Boring day at work and reading through the RFL Operational Rules, found these nuggets:

Focus Matches
The Club Development Manager will work with each Super League club to identify a focus game for the season. The aim of the focus game is to drive the match attendance a minimum 2.5k higher year on year for the same fixture through a collaborative marketing campaign. The RFL will make available additional funds to support this focus game campaign on the proviso that the club matches the resource and budget contribution.

Themed Rounds
In the 2012 season the RFL will introduce a number of themed rounds (number TBC). Through a collective approach by working with selected other organisations, the themed rounds will raise the profile and overall public awareness of the Super League. It is therefore imperative that all clubs work together to support and promote this round in conjunction with the other parties that come on board.

At present the only confirmed themed round is Sport Relief which will take place on the weekend of 23/24/25 March. Further details on this themed round and the unique opportunities available to each club will be confirmed in due course. Clubs will be required to adopt centralised imagery and messaging as well as adapting match day
presentations to comply with the themed rounds.

Attendances below 5,000
If for any reason a club can foresee any individual match attendance falling below 5,000 spectators, they should highlight this to the RFL Marketing department at least one month out from the fixture. The Marketing department will then work in partnership with the Club to explore all avenues to drive this attendance above the 5,000 threshold.

Good find!

How do London stand up in light of the third one though? They didn't even get 2,000 at the weekend?

Versus the same three fixyures last season, Londons attendences have increased by 10% or something i believe.

SL clubs should be proffessional enough to sort this stuff out for themselves , this type of initiative should be done for the Championship clubs , the ave attendance last weekend was under 1,000 , including Leigh playing at home , Fev at Fax , and derbies at Workington-Whitehaven and Doncaster-Sheffield

in the Championship section it says:

Promotional Activities
If you are implementing any promotional activities or special arrangements for any game which we can help promote on our website please let the RFL Commercial Department know at your earliest convenience. The competition sponsor may partake in any promotional activity they wish at a game in their respective competition. The RFL will ensure this is approved with you at the earliest convenience.

Yes , and ?

They will put it on their website , well woopy do , so Northern Rail will provide what ? exactly

Good stuff. Wigan have been doing this since 2009 though on a pretty large scale. Been wanting other clubs to take on similar initiatives.

I love the sound of the sport relief round. The RFL could be onto a winner with that one. I just hope they market these events properly.

Yes, damn the RFL for trying to raise attendances and awareness.

Putting something on their website ? , are you being serious

Which round would that be, loads of stuff people could do. And plenty of stuff the clubs and RFL could do too

Hmmm. You do have a habit of changing the argument don't you. Did you even look at which of your posts I quoted or just froth at the mouth and immediately start typing?

We had the State of Mind round last year too (the last one of the regular season I think).

Good idea, should help to improve attendances.

Since most clubs have their official charities could they do a round where every team wear a specially designed kit for their chosen charity (Help for Heroes) at Hull FC, then auction them off for these charities?

Saints did this last year with a "Pink Vee" kit in aid of charity.

themed round.........heritage round maybe?

Some clubs did last year

Warrington with the cammo kit
another pink kit

But yeah spread it out like aussie have the pink week for breast cance.

Would put the message out there that us rl lot are a good bunch

I'm all for it. Raise awareness and possibly some money for a great cause while at the same time gaining publicity and hopefully increasing attendances for TGG. Get the high profile players involved, recording promos for the weekend.

I don't recall them getting a sub 2,000 crowd last season? I'll take your word for it though.

Quote ="TFC"I don't recall them getting a sub 2,000 crowd last season? I'll take your word for it though.'" Ive just taken that statement from the Broncos board. Im assuming that they have had better crowds for the earlier fixtures. Quote ="gutterfax" 6,894 so far, is 11.7% up on the corresponding fixtures last year.'" taken from viewtopic.php?f=27&t=520267&start=10

Quote ="TFC"I don't recall them getting a sub 2,000 crowd last season? I'll take your word for it though.'" Ive just taken that statement from the Broncos board. Im assuming that they have had better crowds for the earlier fixtures. Quote ="gutterfax" 6,894 so far, is 11.7% up on the corresponding fixtures last year.'" taken from viewtopic.php?f=27&t=520267&start=10

Hull did with Pink and Black irregular hoops, and Rovers did with pink shorts and socks for a couple of rounds.

My thinking was more of a themed round where it all happens, so Wire would have their cammo kid, pink for breast cancer, yellow kits for Marie Curie etc.

Leigh have announced they will be wearing a special edition kit on Good Friday in support of Wigan & Leigh Hospice

I like the idea of an official Charity Round in which every team is involved, with plenty of fan-fare and publicity, rather than the individual and somewhat isolated efforts we've seen thus far.

London have a template e-mail that one of the office admin staff just edit every month according to the fixture list;

[iDear RFL,

We would like to make you aware that in the next month we forsee that both of our fixutres against Bradford / Catalan / Castleford / Huddersfield / Hull / Hull KR / Leeds/ Salford / St Helens/ Wakefield / Warrington / Widnes / Wigan (delete as appropriate) will fail to achieve a gate of 5,000.

Please take whatever measures necessary to try and reduce the embarassment of our attendances.

Many Thanks

London Broncos

Ps. Do you have any inflatable dolls we could put in seats to look like supporters?[/i

Let's not let this turn into a Starbug "let's moan about the RFL/Championship/everything" thread.

Focus Matches I'm guessing is on the back of Wigan's "The Big One" campaigns. Hull used to do "Party in the Park" at the KC, which got 19,000 against Bradford Bulls in its first year. I think this is something we should be doing against the likes of the current "big four" and possibly Castleford (closest team after Hull KR and usually bring a few to us). Think we've got Leeds at home on the May Day Bank Holiday weekend on the Saturday on Sky, so that allows for a good day long event.

Themed Rounds have been suggested for years. Heritage round obviously makes the most sense. A charity round is also a good idea. Things like camouflage kits (Help For Heroes), pink kits (Breast Cancer Awareness), flesh coloured kits (Everyman men's health), spotted kits (NSPCC), green kits (Macmillan Cancer Support), multi-coloured stripes (Unicef Africa), and I was going to suggest a kit made from fur for the RSPCA but I think it would defeat the point! If every team picks their own charity, the awareness they could generate could be substantial, especially if they did it at say the Magic Weekend.

Attendances below 5,000... well, I reckon London will need that for EVERY game this season. Other than London (obvious), Crusaders (not in SL anymore) and Salford (in a new ground now, so hopefully not as much of an issue), the only other two teams to dip below 5,000 were Cas and Wakey (both once, and against Catalans). This could hopefully be something to help them against clubs bringing a low away support.

I hadn't posted since yesterday afternoon!

Obsessed

Wigan do the focus game for the 'Big One' where they try and push ticket sales.

The State of Mind round will be confirmed shortly and I also believe there are a couple of sponsors running themed rounds; Heinz being one of them.