How to restore the magic of the Challenge Cup (Merged Threads)

[Gerrumonside ref]

44 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

1. It will allow matches to be on Season tickets. Its no great exaggeration that attendances for many matches will double - no more Leeds vs Saints losing thousands of fans in a week, no more 2000 watching Warrington vs Wakefield. Instantly the competition looks healthier and the demand on fans to pay for one off matches is reduced.

2. We already weed out all but 4 non super league clubs anyway.

People really going to turn up to see Leeds play London in group match 6 when one team is through and the other is out?

 

[Anita Bath]

10 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Shockingly as sport becomes more professional and not blokes having a run out after work leads to the better sides winning more things in a given season...

The challenge cup is not about finding out who are the best teams in the league…that is what we have league games for.

[Tommygilf]

7 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

People really going to turn up to see Leeds play London in group match 6 when one team is through and the other is out?

 

People turn up for games just as meaningless now on their season tickets.

[Tommygilf]

Just now, Anita Bath said:

The challenge cup is not about finding out who are the best teams in the league…that is what we have league games for.

3 group games isn't much of a league, but regardless, the spectacle of one off knock out games isn't selling nowadays either till the penultimate and final round.

[Gerrumonside ref]

5 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

People turn up for games just as meaningless now on their season tickets.

We’ll see.

[Tommygilf]

14 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

We’ll see.

They do though, it can be seen for the past 15 years of fixtures at least.

 

[north yorks trinity]

26 minutes ago, Anita Bath said:

The challenge cup is not about finding out who are the best teams in the league…that is what we have league games for.

But surely better sides will tend to beat poorer sides no matter the format!

[Gerrumonside ref]

10 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

They do though, it can be seen for the past 15 years of fixtures at least.

 

An actual dead rubber group match with nothing at stake at all with possible weakened teams too will not be as well attended as a league game and I doubt TV will be crawling all over themselves to show it.

[gingerjon]

9 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

An actual dead rubber group match with nothing at stake at all with possible weakened teams too will not be as well attended as a league game and I doubt TV will be crawling all over themselves to show it.

So how does that differ in any meaningful sense from the current state of the Challenge Cup?

[Tommygilf]

17 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

An actual dead rubber group match with nothing at stake at all with possible weakened teams too will not be as well attended as a league game and I doubt TV will be crawling all over themselves to show it.

I guarantee there won't be the 1000s of drop offs in attendance like we already see in the cup now. 

Its embarrassing every year and is the number 1 reason the "cup is dying" threads exist. 

[Gerrumonside ref]

40 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

So how does that differ in any meaningful sense from the current state of the Challenge Cup?

It doesn’t fix the issue either 

[Gerrumonside ref]

33 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I guarantee there won't be the 1000s of drop offs in attendance like we already see in the cup now. 

Its embarrassing every year and is the number 1 reason the "cup is dying" threads exist. 

So a complete dead rubber match will get thousands of people attending for Group match 6 - let’s see!

[Tommygilf]

11 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

So a complete dead rubber match will get thousands of people attending for Group match 6 - let’s see!

If its on Season tickets, yeah 100%. We see that in Super League every year.

[Black Country Wire]

12 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

 

This, in conjunction with the total lack of competitiveness between the majority of 2nd division and lower sides with Super League clubs, and the desire to "get rid" of loop fixtures, is why I think the Challenge Cup will be reorganised into a 16 team group stage then finals comp in the near future.

Surely in that scenario you are getting rid of loop games in order to introduce what is essentially another set of loop games?

 

[Gerrumonside ref]

Just now, Tommygilf said:

If its on Season tickets, yeah 100%. We see that in Super League every year.

So how much extra are season tickets going to cost for these three Challenge Cup games in theory?

What value are you going to place on Challenge Cup games in particularly knowing the high likelihood the last game for many clubs would be meaningless?

Presumably you wouldn’t add them on for free?

[Gerrumonside ref]

11 minutes ago, Black Country Wire said:

Surely in that scenario you are getting rid of loop games in order to introduce what is essentially another set of loop games?

 

Agreed and this is why I’m questioning the proposal tbh.

Change for the sake of it is not going to help.

Everybody wants the Challenge Cup restored to its former glory, but how we do that is a big question and I don’t think the knock out format is the cause of the problem.

