Except, as has been widely reported, there was another offer on the table - and the SL clubs voted to go with this one.

Just because you don't appear to understand the value of marketing or product placement does not mean it doesn't exist.

Product placement? 100 lorries out of 2,250?
What a crock of . I understand when our game has been sold down the river by incompetent leaders. Lap it up. I suppose you've fallen for the "predator" crap that Lewis came out with over the Bradford bail out?

The SL clubs voted for this in a majority so clearly they could see the value. Quite what it has to do with the Odsal deal I'm not sure - but then I don't live in an embittered fantasyland.

If you think 100 lorries worth of advertising is worth three years sponsorship of our flagship league then you certainly are in fantasy land, along with the cretins who run the game and the SL stooges that blindly follow. Judging by the pomposity of your post, you're clearly in good company.

was not the majority 4 or five clubs though.

No, you obviously live next door in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Do you honestly believe that an advert on the side/back of a wagon travelling through Cornwall or somewhere is going to make someone pull off the road, access the internet and look for the nearest and most imminent game?

Stobarts have fleets of wagons. Each club will get around 5 or 6 that deliver daily in their catchment area. every day of the week they will be on their rounds. So no cornwall for these wagons. SL will get some for promoting the game seperate from that given to each club.

Stobart have 20K or so 'stobart spotters' and their stobart fest had 8000 people attend. Would see this being tied in with Gf or magic weekend etc

There will probably be scope to advertise games at stobart depots

I think there is still a stobart programme on C5 so plenty of opportunities for tv promo there.

It is possible that stobart have agreed a deal that creates room for significant secondary sponsors - like heinz

Stobart have close working relationships with many blue chip businesses so there is potential for tapping into these contacts for sl.

also several sl clubs will probably have contracts with betting companies. these may have been lost to clubs if betfair came on board.

The RFL have a lot to answer for where is our TV money? Why do we have to pay for our under 18s and under 23s teams? plus many more. Looking at the Storbart deal it looks a complete joke to me. Its time for the resurrection of the spirit of 1873 RFL=FAIL

The Wagons will not necessarily deliver in a clubs catchment area, when we load wagons at my work we don't give a toss whats on the outside of the trailer (be it company branded, fleet branded or just plain sided) we only care for what type of trailer it is (Box, tautliner, Double Decker, Semi Deck ect). Working with tight deadlines there will be no gurantee these trailers will go where people want, won't be long before someone's moaning that there's a "St Helen's" Stobart Trailer delivering to Tesco in Warrington or something.

As for advertising at depots, we get stuff advertised at the depot I work at, don't know how effective that is, I know the Union were offloading some free Fev tickets last season, think they had 2 pairs to each home game or something, but people only took them as they were free, some will have been going anyway.

Out of all the Stobart Spotters, how many are likely to have an interest in sport, these are people who choose to spend their free time not watching sport, but spotting Wagons, thats their choice, RFL might as well sponsor RailFest in york this year, be far more people there but won't attract many if any more speccies to the sport.

As for the BetFair thing, not sure sky would have been too happy with that, they are often advertising SkyBet during the coverage, And another bookie (Stan James?) often advertises during the ad breaks in the games too.

So, the RFL have negotiated a "sponsorship" deal where people have a 1 in 25 chance of seeing a stobart lorry advertising super league, if they see one.

Except in reality, the widnes lorry can be expected to be advertising widnes vikings............................to the people of widnes!

So the lorries are going to be advertising super league to the places that watch super league!

Meanwile, Stobarts get free advertising every time the second most watched sport on sky sports is on sky sports!

Sounds like a grat deal.............................

For Stobarts!

Well done Nige! Great to see youre carrying on the good work you started at Fax!

Frankly I'm appalled at how cheaply the governing body value our sport, how are we expected to be taking seriously?

Liverpool Footbal Club sign a £25m a year deal to wear kit from a company no one has heard of and we sign a sponsorship deal for our elite competition for which we get nothing! Smart

Another masterstroke to add to his list.

Wow that has really convinced us that 'the SL clubs voted for this'.
Like they get any choice with the Fat Controller in charge? He has them like rabbits in the headlights, they dare not go against anything Uncle Nige says as he will 'get them back' if they don't like he will threaten to pull their SL Franchise or put some bad spin around about them not being well run or something that other clubs will jump on and use to their advantage in this dog eat dog world he has created.
It gets us fans split down the middle - those who believe anything they say and those of us who don't.

Bradford must be in a mess with injuries, they've handed Phil Joseph a 12 month contract, good luck to the lad he must have worked hard, but SL quality ?

they're skint!

Turned down a £750K a year deal with BetFair for this, a deal where you get no money just some advertsing space on some HGVs, great deal eh?
Oh and how does Lewis justify this?
Better a logistics business than a bookies on some kind of principle basis.

What????

The hardest nut to swallow is that the ads (and I must say, they do look impressive) only appear on 100 out of a fleet of 2,250. I'm sorry, but that's crap. It may increase later or there's an option to enhance the deal next year but right now it's a beggerman's cup of tea. But then that's what the game has become - an increasingly marginalised plaything for the rich and seemingly philanthropic. It's a charity case. If the benefactors walked away they'd have to put the game in a soup kitchen and Dicky and Nige would become Randolph and Mortimer.

And the news yesterday that SKY won't be showing a live game on saturday evenings in the footy off-season, transferring it to the vacant monday night slot. What an absolute joke the RFL/SKY combo is.
Apparently from May to August, this sport is laughable beyond joke nowadays.

Monday nights, one of the highest rating sporting TV slots worldwide; what a terrible development that Sky thing RL is the high rating product to fill this vacancy

Great for TV, terrible for supporters you know those who actually go to watch the games in the stadiums

How did we ever cope with midweek games back in the golden age?

the old floodlit trophy.

Nigel wood nearly killed off Fax. Ralph Rimmer nearly killed off the game in Sheffield. Yet we have these two clowns running and ruining the game with their cluelessness. Talk is more about off field stuff rather than whats going on it. We have clubs still being run badly and needing to go begging for help or being in administration. We have a Sponsorship deal thats worth very little and the Trailers are more an advertizement for Sky than the game-great move RFL. We have Monday Night Football- Great for families and away fans to attend. We have a Licence system that is bent and the RFL helping certain clubs over others. The Gleeson affair is getting very interesting and could see Sport England fine or stop certain funding of the RFL due to people like Rosewarne, Wood and Rimmer. I dont expect things to be perfect or everything to my liking but the game is in a mess yet Nige and Ralph are living in some fantasy world while Lewis is busy working at Sport England, The FA Premiership etc so has little idea the mess the whole game is in. Some SL supporters are in a dream world much like there loss making clubs. SL is buggered as is much of the game but they are being sold a dream and a lie by Clubs and the RFL who are not living in the real world.

Great for Sky, rubbish for the fans of those two clubs though!