Quote ="wrencat1873"If the sports' audience is getting smaller then, it's more important than ever that we keep in touch with as many fans and possible new fans as possible and having the sports official website in such poor order is just mickey poor.
Can you imagine is all businesses did the same.
It's like Tescos not offering cornflakes or milk on their on line shop.
Not the end of the world but, their customers may just go elsewhere.'"
I agree. Digital properties should be a major asset but they aren't being properly utilised. Whether that is due to lack of resource, lack of skill, apathy or whether it's a conscious decision to focus on certain areas and audience segments, I don't know.
One of the difficulties the RFL / SE has is that the website does try to do a lot of things, and I'm not sure they know the priorities of those "things". Is the website a sales and marketing channel for SL? Is it just somewhere to put press releases? Is it somewhere that is there to develop the community game? Is is somewhere for people to read about match official appointments and disciplinary judgements? Is it supposed to be a video and multi-media platform? Or is it supposed to be the go-to place for original content? It's trying to do an awful lot, and not doing a lot of it very well.
By comparison, the websites of the NFL or NRL are much more focused on their approach. NFL.com is about fan engagement, about exclusive content and about video streaming that generates ad revenue. The NRL is similar. Either today or yesterday, there were 104 pieces of content posted to the news section of NRL.com - whilst that's probably skewed by Origin, it's still a huge amount. However, the level of resources that go into those websites (particuarly NFL.com) are enourmous - much more than the RFL/SLE could ever undertake with its current income streams - and the commercial value of that content would be much lower. The RFL/SLE are also somewhat hamstrung by a TV deal that doesn't really work for digital (they're not the only sport in this regard).
Again, I think a lot of that comes down to this lack of idea or clarity about 'audience'. It's the most important word in any sales and marketing approach but I don't think the RFL, nor most of the Super League clubs for that matter, could provide a meaningful description as to who their audiences actually are. Without that, it's very easy to make the wrong decisions.