Edited May 2 by Gerrumonside ref

[Tommygilf]

5 minutes ago, Black Country Wire said:

Surely in that scenario you are getting rid of loop games in order to introduce what is essentially another set of loop games?

 

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, in the absence of a 14 team Super League, clubs need more than 11 home games a season.

Ideally it wouldn't be that way, but it is. At least this way its a different competition.

[Black Country Wire]

3 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, in the absence of a 14 team Super League, clubs need more than 11 home games a season.

Ideally it wouldn't be that way, but it is. At least this way its a different competition.

Would that necessarily make the games more appealing though?

[Tommygilf]

6 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

So how much extra are season tickets going to cost for these three Challenge Cup games in theory?

What value are you going to place on Challenge Cup games in particularly knowing the high likelihood the last game for many clubs would be meaningless?

Presumably you wouldn’t add them on for free?

Same as now, they replace loop games in the League. Added benefit that in a 16 team set up, 4 additional championship clubs get exposure to Super League level competition and environments.

Its only like selling tickets for SL teams with no hopes of the playoffs (or in recent times no chance of going down) either. Fans turn up if they are on season tickets - they don't if they aren't.

[Tommygilf]

26 minutes ago, Black Country Wire said:

Would that necessarily make the games more appealing though?

Based purely on turnout yes. 1000s more people turned up to watch Leeds vs Saints in the League than did the week later in the cup despite the latter having the advantage of a narrative and knockout.

Fans in RL go to games on Season tickets. Less fans go to them on one off purchases (finals aside).

We even see this trend in the playoffs.

[Gerrumonside ref]

4 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Same as now, they replace loop games in the League. Added benefit that in a 16 team set up, 4 additional championship clubs get exposure to Super League level competition and environments.

Its only like selling tickets for SL teams with no hopes of the playoffs (or in recent times no chance of going down) either. Fans turn up if they are on season tickets - they don't if they aren't.

So the clubs are losing league games they currently have?

I’m no fan of the loop fixtures btw.

[The Blues Ox]

2 hours ago, north yorks trinity said:

But surely better sides will tend to beat poorer sides no matter the format!

I think that is the point, we will still see all SL finals and mainly all SL semi finals but in my opinion its just more greed from the SL clubs in that the competition has essentially been made a SL competition anyway. If we are still getting the same end result what is so bad about games such as Hunslet V Wigan which might put an extra 1k on their gate, income that will help out massively at that level or say an amateur team earning a huge tie against a SL team making them money that could keep them running for a year or two.

[Black Country Wire]

56 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Based purely on turnout yes. 1000s more people turned up to watch Leeds vs Saints in the League than did the week later in the cup despite the latter having the advantage of a narrative and knockout.

Fans in RL go to games on Season tickets. Less fans go to them on one off purchases (finals aside).

We even see this trend in the playoffs.

That sounds like the Cup games are LESS appealing suggesting that if you are going to have loop fixtures they will have more appeal as league games.

[Sports Prophet]

On 30/04/2024 at 18:03, Martyn Sadler said:

You're right to point this out.

What prompted me to write the piece in the first place was someone at the RFL saying to me that the Challenge Cup is now in a state of "managed decline".

If you take that view, you may as well ditch the competition. We've seen the Lord Derby Cup in France draw just over 4,000 people at the weekend and that is ultimately the fate of the Challenge Cup if we allow it to happen.

The point is that a market can be created for major events, particularly when they already exist.

Not many years ago, most people wouldn't have imagined that NFL games could come to England and sell out.

But that now happens regularly and it's because the NFL has invested resources into creating a market for its product.

My aim in writing the piece was to create a product that is capable of being marketed and sold.

The Challenge Cup is simply too important an competition to just let whither and die. I don’t know how much the BBC pay for the rights, but this is a competition which gives RL its greatest exposure to the wider public and not just the final.

To shrug shoulders and say the Challenge Cup is in a state of “managed decline” is an atrocious perspective for anyone at the RFL to be heralding, especially to a journalist. I hope it wasn’t a senior RFL official, but I anticipate it could well have been. As far as I am concerned, that type of mindset, if widely held at the RFL, simply demonstrates how awful an administrative body the RFL are.

The CC must stay and it must find a way to be relevant to modern day RL supporters and casual observers alike.

[Tommygilf]

1 hour ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

So the clubs are losing league games they currently have?

I’m no fan of the loop fixtures btw.

To be replaced by guaranteed cup games for Season tickets