JONNY DOPSON supports Bradford Bulls but also supports Manchester City. Aged 24, he has regularly attended both clubs since the age of 10. He grew up near Bradford and got into Rugby League through playing it. His first Bulls game came via a free ticket he got through an RFL/Bulls summer training camp. He was hooked thereafter. 

He also got into football through playing it, but a much younger age. His City link is a family one and he has had a season ticket since he was 14. 

In this article he writes about the opportunity Super League has as elite football becomes increasingly commercialised.

ONE recent weekend, my two boyhood loves were playing.

Both in the elite league of their respective sports. Both meaningful.

One cost £92. One cost £20.

One felt like global entertainment. One felt like a ritual.

That gap says something about where both sports now sit – and where Rugby League has an opportunity.

Going to the Etihad used to feel like ritual. But success changed the texture. Ritual became event. Event became premium. The backbone of the club became redundant. We’re no longer the scaffolding holding up the club – we’re an aesthetic feature used to market the club on social media.

Premium came with conditions: drastic yearly price hikes, tedious fan-to-fan resale systems, attendance thresholds – even loyalty is transactional now.

At the time of writing this, I’ve come down with the flu. We have a game tonight – I should be recovering. If I don’t go, I risk losing my season ticket.

I’ve sat in that seat since I was little. My block has seen me cycle through various phases – stupid haircuts, bold clothing choices. I’ve watched them change too: scrawny teenagers becoming parents, neighbours battling illness, some made it through, some didn’t.  

The community has not disappeared. If anything, the growing distance between club and supporter has pulled fans closer together.

The block I sit in has never felt so alive. Conversations now stretch beyond adjacent seats to rows behind. Weekly in-jokes travel through the stand – the fella who’s always booed for being late, the guy whose ‘Come on Ciddy’ shout is met by sarcastic chants of ‘I’m C-I-D-D-Y, I know I am, I’m sure I am’ and if we concede before I’ve had my ‘lucky Bovril’, it’s apparently my fault.

And when disputes flare – over pricing, policy, priorities – the response isn’t fragmentation but consolidation. Protests have fostered a siege mentality.

The disconnect isn’t between fans. It’s between fans and the club.

What changed? The simple answer is money.

The Premier League’s broadcast deal is worth more than £10 billion. For clubs like Manchester City, television revenue dwarfs what comes through the turnstiles.

City generate roughly £7 million per home game from broadcasting rights alone, compared with around £1 million from season-ticket holders.

The financial centre of gravity has shifted. The supporter in the stadium is no longer the financial backbone of the club.

In that context, restricting new season-ticket availability makes sense. Why sell more seats at roughly £35 per match when those same seats can be sold for two or three times that?

Super League feels like the opposite.

Say what you want about the system, but when IMG gradings were introduced, supporter behaviour mattered in tangible ways. Attendance figures and social-media engagement were part of the criteria.

As a Bulls fan, I could genuinely say that turning up and engaging helped push the club up the gradings.

In elite football today, the strongest sense of community runs horizontally – supporter to supporter. The relationships in the stands remain intact, sometimes stronger than ever.

What has weakened is the vertical link between supporter and club. The community still exists, but it increasingly operates alongside the institution rather than within it.

In Rugby League, the connection still feels intact. The crowd generates atmosphere and feels like an extension of the club itself.

It is not uncommon for Super League clubs to showcase junior matches at half-time or invite local children and teenagers onto the pitch. The game feels connected to the community around it.

At elite football grounds the interval is more carefully staged – a club legend on the big screen, a few Oasis songs, then back to the spectacle.

There’s also the small matter of the sport itself. Rugby League is, and was quite literally, built for spectators, relentless phases, collisions every set, momentum swings every few minutes.

Modern elite football, by contrast, can often feel like territorial patience – possession recycled, shape maintained, moments of brilliance separated by long spells of control.

For supporters in the ground, Rugby League rarely drifts. The action is constant, the stakes immediate. In an era where attention is harder to hold, that intensity is an advantage.

Participation is not missing from football as a whole, just at the elite level.

I know supporters of Premier League clubs who hold season tickets at lower-league sides. Some become genuinely invested. For others, it’s more like a way to simulate belonging – a substitute rather than the real thing.

Football loyalty is inherited. It’s something many of us are born into. That fierce tribalism is not easily transferable, and in my view it’s part of why football is so deeply embedded in our national culture.

People who only follow football struggle to imagine another sport feeling the same way.

Rugby League, though, carries that same intensity – in some cases, more so. The towns define themselves by it, the rivalries run deep, and the crowd still feels like the club rather than a backdrop of it.

As the Premier League’s commercial ceiling rises, it inevitably leaves space beneath it.

Instead of trying to compete with that ceiling, Super League should recognise – and exploit – the space it leaves behind.

That opportunity is not about replacing football. Nothing will replace it.

But as football becomes premium entertainment, Super League has the chance to position itself as a participatory sport – affordable, tribal, and visibly shaped by the people who turn up each week.

Super League offers what football increasingly cannot: density, fierce tribalism and genuine participation.

The towns still define themselves by the clubs, the rivalries still carry generational weight and the crowd still feels like part of the institution rather than an accessory to it.

It offers what the lower leagues in football often do – closeness, tribalism, and community – without asking supporters to abandon their tribe.

There is a danger, though.

In trying to grow the sport, Rugby League could end up chasing the very model that has created this gap in football. If Super League pursues the same path of escalating prices and corporate spectacle, it risks breaking the very connection that makes it different.

The opportunity only exists as long as that relationship between club and crowd remains intact.

I’ll still go to both. I’ll still love both.

One is the pinnacle of global sport – spectacular, polished and increasingly expensive to participate in.

The other still feels like something shared.

£92 buys you spectacle – £20 still buys you belonging.