.... whilst you concentrate on DECIMAL point scoring over attendances v % capacity, their comp is still 88% full and ours isn't...and that's what creates media, dictates TV deals and makes them seem bigger. Skew the stats whatever way you want if it makes you feel better, but the reality is that 91,000 more people watched a Quins home game over 11 matches than watched Leeds over 11....the number for Saracens is 40,000+....Bath, Leicester, Northampton and Wasps are also more popular it would seem.....how many of them are on the M5?





Downtrodden? WTF?? Of 24 top flight clubs in either code his club is 11th in terms of attendance and his stadium averages 46% capacity......rather than blaming everyone else, why not fill the stadium or at least half fill it? Christ...WASPS moved to Coventry and in a few years they average 19k.......were they downtrodden at Loftus road or in High Wycombe?

Does young Adam really believe that there's a snowballs chance or Perez arriving with bundles of cash to save to sport?



The only people who can save the sport are the marketing people at our heartland clubs. Get the locals back into attending before you expect a Lumberjack to embrace the sport....

Not every guy running a SL club can be as good as Gary Hetherington. Kept us up and around the same avg attendance figure for nearly a decade whilst the likes of Hull, Wigan and Wire are a few thousand down for where they were 5/6 years ago. Done so even without the modern facilities of those other teams stadiums and a South Stamd that was condemned over 10 years ago and loss of Bradford which was at one point getting up around 20k attendance. Obviously drop this year due to the two main stands being built but will be looking upwards from next year.

COMMUNITY MARKETING......to be fair, Wigan seem all over it too. Wire and Hull are in the comfort zone but need to step up...... everyone else MUST TRY HARDER

Hull KR have seen a steady increase for the past 3 years of season ticket sales including our year in the championship. The average attendance however did drop for our season in the championship as we didn't have the usual derbies or the targeted games for increased attendance that we've had in SL. We are moving in the right direction and hopefully we can carry on increasing our attendance and growing the brand.

Actually I agree with your points about the onus on clubs marketing their RL, rather than expect overseas clubs with mass wealth getting on board being the solution. I'm not sure what will fix RL long-term but your comment made sense

Actually, Rovers are very active in the local community. Have a tie in with 2 schools & the 6 form college. Have just recorded records sales In merchandise. And as posted before have a good record in season tickets.
This despite having 2 clubs in the same city. And useless public transport to and from the ground.

Part of the problem is Thurs & Fri games, as people who don't live in the city of there clubs, work, rely on public transport (I'm all of these), just can't go. And it's harder to get back going. Especially as there's games on TV to watch.
For me to go on a Friday, involves having to get a B&B as I can't get back. This obviously affects attendence both for home and away fans.

How do you expect Halifax and fev to get 7k crowds playing the likes of Dewsbury and Oldham when wakefield v salford huddersfield v widnes does not even get 4k these days

hudds v widnes attendance 5253 when last played in july

Bath has a similar size population to Halifax........Bath fill their ground 11 times a year......find out how they do this and try to emulate it!

Never forget. I run Rugby League. It will be done my way

Regards

The Sleeve

Just for you Maurice....oh and downtrodden Adam Pearson. The results of a recent "yougov" poll are in!
[urlhttps://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/01/10/what-most-boring-sport/[/url

Meanwhile....in your soaraway scum
[urlhttps://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/5307521/massive-changes-coming-in-rugby-league-heres-13-things-sunsport-wants-to-see/[/url

Unfortunately for many on here (and other forums) reality doesn't strike a chord. Simply because they (and TBH I) believe that RL is TGG they think that everyone else has the same view. Until the reality of how we are actually not that 'big' the sport will never really expand. As I've already stated I expect the 'coup' that is obviously coming will just demonstrate that some egos are bigger than the game actually is in the UK......

This has been the #1 and in many cases only marketing strategy used by many clubs since the start of SL. I refer to it as the Kevin Costner strategy...."if you build it they (sic) will come".....as the averages at many clubs with 125 years behind them show, sticking posts in the ground and announcing KO times isn't a viable strategy......

Leeds Carnegie (3rd in RFU Championship) struggle to get more than 2,000. Bath are in the Premiership, and have been for a long while. Fax (and Fev etc.) would clearly get bigger crowds if they were in SL. It's not equitable to suggest that teams need to have SL level crowds before they get there.

Fax have a new board in place for 2018, and do engage with the local community. They don't have a big-money backer though. They also tried (and failed with) some marketing ideas using the extra funding received from their first visit to the middle 8's. The new board do seem to have their "sensible" heads on, which does mean spending within available income.

