We need to get away from this mindset that clubs can only market to their postcode.

There is no reason why Wigan cannot draw support from the wider Greater Manchester area. That's an area of 2.8m people - roughly the population of Chicago.

There is no reason why St Helens cannot draw support from the Liverpool City region - an area with a population that is similar in size to Philadelphia.

The population of Leeds alone is comparable to cities like San Francisco and Seattle and there is no reason why Warrington couldn't market itself as a team for Chesire - an area with more people living there than Boston and Atlanta put together. These are serious markets, if the clubs themselves can position themselves in that way. If US TV audiences are interested in a tiny little village in Wisconsin, then why wouldn't they be interested in what we can offer if the product is right?

That doesn't mean that our clubs need to have to rebrand, but just that they broaden their appeal - something that every single club should be doing anyway.

This obsession with "away fans", and this myth that paying spectators and TV audiences have any interest in two teams fighting for the prize of being "the least crap" needs to stop.

Any club that relies on away fans for its finances really should be facing serious questions about whether it has a place in any sort of elite competition, because either they aren't trying hard enough to reach the local audience, or the local audience simply doesn't care.

The Lenagan model would retain the top supported existing SL clubs — Wigan, St Helens, Warrington, Leeds, Hull FC, Hull KR, Catalans and maybe Castleford — and ditch the strugglers by relegating them to the Championship in favour of the new French and North American clubs.

Special dispensation would possibly be given to London because of its centrality for southern development and player recruitment, and because of its usefulness as a brand name to attract corporate sponsors.

There would be an open door for future financially viable French and North American clubs, as well as a financially viable Bradford.

....no thanks. We've never had special anything and have no interest in getting favours now......if we have a money man waiting then fine, but no "handouts"......we need a fiscally viable plan!

They'll go with the same clubs they have now, and English rugbyleague will once again fall further behind the NRL and union, and unfortunately we will then fall behind North America once their clubs have established themselves and the same fools that post on forums like this will still blame wakey fev and halifax etc

You really think there'd be 2 Hull clubs in there?
Because I don't and I support 1 of them. I also doubt weather Cas (who go against every expansionist on here's argument of population, crowds and market they can appeal to). or Bradford (they won't be financially viable by then, and apologies to Bradford fans but even if they were could they be trusted due to there recent history ).

If Toronto, Toulouse whoever come up through the current system then great fair play to them. If they don't then tough try again next year. We shouldn't be putting in just cause they're nice places to go, it look's good in the papers, and they may bring better opportunities for marketing. Because they also may not.

As someone else has put, why aren't we looking at Scotland, Ireland?

The Warriors, Wolves and Saints would though.

Why will we fall behind? Why is the mindset that everything the sport tries is doomed to failure?

And let's not beat about the bush here. The sport is in this position because there are certain clubs that aren't marketing themselves well enough, that aren't growing revenue, that aren't developing travel, that aren't raising standards and aren't reaching new audiences. These are the very same clubs that are voting for things like a £1m real-terms pay-cut to our talent since 1999, which makes it harder for those clubs that do develop, grow and market themselves to keep their talent and progress.

Can you blame them for wanting to look elsewhere?

Bit of questionable comparisons going on there. Comparing the population of a county in U.K. to just a city in the USA. What are the populations of Georgia, Massachusetts, Washington and Illinois instead of just making it sound like American teams only get their fans from the city and not the whole State it's located.

Green Bay might only have relative small population but what's the population of Wisconsin and how many other NFL teams do they have there?

I still think it's a relevant argument. If Wigan Warriors can position themselves as a team for "Greater Manchester", or Saints position themselves as a team "for Merseyside", then that is a market that is comparable to what the American's have. People are saying that this won't work because Wigan is a small town and the Yanks won't be interested in that. But if Wigan can position themselves as a club that speaks to a market that includes one of the UK's biggest financial, creative and legal hubs outside London, that arguably is a market that Americans are likely to be interested in.

We're not talking about getting 2m Liverpudlians clamouring for tickets to the Totally Wicked, but what we should be aiming for is generating a basis of interest in 'St Helens' (or 'Saints') across that region. TV is arguably more important here, and St Helens can market themselves in a way that raises TV interest across the Liverpool City Region, that makes us more attractive to TV not just in North America, but in the UK as well,

Is that realistic? I'd say so. St Helens is 20 minutes from Liverpool Lime Street - there's no reason why a club shouldn't be engaging with potential audiences a 20 minute train ride away.

