How about minimum standards like: decent toilet facilities (including running water), HD CCTV (capture mugshots/incidents of unruly fans) etc before demanding minimum capacity. Not all clubs can even achieve the basics atm.

Indeed. Are these published anywhere?

Do they still apply?

I would guess not since plenty of SL clubs have grounds that seem rather below par.

Rugby Union has gone from 8518 average to 15065 average in 15 years. They only have one league winner each year same as Rugby League.

The clubs outside Super League that could average 10000 are Toronto and Toulouse.

Before SL you would have been hard pushed to find anyone that would say Bradford could've got an average of well over 10k but they did it. I reckon plenty of clubs could do it if they had the marketing expertise and a budget to throw at it.

Compared with football the cost of sponsoring Super League is minimal. Yes football takes up a lot of sponsorship but that may not be the case forever as platforms diversify in the internet age. At present most Premier League teams make so much money from TV deals that they could give tickets away and still make a profit. It reminds me of the South Sea Bubble or the Tulip craze and is being driven by development in previously poorer parts of the world. The suggestion that we should roll over and die must be refuted. Returning to semi-pro status would be the end of the game. Other sports earn more in sponsorship than we do largely because our public profile stinks. Hopefully expansion clubs like Toronto might help to change that. Accepting the status quo is as bad as giving up. I do not watch St Pats often and if that is what we can offer as the pinnacle of our sport we may as well give up. As for the equalizing everyone down argument it is a non starter. We need to even everyone up to the level of the best practice teams otherwise we really will be competing for participants with the RNLI.

exactly. The idea that Rugby League cannot get more in sponsorship due to Football is absurd.

RL won't generate more sponsorship because the advertising industry has changed to make it incredibly cheap to reach the audience that we have to offer. One of the reasons why we are so attractive to bookmakers is because they are largely prevented from accessing those cheap forms of digital advertising.

For many football clubs it's the same story. Huddersfield Town and Burnley are appealing to Asian bookmakers because advertising gambling is banned in large parts of Asia, and they can't advertise on many digital platforms in the UK because they don't have UK Gambling licences. These companies aren't paying huge amounts of money to circumvent those restrictions (I believe OPE pay about £1.5m to Huddersfield Town).

Missed my point all together! I am not talking about equalising down. just making the point that our sport as most sports that are not of interest to the vast majority of the worlds population or the mass market in the USA or Asia can not get the type of TV revenue we need to pay full time players or make the profits that will bring in investment. We are a small niche market who on the whole are watched by people who are not in the highest income groups that the advertisers are courting. The only thing in my opinion that will make our sport entertaining is for equally matched matches with tight results at whatever level you choose to watch. Wether that will help to spread the sport is anyone’s guess, but getting the game spread wider & more people playing the better. If people don’t like watching games that are not played in super stadiums by highly paid players then we are sunk anyway.

RL is fe-ked because of its fans jealousy and lack of vision. We attract a wealthy benefactor then spend the remaining years of his/her tenure slagging them off, despite the millions they have put in - that really encourages the next guy.
Image is critical and an ageing fan base, decrepit half empty stadia and giving tickets away/on the cheap places our product in the bargain basement for income - unless we can get a huge tv increase we will not change this perception, Hearns or not.

5k minimum capacity.

2k seats for Super League clubs.

[url=http://www.rugby-league.com/operational-rules-2018/#p=425Operational Orders Page 425[/url

Isn't the whole point the game needs t attract and retain new supporters. Has research ever been conducted as to why it fails to do this? New people go to games but often don't return - why? Are they bored or is it for other reasons?

My football supporting friends have said one of the reasons is the sport messes around with the structure of the league on almost an annual basis. Top 5/Top 8 playoffs, now we have middle eights, million pound game. Too confusing and too much chopping and changing for those with a mild passing interest to even think about getting into it.

I have heard this many times but then I think back to when I first went to a game as a ten year old never having seen team sport played live or on TV (well over 50 years ago) I had no idea what a league was, the rules of the game or who Hull KR were? I am not even sure I knew it was rugby of any kind. What I do remember was the excitement when a break occurred a try was scored ar a big hit made, I was hooked for life. Maybe life was simpler then but I had no idea where my team was in the league if they were a good side or not just that from then on they were my team. What we should be doing is getting as many people through the gates as we can especially young kids to feel as I did back then. As a quick thought I remember three or four of the lads from school I went with & I don’t think many went again much so I would like to know what percentage of first timers are hooked & what kept them coming back that might help the game understand what it needs to do.

double

Oh Buddy......how long have you got?
It's only useless in your eyes because it paints them in a better light than League, but the reality is they have gone from an average of 5k in 1998, to an average close to 3 times that in 2 decades whilst in the same period we've gone from 7k to 8.5k...but yeah, it's a useless statistic


...here's another useless statistic.....Harlequins RU v Northampton Saints, December 30th 2017 attendance 77,825......that's more fans for a regular season fixture than attended 11 home games at either Salford, Leigh, Wakefield, Huddersfield or Widnes ALL SEASON in 2017.....useless stats eh....aren't they just terrible at underlining how poor we are at marketing ourselves....here, try this one for size....the first Heineken Cup final in Union saw 21,800 people watch a French and Welsh team play in wales...the 19th and last one saw a French and English side play in Cardiff with 67,500 watching.....bloody useless these stats.
Union may well be as sick a puppy as we are in terms of finance, but everywhere else they are at least relevant on the UK and European sporting stage...