Marketing etc. is great if it works, and generates more income than it uses, but becomes a bit of a money-pit if it doesn't come off.

8 Seasons of SL for Halifax.....seasons averages/capacity v SL averages v =#FF0000Bath Averages/capacity
5,298/9832 6,571 =#FF0000 ?
5,330/9832 6,997 =#FF00007,282 8,200 capacity
5.668/9832 7,280 =#FF00007,400 8,200 capacity
4,483/9832 6,638 =#FF00006,973 8,200 capacity
5,882/9832 7,901 =#FF00007,664 8,200 capacity
4,911/9832 7,526 =#FF00008,048 8,200 capacity
4,152/9832 7,677 =#FF00008.047 8,200 capacity
2,977/9832 8,514 =#FF00009,706 9,800 capacity


It's non-negotiable. If you don't market, you won't increase crowds....being clever isn't the same as spending loads.
[urlhttps://www.hrsb.ca/[/url
Give every one of these schools 100 tickets to sell for 15 quid a pop.......let the school keep a fiver from each sale to go towards stuff they need.....10,000 tickets to sell....if 10% do it, then you've sold 1,000 tickets at a tenner a head and it's cost you the admin fee......nothing else. The PR of Fax giving 5k to local schools would be handy too.....
....it's not brain science or rocket surgery......it's just hard work liaising with 100 schools sports departments, meeting, greeting...etc.

Giving free tickets to schools is something that has been going on for as long as I can remember by at least the 2 closest clubs to me. The major flaw in getting schools to sell them for £15 is that walk up admission last season for juniors, certainly at Fev, was a third of that!

Where in any of what I posted did I say 'give tickets to schools for free'? I said get the school & the kids to sell them.
Also, I am not suggesting we sell the little mites the tickets, but that they are encouraged to go and sell a book of 10 to their dads and their dads mates and in doing so, raise £50 for the school.

I've been to Fax but only as far as the Shay and back, so I don't know it that well, but lets pich a school at random.

North Halifax Grammar School....1,000 pupils between the ages of 11-18.
Call Mr Fisher and ask if he's be interested in a scheme by which his school has the chance to receive a cheque for £50,000 to go towards anything they need...maybe towards [urlhttps://give.joinos.com/north-halifax-grammar-school/product-design[/url
If the head master is inclined to agree, then each pupil is allocated 10 tickets to sell to their immediate family, friends etc. If 100% are sold, then the club has just shifted 10,000 tickets and the school picks up £50k.

Each ticket sold by the way is actually a receipt for a ticket with a few questions on it...like name, age, email or actual address and mobile number which is handed in at the box office in return for the ticket......you then call/write to these people, ask them if they enjoyed their match day and ask them if they'd like to come back........

The whole thing is scale-able and can be reused....... and I can testify that it works!

Exploiting and using young children to do your work for you....lovely moral idea. Maybe ask them to clean the toilets post match and they get into the next game for free.

Bath also play in the top tier & have done for decades. Have a history of trophy wins, and are regularly around the play offs. And don't have a well supported football team in the town (Bath City get what 300?).

Oh, and there's also International RU what 9 games a year. Most on BBC. So people might watch that, and decide to try the local teams to see players they've seen on TV.

They and Gloucester are also the biggest teams between the Avon & London (and there's only really Saracens in London know). Where as Halifax has roughly 10 or more clubs within 40 mins of them. And more than 10 football clubs. And football really is taking over the sporting universe lock stock and all.

The comparison between Bath and Halifax isn't the fairest one, but I think the argument that clubs aren't marketing themselves correctly, and that attendances should be higher across the board, is absolutely fair.

We can't just keep stamping our feet and complaining that football and union have an unfair advantage. It doesn't wash. Most people, when they're looking for something to do at the weekend, don't think about that.

What all clubs (and the league as a whole) really needs to do is look at what they can do differently, what they can do that nobody else is doing, and what they can do to create something that people are really going to enjoy that they can't get elsewhere. It's what us marketing s call the "value add" or, if you want an even more tossy-phrase, the "purple cow".

Bradford and Keighley did this. They created an event, they created a buzz, and they made it so that they were the places to be on a Friday night / Sunday afternoon.

