It's controversial because it's wrong. Their algorithms for assessment are wrong.You don't pick your "best" clubs. You set up systems, explain new methods, impose them, fine tune them and the top clubs will become apparent.

Much less conflict, confusion, controversy.

If they had done absolutely nothing with grading whatsoever, Wakey would replace London in 2025 anyway and that's what they wanted.

 

Its ok saying Wakey will reace London, would you have said London would have replaced Wakefield for this year.

Its ok setting up systems but if you keep traditional P&R it can throw up things like London a club not at all equipped for the top tier in the tol tier.

Anyway there’s a thread for that

[Chrispmartha]

22 minutes ago, Worzel said:

The jury will always be out for those among us who are naturally resistant to progressives

Rugby League's media rights values have declined to their appallingly low levels as a result of the past 20 years' administrative incompetence, whilst a load of distinctly average people from West Yorkshire fiddled as Rome burned, with a succession of amateurish re-structures that didn't address the core issue. We have to make the product more attractive, and seen by more people, in order to reverse that decline. That wasn't happening pre-IMG. At least this way we have a chance of turning things around. Without it, we were on a path to part-time rugby league and a fate similar to that of the French game in the end in the long term.

If people can't see what we've got from £440k in services from IMG already, then I'd politely suggest they've no idea how much this sort of stuff costs. There was a time when clubs would blow that on a couple of expensive Aussie imports. The sport gets far better value from spending it on this.  

 

 

I think some people expect IMG to work for free or something.

Paying for experts is not a bad thing

[Archie Gordon]

59 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

That’s what club channels are for, surely?

I’d expect to see starting teams and the like but not details of the larger groups until the play offs.

I don't follow a club. I'm one of these floating consumers that is now being catered for. Or not.

For example, I've been alerted to the NRL pre-season squads in a very simple post - all very easy, all very helpful to me.

Super League seems keen to alert me to gurning players giving countdowns in days.

Genuinely on a different level.

Edited February 14 by Archie Gordon

[dkw]

24 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

I don't follow a club. I'm one of these floating consumers that is now being catered for. Or not.

Google "super league 2024 squads" and its the first several results. Same on social medua.

I'm not sure where you want these all posted for you.

 

Also, I cant remember there ever being a single squad naming thing, for any sport. Has this happened before?

Edited February 14 by dkw

[Just Browny]

£440k sounds pretty modest - is that 4 or 5 decent people working full time plus a bit of profit?

[marklaspalmas]

1 hour ago, Chrispmartha said:

Its ok saying Wakey will reace London, would you have said London would have replaced Wakefield for this year.

Its ok setting up systems but if you keep traditional P&R it can throw up things like London a club not at all equipped for the top tier in the tol tier.

Anyway there’s a thread for that

There'll be enough clubs off the pace at the dawn of the new age whenever it is. There are six top clubs and six more making up the numbers. Much better fir me to concentrate on the processes rather than artificially deciding winners and losers before kickoff

[marklaspalmas]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

They literally did give the clubs a couple of years.

A year (maybe more?) warning of indicative grading and then a further year before real grading.

Not really. It was chaotic and confusing and people still don't know how it will work.  Put the systems in place, the best 12 clubs will emerge. No need for some flawed arbitrary judging competition 

[marklaspalmas]

.

Edited February 14 by marklaspalmas

[Gooleboy]

2 hours ago, Chrispmartha said:

The grading was always going to be the first thing they tackled because they needed to make sure they have the best equipped clubs to move the game forward.

I get that it’s controversial though and obviously is going to cause controversy 

Controversial is an understatement.

[Damien]

Part 2 here:

In the lead-up to the new Super League season, Love Rugby League has sat down to learn more about IMG’s plans to revolutionise rugby league with their Vice President of sports management, Matt Dwyer, in a series of exclusive interviews.

Part one covered the unprecedented broadcast coverage Super League is about to experience this year, more detail on how IMG plan to market the game’s superstars to a mass audience and what the increase in coverage could mean long-term. That can be viewed below – this is part two, discussing the all-important gradings system and much more.

https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/exclusive-img-boss-discusses-super-league-gradings-london-controversy-and-competition-rebrand

[Martyn Sadler]

5 hours ago, Chrispmartha said:

Didn’t the BBC ‘outbid’ channel 4?

No, the BBC offered the possibility of a larger audience.

 

5 hours ago, Chrispmartha said:

I think the point of the new deal is that the RFL were able to ise the Sky broadcast games elsewhere hence BBC and SL+. This means there will be more eyeballs on the game than ever before, the RFL and importantly the clubs need to have the nouse to moneytise that.where has the 440,000 figure come from?