It's not when you look at the population of Illinois (almost 13m) compared to Greater Manchester instead of just using the population of Chicago.

I get that the scales are different, but that's the nature of comparing the US and UK in many respects. London is the only world city that we offer, and that comes in at around 8m.

But if we're looking for reasons why this wouldn't work and coming up with an argument that an American media market wouldn't be interested in a small town called Wigan that to be honest, that's fine. Firstly, because there is no excuse for a club not to be marketing beyond their postcode anyway. Secondly, because I still think it's a sizable market to offer, even if it isn't quite large enough to attract NFL TV rights. And I'd also point out that this isn't just about raising interest in the US - we should be doing this because it appeals to TV audiences here.

Whilst I agree in principle. Wouldn't both clubs have to change there name?

People in Manchester /Liverpool wouldn't be interested at the moment, because they would view them as part of them towns. And nothing to do with there respective cities. And there in lies one of the problems.
Trying to stretch the audience is good, but in the end only people who already know about the sport, or are connected to a town with a club really care. And this is due to bad marketing/promoting by everybody.

Both those clubs you mention would stand a better chance of being known should RL take off over the pond. Due to there histories and respective success.

North American teams will never get involved in a serious way unless franchising is included. P&R is not going to get any serious investors, sponsors or TV companies from overseas interested in putting serious cash into the sport. Like it or not these people will only spend money to make money, which will require certainty for more than a year (probably 3-5 minimum).

It might all end up not happening, but to be held back on the basis of away fans or some nebulous concept of grass roots support (which the sport as a whole has failed at miserably developing over the last 40 years) is to effectively doom the sport to continue its current death-spiral IMO.

What we absolutely need is real commercial nous in moving forward. No Koukash-esque promises of future investment should be accepted before allowing even Toronto into SL, but credible, warrantied commitments, and people who understand that whilst the North American teams might bring huge value to the game, they'd have nothing without it.

What I absolutely agree needs to happen as well is if through franchising we effectively freeze teams out of SL that there is either a genuine process to consider them in the future, or at the very least decent funding to enable a second tier competition to survive and thrive.

stone dead killed any approach from any "backer" currently in the mix........too many clubs think the SKY 1.8 million is the answer.......it's not!

I agree about the grass roots. All clubs should hang there heads about this. I never understood why barla clubs should not be connected to local professional clubs. The clubs should be promoting there games, build arrangements with regards season tickets (ie a choice of prices, pay more and get free entry to a Barla club of your choice, the extra going to the Barla club etc). Put there merchandise on sale as well at club shops. Just promote them (but then again I go to Barla games especially any Hull club, when I can. So I'm biased). A strong professional sport needs strong grassroots. Look at Football. And I would also make it compulsory that all SL sides and aspiring SL sides must have a reserve team.
The only thing I'd say about away crowds (which I do feel is necessary). Is would we be as attractive to TV companies if there's none, only rows of empty seats/terracing?

How do you make the championship survive during Franchising?
They've effectively got nothing to play for. And it's hard to promote/market the clubs if your effectively saying no matter what happens this season, we'll be in exactly the same spot next year, the year after.
Same with SL, if there's nothing to worry about, less games that have meaning. Marketing becomes harder. And we've seen how lazy clubs are when there futures are safe.

In my opinion p&R is essential.

P&R is only essential for a few clubs that are yo-yoing about. Most semi-pro cubs have no ambitions to get into SL, and if they did its not so much empty seats that would be the problem but tiny, ancient stadia and getting smashed on the field every week. Lets not pretend that promotion to SL is a realistic prospect for a number of CHampionship clubs. If your argument was right, how have the likes of Batley survived at all?

I'd have no problem with providing a credible pathway for clubs to enter SL in a franchising world. But whilst that would require a firm commitment from SL to allow Championship teams to get in, it also has to be based on proper criteria for entrance - financial stability, stadium quality etc.

Too often the options we look at are a zero-sum game - take money from SL and give to Championship etc. But the real aim should be to expand the pot for everyone. That means more money to spend on everything. If clubs are relying on away fans for survival, then they deserve to die.

Football and RU have P&R and they seem to get wealthy backers including Yanks.

Do wealthy owners of football clubs outside the Premier league make money? Do owners of Premier league teams even make money?