I don't necessarily think that "Bullmania" or "Cougarmania" is the right way to go now - it's probably a bit dated - but look at how we've moved on since then. We have clubs who think that "marketing" is simply throwing around cheap tickets and undervaluing the sport. We don't create "events" around our high profile fixtures, never mind all of them (perhaps with the exception of Wigan's "Big One" promotion), we have cubs that massively overvalue 'away supporters' as an audience segment, and clubs that still don't understand how modern marketing tools such as social media and ecommerce work. I guarantee that there are clubs that haven't even started thinking about how they are going to protect their marketing strategy from the new data protection laws that come into force in May.

Should Halifax be getting bigger crowds? Yes, but so should anybody else. It isn't enough for Halifax to aspire to get the crowds of Huddersfield, because Huddersfield should be aspiring to get the crowds of St Helens.

The same applies to sponsorships. We aren't just competing with other sports for sponsorship, we're competing with every other advertising and marketing channel. So what do our clubs, and what does this sport, offer to sponsors that they either can't get elsewhere, or is much more expensive elsewhere? That's the line of thinking that the clubs need to take.

Agree with every word.



The sport is in a real rut at the moment from where it was 10 -15 years ago. It's not a coincidence that we had the simplest and best system with 5 team play-off and 1 up 1 down back then. The constant jigging of the system and ridiculous unregulated licensing really hurt the sport.

I believe some clubs have become lazy in marketing. We used to worry about our players not being recognised in the non-heartland areas. Now we worry about them being recgonised in the heartlands. Tom Johnstone is one of the most exciting up and coming players in the game. Yet if i printed a picture off and showed it around Wakefield, would 50% of the population recognise him? (Not picking on Wakey, they're one of the best run clubs at the moment. Only using them as an example as they have one of the brightest talents in the game. The game as a whole is at fault)

The sport is crying out for a Peter Deakin who masterminded BullMania (which as you say is outdated now) but some stuff can still be used. Just trying to market an individual player would be a start. For example, as a young fan growing up in that era, i remember the Bulls putting a young 21 year old kid called Robbie Paul at the front of everything they did. Not your traditional on-field leader like a Jimmy Lowes, Graeme Bradley, Brian Mcdermott etc. But Robbie, who every time he got the ball, people got off their seats. Electric pace, one of the best steps n the league. They made him captain (even though he wasn't necessarily the leader of the team on the field) They did away with the traditional no 7 shirt for scrum half and gave him the number 1 shirt. Why? because number was the bets, 1st place etc. Robbie was the face of the Bulls. As someone who grew up in that era, every kid at school and my local team wanted to be Robbie Paul and most people in Bradford knew who he was even if you didn't follow RL as he was all over Bradford in the local paper etc. I believe the sport and clubs can do the same with the likes of George Williams, Tom Johnstone, etc.

I think the RFL have tied to do something by giving the ambassador contracts to Johnny Lomax etc. But i haven't seen a single media glimpse of Lomax.

Unfortunately with Ralph Rimmer looking like he could replace Wood (who's expertise media handling included stating how a Bradford fan hadn't been to a game in a decade, had now purchased a season ticket for the first time, due to the RFL getting new owners after we had been liquidated







) As someone who had a Christmas from hell wondering about the future of their tam 12 months a go, i can't tell you how angry that comment made me. Talk about insulting the intelligence of fans!

There are risks with building marketing around the players themselves, but Bradford certainly made it work. Even things like the player nicknames, whilst cheesy and something that non-Bradford fans would cringe at, worked to get people excited. People didn't go to see Lesley Vainakolo, they went to see "The Volcano". We just don't have that now.

Of course, the problem comes when you don't have the most marketable players (because they leave, or their talents wane) and you need to find that next hook - that'ts what Bradford didn't do.

I think the sponsorship thing is key as well and if you look at what we offer to sponsors, we're lightyears behind.

Big companies aren't satisfied with paying for a handful of pitchside hoardings that start looking tatty by the middle of the season. They want full pitch length interactive digital hoardings with animated messages - something that we offer at a whopping three clubs. They want on-pitch branding - something that we can't offer at a lot of our grounds because football clubs won't let us (we've only just started super-imposing logos). They want more interaction with fans and players, they want new ideas, they want big events where their brand gets media exposure and perhaps most importantly, they want tangible ways to measure the impact. Can we honestly say that, as a sport, we offer that?

We dont have the players anymore to build the marketing around them

Regards

King james

Of course we do - every club has at least one player who will have a sufficiently interesting and engaging story, on-field persona and showreel to use for marketing purposes; and the sport has sufficient celebrity fans to provide some impetus. What's lacking is the expertise, imagination and resource to actually do it properly and consistently. We got close with the Extraordinary Rugby thing, but that fizzled out.