There certainly could be more eyeballs on the game than before and the clubs should be able to monetise that situation, although the confirmation of the deal has come too late to make a significant difference in their current financial year, which leaves them with two more years.

I've previously revealed the £440,000 per annum figure. You should pay attention.

The RFL has confirmed it to me.

The RFL paid the bill this year by 'selling' the game's betting rights to IMG.

[Chrispmartha]

1 minute ago, Martyn Sadler said:

No, the BBC offered the possibility of a larger audience.

 

There certainly could be more eyeballs on the game than before and the clubs should be able to monetise that situation, although the confirmation of the deal has come too late to make a significant difference in their current financial year, which leaves them with two more years.

I've previously revealed the £440,000 per annum figure. You should pay attention.

The RFL has confirmed it to me.

The RFL paid the bill this year by 'selling' the game's betting rights to IMG.

I hadn’t read anything official about the £440,000 per year, and I don’t read everything you write, sorry about that.

So they haven’t paid it for this year then, they’ve given them the betting rights, what have they previously sold those for?

And anyway as Ive said, should they work for free?

There’s no ‘could be’ about more eyeballs on the game, there will be.

SL has never had as much exposure with regards to broadcasting. Has there been any official confirmation that the BBC are not paying any money?

[Martyn Sadler]

5 hours ago, Worzel said:

The jury will always be out for those among us who are naturally resistant to progressives

A rather eccentric comment.

5 hours ago, Worzel said:

Rugby League's media rights values have declined to their appallingly low levels as a result of the past 20 years' administrative incompetence, whilst a load of distinctly average people from West Yorkshire fiddled as Rome burned, with a succession of amateurish re-structures that didn't address the core issue. We have to make the product more attractive, and seen by more people, in order to reverse that decline. That wasn't happening pre-IMG. At least this way we have a chance of turning things around. Without it, we were on a path to part-time rugby league and a fate similar to that of the French game in the end in the long term.

There wasn't 20 years of administrative incompetence.

The media rights value was £40 million per annum as recently as 2021, which was the final year of a five-year deal and the RFL persuaded the government to cough up £25 million to support the World Cup planned for 2021. If that's incompetence, I wouldn't mind seeing more of it.

The RFL was flat broke after the 2000 World Cup and it came perilously close to liquidation. But it gradually built up its financial strength year by year from then onwards. You can check this information by looking at its annual accounts.

The 'incompetence' came when the clubs, led by Wigan's Ian Lenagan, succeeded in their plan to oust Nigel Wood as the RFL CEO and then created what was effectively a breakaway body, wasting a fortune in the process before realising their error and coming back into the fold, but only after having effectively reneged on their contract with Sky, which goes some considerable way to explain why the contract is now effectively halved.

5 hours ago, Worzel said:

If people can't see what we've got from £440k in services from IMG already, then I'd politely suggest they've no idea how much this sort of stuff costs. There was a time when clubs would blow that on a couple of expensive Aussie imports. The sport gets far better value from spending it on this.

I do agree with you that we would be much better spending more of our income on improved marketing, including some of the work that IMG have done, rather than blowing the same amount on Aussie imports, which is why I would significantly reduce the overseas quota over time.

[Martyn Sadler]

5 hours ago, gingerjon said:

You’d have written this post regardless of what the situation was at the start of this season.

I sometimes think you must be a Russian bot who comes on this forum with the sole purpose of making me smile.

Again you've succeeded brilliantly.

[Worzel]

15 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

A rather eccentric comment.

There wasn't 20 years of administrative incompetence.

The media rights value was £40 million per annum as recently as 2021, which was the final year of a five-year deal and the RFL persuaded the government to cough up £25 million to support the World Cup planned for 2021. If that's incompetence, I wouldn't mind seeing more of it.

The RFL was flat broke after the 2000 World Cup and it came perilously close to liquidation. But it gradually built up its financial strength year by year from then onwards. You can check this information by looking at its annual accounts.

The 'incompetence' came when the clubs, led by Wigan's Ian Lenagan, succeeded in their plan to oust Nigel Wood as the RFL CEO and then created what was effectively a breakaway body, wasting a fortune in the process before realising their error and coming back into the fold, but only after having effectively reneged on their contract with Sky, which goes some considerable way to explain why the contract is now effectively halved.