Other reasons...regardless of the romantic ideal of some, RL fans are rough and gruff and working class folk.......not a bad thing essentially, but not aspirational middle class Britain that we all believe we've become. £90 a ticket to watch Chelsea screams "I am worth having".....£10 a ticket to the CC Final screams we are cheap and nasty.

Quite simply, it's an attitude thing.

The point game up here last week or so that Michael Carter said that the short notice of the Super Eights makes it "impossible" to sell the event, yet between the S8 fixtures being announced and Wakefield's first home game, there were 16 days. Sorry, but it is not "impossible" to sell an event in 16 days, it is just laziness. One of the posters in that thread said that, even though they often buy tickets online, they hardly see any email communications from the club. That's just one example of a poor attitude that's rife across the game.

In those 16 days, Wakefield (or any other club for that matter) could have really gone to town with the marketing and messaging - this is the business end of the season, they had a chance to upset the champions-elect, and one of the game's biggest talents was coming to town. They could have really pushed the boat out to enhance the matchday experience, to put on an event (hell, maybe even run a beer festival or something to appeal to people who maybe don't know much about the game) and make that game the place to be on a Thursday/Friday night, or a Sunday afternoon. They had 16 days to hammer the email database, 16 days to go through their CRM system and find those customers who could be tempted back, 16 days to run some targeted social media ads and sponsored content, 16 days to get players visiting schools, 16 days to hammer workplaces and 16 days to hit the amateur clubs. None of this is expensive, none of this needs Eddie Hearn and none of this needs the RFL to do it for them.

But no, despite the fact that part-time clubs like London Broncos managed to do it, apparently that's all "too short notice".

Ageing fan base... I go the the HJ to watch Wire and there are loads of young people in attendance, LOADS! And we won’t be the only club where that’s the case.

Decrepit stadia... Headingly, KCom, Langtree, HJ, DW, John Smiths, AJ Bell, Gilbert Brutus are all fine stadiums and with a bit of work so would Craven Park be... Cas have an old stadium but it’s always full so it looks good anyway

Half empty stadia... this is where we fall down. But we look better than every NRL game in that giant 90000 stadium in Sydney with 12000 fans in there every week. But compared to RU we do look empty. (It would help at Warrington if the cameras looked AT the standing stand as that is always full)

Spot on........... What Carter doesn't like is the chance of finishing 9th but being relegated....... The way Wakefield celebrate 8th spot is an embarrassment to the sport..... Survival should not be seen as succrss

Tell that to every Premier League, Championship, Lg1, Lg2, ANY football competition in the world when a team secures safety from relegation...

We are not a wealthy sport. Giving 1.8 million to teams to survive is not a luxury we can afford...... And it's not just wakey..... Salford and Widnes are in there along with Huddersfield......

There are only so many places in a league system and somebody has to be in every place, and with the player pool we have it doesn’t matter which club that is because it’s the same players playing for whoever makes up the league.

London are doing OK in the 2nd tier and are developing talent..... Their kids have been really impressive over the last couple of years.... Fax have 2 sides...... Clubs can produce players if they aren't threatened with relegation...... But the likes of wakey will spend the 1.8 on survival...... Widnes look like they've thrown in the towel this year..... Watch them prosper in the 2nd tier and develop more local Players

Occasional cheap tickets are fine, but in isolation they are not the answer. Whether it’s Camel racing, tug of war or Britain’s got talent contestants, to attract people who do not normally go to rugby games to attend, it needs to be an event with additional entertainment and the event needs to be marketed to get the word out.

This is taken from an old news article. Yes camel racing is a bit daft, but it’s sure to be talked about and it made the newspaper sports headlines (free marketing)

Saracens' hopes of making Wembley stadium a "home away from home" this season have suffered an untimely blip after stadium authorities banned the club from staging a camel race as part of the entertainment at Saturday's Premiership Big Day Out against Northampton.
Saracens' eventual goal is to replicate the huge attendances Stade Français have attracted in Paris with similar reduced-price ventures. The majority of tickets for the game are on sale at £10 for adults and £5 for children and the club's long-time backer Nigel Wray predicts the club will attract a crowd in excess of 90,000 within three years. "Over 10 years our average crowds have generally flatlined at Watford at around 8,500-9,000," said Griffiths. "If we can bounce an extra 3,000-4,000 out of Wembley to our game against Gloucester on 27 September, we start to get some momentum. Viewed in isolation it could be a loss-making exercise but you can only assess crowds over a whole season." In the camels' absence, entertainment will include a performance by Diversity, the winners of Britain's Got Talent, and a tug of war competition.

Can you imagine football doing something as stupid as having a major event at a stadium that this incredibly difficult to get to and giving fans almost no time to organise their tickets and travel. They may as well have played the Champions league final in a war zone. Oh wait.