...and that is exactly how it's been done.

In Bristol we have had:

- a corporate touch rugby event
- a female only touch rugby event
- a museum exhibition
- a cinema screening
- a music competition
- a cheerleading festival
- a student rl nines
- a wheelchair rl exhibition game
- a secondary schools rl competition
- a coaching masterclass.

- a stall at the Harbour Festival and the Brisfest Music Festival
- stalls at the weekend 'make Sunday special' events
- a stall at the Half Marathon
- the trophy tour for 4 days in Yate (a small local town), Bristol City Centre, and the international Balloon fiesta.
- a stall at the 1908 Cup Schools events (400+ kids from Gloucestershire playing an annual RL festival)

We've regularly been at the two universities, UWE and Uni Bristol, with a standard RFL ticketing deal for ALL their student clubs.

We've engaged with all the local amateur RL clubs

We (I) have emailed every rugby union club (over 150 of them) with the RFL ticket offers.
We've mailed all the coaches, volunteers, rlc players and RL spectators that we have contact details for

We've staged press events at the bid launch, the announcement of the venues, the 1 year to go, the announcement of the game, the 100 days, the 50 days, the arrival of the Cook Islands, the Civic reception for the team, the raising of the CI flag, and the USA flag.

We've had viral campaigns for our local theme song, with a video I cut from other videos ([urlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTz7VXkLH0A[/url), and the footage of the Cook Island lads doing their haka at a local arts centre in Team Suits ([urlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rHGYfpaNO0[/url)

We've had a huge social media campaign, particularly by systematically building up a twitter audience (we have 1753 followers in Bristol... Leeds has 1294).

We've had local leading councillors and mayors involved at major events.

We've run competitions for stash and tickets on all the local and regional radio stations.

We've run standard ticket offers for cashback to the Community Foundations for Bristol City, Bristol Rovers and Bristol Rugby.

We worked with the Cook Islands Tourist Board to get a troupe of Dancers over... they have performed for the Mayor, at an arts venue, at a museum, and at the Bristol Rovers home game v Chesterfield last weekend, before coming to the match and performing there.

Our entertainment included a local choir, the Bristol Samba Band, our singer (NICOLE), three groups of cheerleaders, the local Police Ceremonial Guard, 'Mr Isambard Kingdom Brunel' from SS Great Britain, 7 local schools, all the schools from the RL competition, and 4 local RL clubs

The City Council bought and erected huge banners around the city. RLWC funded bus ads and bus-shelter adshel ads.
The Council also ran a few local ads, and advertised in the Cardiff programme, and put flyers and fixture cards in all the leisure centres and libraries.

S Glos Council ran library exhibitions, and presented every school with a RLWC ball

We've run press articles in Forty-20, the African-Caribbean media, local history bulletins, and in papers from the regional Bristol Post down to the doorstep-local 'Bishopston Matters' news-sheet.

In other words.... we've reached out to hundreds of different groups of people, a very few who know RL, a lot who only know union or football, and even more who don't follow any sport. We built our audience over 2 years and dozens of programmes, in the framework from, and supported by markeing from, RLWC2013. The key was, and is, to get people talking about it, to make one or two key advocates in dozens of different groups, and to get them to spread the word. We didn't spend a fortune because we didn't have a fortune to spend.

But we did get 7000 people to a RL match in Bristol.

How many tickets sold for the four QF games so far?

249,923 people have so far watched 20 games at this RLWC so depending on which church you worship at, gives an average of 12,496 or 14,748.
A full stadium tomorrow night will see the Group stages complete with the entire attendance of the 2000 RLWC almost overtaken having played 10 less games....well done to the host cities who in the main have done their bit and created the great buzz surrounding the RLWC 2013.

QF's up next, and other than the DW England game, I suspect Leeds and Warrington will sell well and only the Wrexham game could disappoint.

Looks like my prediction of 360k is going to be blown out of the water and I couldn't be happier...240,000 possible attendance from the 6 knock-out games.......I see no reason why Wembley won't sell out other than an England loss in Wigan and the Final is as good as sold out anyway....
..amended projection.....460,000

......now if only they could kick on and get these people back through the gates come February!

If the figures given for sales for the semis and final are right, then 360,000 is beaten without including qf gates. The French game tomorrow should produce a 5 figure crowd and then there should be a real panic over getting qf tickets. regular updates from the organisers should help push up sales.

They might, dependant on their location.

But the most important thing is that RL raises it's profile as a result and increases participation across the board. Getting more people interested in playing is imperative.

Many people thought the Olympics and Paralympics were a waste of time and money, slating it before it began. Just a further example of unfounded scepticism by the general (...ly clueless) public where the old adage about opinions and bum holes couldn't be more apparent.

Well done to the team involved, competitors, host towns and cities and of course the hundreds of thousands of supporters.