I do agree with you that we would be much better spending more of our income on improved marketing, including some of the work that IMG have done, rather than blowing the same amount on Aussie imports, which is why I would significantly reduce the overseas quota over time.

Martyn, I'm sorry to be so blunt I really am, but you see everything through your immovable prism of "Nigel Wood was unfairly maligned". You feel he was an insightful strategist, hamstrung only by his failure to communicate as well as others and some irrational conspiracy of others. It was written between the lines of your original post, and precisely what I was alluding to in my response. For you to then reply with a revisionist history in his favour merely hammers home my point.

To be fair it wasn't 20 years, it was just 15. I'll happily revise that mistatement. Richard Lewis did a great job at rebuilding the sport from the nadir of 2000. However,  when he moved on in 2007 the RFL then made the mistake of appointing a classic, no doubt previously competent #2 into the #1 position to succeed him. When Wood then himself stepped down after years of mediocrity, they did the same thing again, appointing a non-strategic #2 into the #1 role, in Ralph Rimmer. It was a bit like when you make a photocopy of a photocopy. Same thing, only even weaker. That's the West Yorkshire clique, internally-focused, same-stuff-different-shovel closed thinking I was talking about.

Ever since the IMG strategy you've been negative about it (but disguised as "wait and see"), because it is an implied criticism of the Ancien Regime you were close to. 

 

[Sports Prophet]

What IMG brings more than anything is confidence.

Clubs are predominantly on board with IMG’s grading structure and other ideas, because IMG is a proven global sports marketing company. Whereas prior, if the RFL was to suggest any wholesale changes to the structure or presentation of the sport, it was met by clubs with no confidence in a body like the RFL to be either correct or carry it off.

[Worzel]

3 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:

What IMG brings more than anything is confidence.

Clubs are predominantly on board with IMG’s grading structure and other ideas, because IMG is a proven global sports marketing company. Whereas prior, if the RFL was to suggest any wholesale changes to the structure or presentation of the sport, it was met by clubs with no confidence in a body like the RFL to be either correct or carry it off.

There's a lot of truth in this. That's why things like "ability to articulate a compelling vision" and "communication skills" are critical aspects of great leadership, not nice-to-haves (re: my Wood/Rimmer point in other comments). It doesn't matter how good your plans are if you can't get people to both buy into them, and get them to lean-in and apply their own efforts in the same direction as a force multiplier. Prior execution competence and the confidence it generates genuinely matters.

The sport's growth strategy only works if most of the clubs put their own efforts in at the same time, no matter how good the framework. The IMG approach is a platform strategy "here's the vision, framework and tools, but now you go and do it".  

[Damien]

The improvements we have seen in recent months tell me that the £440,000 we paid IMG has been money well spent. The marketing, advertisements, partnerships and digital media in its various forms has been streets ahead of anything I have seen before in this country. RL is actually beginning to look professional, modern and relevant for the first time in a long time.

What they have done is given the sport a real shot in the arm and the excitement and confidence people now have for the new season is there for all to see.

[Chrispmartha]

3 minutes ago, Damien said:

The improvements we have seen in recent months tell me that the £440,000 we paid IMG has been money well spent. The marketing, advertisements, partnerships and digital media in its various forms has been streets ahead of anything I have seen before in this country. RL is actually beginning to look professional, modern and relevant for the first time in a long time.

What they have done is given the sport a real shot in the arm and the excitement and confidence people now have for the new season is there for all to see.

Look at the broadcast deals as well, I’d say £440,000 was money well spent.

[ghost crayfish]

2 hours ago, Martyn Sadler said:

 

The RFL paid the bill this year by 'selling' the game's betting rights to IMG.

Oh wow! That is a big point - IMG could make big money there, particularly given the game's seemingly only big sponsorship at the moment is Betfred! They certainly know what they're doing... 

[Dave T]

@Martyn Sadler your original post appears highly flawed. You start by making the point that we are targeting existing customers, despite even quoting the fact that IMG are focusing on new audiences through wider tv deals.

It is an impressively negative take on the whole situation. 

[Spidey]

31 minutes ago, Dave T said:

@Martyn Sadler your original post appears highly flawed. You start by making the point that we are targeting existing customers, despite even quoting the fact that IMG are focusing on new audiences through wider tv deals.

It is an impressively negative take on the whole situation. 

I would have expected such an interview to be in LE but Love Rugby League seems to have done their work a bit better in getting hold of IMG.  Does this have som set being to do with it?

