THERE have been continuing rumours for some time now that the NRL is considering investing in Super League.
I would imagine that if they were serious about it, their means of doing it would be to buy a majority stake in Super League (Europe) Limited, the company that controls the Super League competition.
At the moment that company has 13 shareholders, comprising the twelve Super League clubs and the Rugby Football League.
It would be very easy for the clubs and the RFL to issue new shares to give the NRL a majority holding in return for a substantial payment.
But would that be a sensible course of action?
Do we actually want the NRL to have a controlling interest in our elite competition?
My instinctive response is to say that we don’t.
How, for example, would the Australians like to sell a majority stake in the NRL competition to a non-Australian organisation?
But in the modern world everything has its price, while there is no denying that the Super League clubs are collectively facing a liquidity crisis and they seem unable to market their competition effectively to a broader audience.
And then again we can look enviously at the progress the NRL competition is making down under.
At the weekend they have just completed the penultimate round of this season’s competition.
The eight matches attracted a total attendance of 212,725 people, which is a new record for a single round of fixtures, with an average attendance of 26,591 per match. And the figure would have been even higher if some of the venues where the games were played hadn’t reached their capacity.
And the game down under is surrounded by positive stories, with further expansion likely to happen in the coming years to Perth, Port Moresby and Christchurch for a second NRL team in New Zealand. Two players from the Wallabies have jumped ship to join NRL clubs for next season.
Meanwhile the NRL’s TV audiences are rising and moving ahead of the AFL (Aussie Rules) competition, which is its big rival as the major winter code in Australia. Rugby League looks a truly vibrant sport in the southern hemisphere.
Such is its success that this weekend’s ‘Spoonbowl’ game between the bottom two clubs, Wests Tigers and Parramatta Eels, which will be held at Campbelltown Stadium on Friday evening, is already a 17,500 sell-out as both clubs will do battle to try to avoid winning the wooden spoon.
Those are the things that we can only dream of in relation to Super League.
On the other hand, we face one major problem that the NRL doesn’t have to contend with. And that is the overwhelming dominance of football in this country, which swamps every other sport.
I’m convinced that Rugby League is a far better sport to watch but such is the tribalism in football that it generates its own excitement, regardless of how appealing individual matches are.
So could the NRL improve the attendances and viewing figures for Super League matches, which would ultimately lead to much stronger TV broadcasting deals?
It’s impossible to say.
But it’s worth investigating to see whether the NRL could develop a viable plan for the development of the game in this country.
What we couldn’t accept is any desire on behalf of the Australians to simply make our competition a vehicle for developing talent that would simply feed into the NRL competition, with no obvious benefit to our competition over here.
Branding – giving off the wrong message
ONE of the things that IMG promised to work on was improving the ‘branding’ of Super League clubs.
So what does this mean?
There are various definitions of branding but broadly speaking, in a sporting context it means creating a distinct identity and impression in the minds of people who can be persuaded to follow the sport.
A branding strategy should help people identify with a club, its players, its colours, its stadium, its supporters, its history and everything else that can be associated with it.
Then there is the competition itself, which should be readily identifiable in terms of pitch markings, the style of player uniforms, the stadiums in which the game is played and the quality of presentation on TV.
Unfortunately in lot of these areas the clubs and the competition fail to get the message across.
For example, many clubs can be identified by their primary colours.
How many of you saw a letter in last week’s Mailbag in League Express from Tim Butcher, the editor of the annual Rugby League Yearbook, which pointed out how most of the Super League clubs didn’t play in their normal colours at Magic Weekend, which made it difficult at first glance to recognise who they were.
Surely our clubs should stick to their true colours, even on their ‘away’ jerseys.
Otherwise they will find themselves appealing to a diminishing audience.
War of the Roses
REPORTS are suggesting that IMG is urging the RFL to revive the War of the Roses between Yorkshire and Lancashire, which was last played more than 20 years ago and was abandoned largely because of a lack of interest.
And you will see on page 7 of this issue that Warrington coach Sam Burgess would also like to see the return of the War of the Roses.
Unfortunately I don’t think that bringing back that tired old concept would achieve anything.
I don’t think the clubs would take it seriously and I don’t think the fans would either, which of course is why it was abandoned in the first place.
The RFL is paying IMG £450,000 for its advice and if this is the best they can come up with, I’m afraid I don’t think they are worth the money.
Rather than consulting a company that seems to have little connection with the game, the RFL might be better consulting with the supporters about what developments might take the game forward.
For example, let’s start with the Readers’ Poll we ran last week.
On the page opposite you’ll see that 59.31% of the readers who voted would like a Super League of 14 teams, with 32.19% favouring 16 teams, while only 6.15% favour the current twelve teams and 2.35% would like to see ten teams.
Surely that should give Super League a clue about the direction it should be travelling in.
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