Why would there be rows of empty terracing? The expectation should be on the clubs to fill that space with locals, who provide much more financial value to the club.

Away fans have a value, but this idea that they should be the determining factor as to whether the sport expands or not is ridiculous.

Differing sports have different profiles. RL teams are relatively closely located and as such maybe there has been a reliance on any fans due to limited travel distance. If we expand the sport geographically then this is a shift in the DNA of the sport that maybe needs to be factored in. It's a consideration if not a determining factor.

If that means that the game branches out to new audience, I think it's a price worth paying. We already see a lot of opposition to the Magic Weekend which is based on little more than "I don't want to pay the train fare to Newcastle", or opposition to England games at Wembley based on "the hotels are a bit expensive".

And let's be honest here, away support is not as big a revenue stream as people make it out to be. Purely anecdotally, the away following of supporters from many clubs to Headingley in recent years is massively exaggerated. Hosting Leeds or Wigan might be a big pay day for Huddersfield or Salford, but it's a blip on the radar at the bigger clubs. Leeds probably generate more revenue selling lattes to students in a week than they do selling tickets to supporters of about half of the clubs in Super League.

Given the oft-stated opinion that the UK SL quality player pool isn't big enough to expand to a 14 club SL, how is it intended to populate the North American teams, in the 'short' term, (say 20 years) until they develop their own talent?

To be fair those Latte's are pretty good and the food in the cafe is lovely! One of the best things Leeds did was link up with Leeds Beckett. The students use the facilities during the week for lectures and staff use it for meetings etc. All of who pretty much buy something there. Good facility management is that! Unfortunately I graduated 2 years ago and I miss those Thursday's at the stadium

Sports fans love to follow their team home and away - they want their weekly fix of live sports action. Like it or not, the typical UK RL fan isn't a wealthy individual, and additional travel costs are an important factor when deciding whether to go to a game or not. International travel would make this far worse, although a lot of fans do build in a trip to France into their annual holiday plans.

Expansion to other parts of the UK hasn't been historically been successful at attracting local folk to attend games there. It's easy to say that it's down to inadequate marketing, but all businesses by necessity have a cap on their marketing budget and there's a limit to what can be done. Plus, if the locals aren't interested, then they're never going to become regular attendees. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but not make it drink, and even if you could make it drink, you can't make it like it.

If we shift emphasis to TV too much, the danger is that crowd figures could start to tumble. If a good selection of games are on TV, then why would anyone without an existing allegiance to a team spend the time and money to go to a live game, other than maybe out of curiosity or just for a change very occasionally. Due to the likes of Sky, sports followers in the UK have become channel-hoppers. Fewer people (other than fans of one of the teams involved) sit down and watch an 80/90 minute game end-to-end. If it's a one-sided or boring affair, they'll flick to other channels and watch a bit of golf, RU, darts, snooker, etc. and they'll likely do the same when the adverts come on at half-time. They may, or may not, return to watch the 2nd half depending on what else they find to watch.

I'll agree that all clubs need to do to market themselves better, both within and potentially outside their postcode area, but I think you'll find that most clubs are trying to do this. With a limited budget, it's always going to be very difficult though. This is where the likes of Toronto, and probably New York if that happens, have the advantage of large slugs of money from their owners for marketing purposes.

TV deals are important, but could be counter-productive if overdone. Success in RL has generally been with the help of rich individual investors, and how we attract more of them to the game is perhaps the golden nugget that we need to find?

Spot on,well said Sparky. Mind you,you'll just get the usual (It has to be my way) Mr Bramleyapple marketing man, saying otherwise.

They're called opinions Cokey. People are as entitled to one as I am, and people are entitled to call mine out as I am theres. That's how discussion and debate works.

I've said it before that I'm more than happy for anyone who feels that the game can prosper into a commercially successful sport by focusing on the heartlands to explain how they would do that, and convince me why I'm wrong. I'm not stubborn enough to feel that I've got all of the right answers, and I'm willing to listen to and engage in any reasoned argument. Unfortunately, that's the point where [isome of[/i those people usually go scurrying off to their hidey hole and throw the insults around.

So come on Cokey; if my ideas to help the sport are grow, to attract, develop and retain talent, and to appeal to new audiences, TV broadcasters and sponsors are so wrong, what would you do differently to achieve all that?