[gingerjon]

43 minutes ago, Spidey said:

I would have expected such an interview to be in LE but Love Rugby League seems to have done their work a bit better in getting hold of IMG.  Does this have som set being to do with it?

Martyn's already admitted on here that he doesn't have the contact details for IMG. If you remember, he submitted his "West Wales and Wigan in the same division" mega plan to them via the Contact Us section on their website.

[Dave T]

Martyn's opinion is perfectly valid, but as he's posted it publicly here, it is well worthy of being pulled apart.

It is clear to me that Martyn has quite a strong starting position of the RFL being great and any change to that is a negative as a starter. I think that is a flawed position to come from.

I don't believe that the RFL deserves all of the criticism that they have received, but I do think it is a hell of a stretch to believe that they were doing a great job and that they didn't need major overhaul. It is absolutely fair though to challenge how it was done initially - the Lenegan/Moran/McManus coup looked poor to start, stayed poor and ended poorly.

But that doesn't mean that things didn't need to be different from how it used to be under the RFL. And thankfully, the RFL recognised this and the new model is a whole new world. Time will tell whether this will ultimately work, but there are absolutely early signs of positivity. 

Where I have an issue with Martyn's post is the bias has taken over everything else. It's all well and good to highlight the £40m TV deal and the £25m World Cup deal, they were absolutely great things - but to refuse to acknowledge what they did with that funding is silly. The Super 8's didn't hit the mark, whatever our personal preferences were, we didn't really have an amazing, clear strategy that utilised that £200m. The World Cup had many great things going for it, but it also had many bits that were quite simply pants, far worse than the 2013 tournament.

We also can't ignore the decline in income, loss of partners, and the shambolic position we have found ourselves in with England RL being isolated. Now the RFL have my sympathy with some of the above, but ultimately, these things are happening on their watch. 

We also need to stop being so worried about spending money.

[Martyn Sadler]

10 hours ago, Worzel said:

Martyn, I'm sorry to be so blunt I really am, but you see everything through your immovable prism of "Nigel Wood was unfairly maligned". You feel he was an insightful strategist, hamstrung only by his failure to communicate as well as others and some irrational conspiracy of others. It was written between the lines of your original post, and precisely what I was alluding to in my response. For you to then reply with a revisionist history in his favour merely hammers home my point.

To be fair it wasn't 20 years, it was just 15. I'll happily revise that mistatement. Richard Lewis did a great job at rebuilding the sport from the nadir of 2000. However,  when he moved on in 2007 the RFL then made the mistake of appointing a classic, no doubt previously competent #2 into the #1 position to succeed him. When Wood then himself stepped down after years of mediocrity, they did the same thing again, appointing a non-strategic #2 into the #1 role, in Ralph Rimmer. It was a bit like when you make a photocopy of a photocopy. Same thing, only even weaker. That's the West Yorkshire clique, internally-focused, same-stuff-different-shovel closed thinking I was talking about.

Ever since the IMG strategy you've been negative about it (but disguised as "wait and see"), because it is an implied criticism of the Ancien Regime you were close to. 

 

I would be grateful if you would try hard not to read my mind, or anyone else's for that matter.

Try to restrict yourself to replying to the points I actually make.

If you want my view on Nigel Wood, it is that he rescued the game from financial disaster, allowing the RFL to build a solid financial base, which is essential if the governing body is to be in a position to do anything else. He was politically very adept and an excellent negotiator. But his PR ability was very limited. I think he should have remained as the RFL's Finance Director with a much more outgoing individual appointed as CEO, although the clubs are difficult to manage as a group by anyone who doesn't understand the underlying tensions among them.

But the truth is that without financial stability, it's hard to achieve non-financial objectives in any organisation.

Richard Lewis may have had a much smoother persona than Nigel but he did two things that impacted badly on Rugby League - abolishing Great Britain and introducing a poorly thought out licensing system, which ultimately failed. So I'm not sure he deserves as much credit as you give him.

You seem to make assertions without any evidence to back up your claims.

And in relation to your final paragraph, I was never close to the regime run by Nigel Wood, much to my regret. Wood was reluctant to speak to anyone in the media, including me, which was one of his major faults, while his opponents were only too happy to.

As for IMG, I'm not negative about them generally, but I'm not a member of the IMG fan club, as many on here appear to be.

I'm happy to acknowledge the good work they do, on digital media and the deal they have negotiated for coverage in France, for example, while being critical where criticism is merited, such as some of the more illogical elements of the grading system.

You are perfectly entitled to view IMG through rose-coloured spectacles, but some of us prefer to be a little more realistic.