So when you buy your season ticket you know the date and time of every home league game?

How many people do you think didn’t buy a season ticket in October-January because they didn’t know whether they’d be playing at home on the weekend of the 7th of September or the 14th of September instead?

Bit unfair to have a go at Wakefield and compare them against the likes of Leeds, when you consider the resources of both clubs and especially the fact that Leeds is by some distance the biggest City in SL, which team has had also the most success, with a huge backer too boot. They obvlously have the resouces and the number of employees behind the scenes to be ahead of many other teams when it comes to marketing the side.
No doubt Wakefield can improve in this area and have done in practically all other areas of how the Club's run, in just the last few years under Carter. But for you to continually pull mainly Wakefield up seems a bit of an agenda tbh.
Leeds themselves could and should do better considering the size of the City you sit in. As well as other well supported successful Clubs with big backers like Wigan and Saints etc. But I suppose Wakefield's an easy target compared to say Hudds for example with it's modern ground and rich backer, who could afford to employ plenty of marketing men to do a good job for them.

I'm not comparing anyone to Leeds. You did that by yourself.

What I am saying is that is wrong of Carter (or any other chairman, CEO or owner) to use the structure as an excuse for his clubs commercial success (or lack of).

When you can't even rank in Google for the thing that you publicly claim you're struggling to sell, it's an indication of how hard you're trying to sell it.

There were no hissy fits, and it was about fifth from a different structure not a top5.

Just look at St George in the NRL. They had a easy game against Brisbane, are full of confidence and now play a beaten up Souths who had a mommoth of a game against Melbourne. Is StG beat Souths they will feel full of confidence, form and good flow against a team who hasn’t had a game for two weeks and may have lost their flow.

I’m not saying St George will do owt in these play-offs but finishing 5th is the best way to get the the GF for me in that format for me.

It's quite reasonable actually.

Any club that can't plan a marketing campaign and launch it the second the fixtures are confirmed shouldn't be in Super League. Any club that claims they can't sell corporate packages with 15 days notice shouldn't be in Superleague and any club with a sub 5k home attendance average shouldn't be in Superleague.
Michael Carter has bigger problems than flogging posh nosh at a fortnights notice.....sub 5k gates to start with!

Agreed, Salford, Widnes and Wakefield out.

So easy that ONLY Leeds managed to reach let alone win a GF from 5th (or the similar 6th spot) in 6 seasons.

I did not, and it was a decision totally based on the fact i have ended up mussing the majority of the 8’s games over last few years as i plan my other hobbies/ holidays other commitments around the full fixture list, so this year thought sod it not worth it, and i will not get another season ticket if the 8’s are not scrapped. I know several other peaple for a fact who work shifts etr have done the same.

But you're quite happy to buy one despite the fact that the day and time of KOs are often changed for Sky's benefit after the fixture list has been published?

Yes because if i know i am going to the game that weekend it does not matter if its Friday Saturday or Sunday, and its like only happens now and again anyway, and it has never affected me.

confirmed loop fixtures are back due to poor crowds for super 8's (which are just still loop fixtures)

The biggest issue with the way it happens now is that you have no idea if you are at home for a 7 week period, the majority of that time is the school holidays. People cannot wait until the fixtures come out for the final 7 games before booking holidays so just have to wing it and hope that they aren't missing a home game. Inevitably, they will therefore crowds will be down. At least this way we know whether we are at least home/away right up to the end of the season making holidays easier to plan and hopefully crowds will suffer a little less.

Although you are quoting Carter for using the structure as "an excuse" for his commercial success, he's probably bang on the money.
Whatever you think of the guy, he certainly knows where every penny is made or lost at Wakefield and if he says the structure is harming the clubs commercial income, I suggest that he's right.
Could Trinity do more, undoubtedly but, he is still right and when you look at the Super 8's, particularly this season, it's a pretty tough sell for the clubs in 5th - 8th and without checking all attendances, it isn't just Wakefield that are losing out, hence the new format.

I am certain that this time next year we will be congratulating the chairmen for their far sighted and wise leadership. I expect the fans to flood back to the rejuvenated Super League and all clubs will be achieving 10 000 averages. It is good to see that they have identified the reasons for Rugby League's problems and have made changes to address those problems rather than tinkering at the edges. They could have just gone back to a version of what has been tried before and failed. At least they have not decided to create a fixture list that gives an advantage to certain teams over others each season with an unbalanced fixture list.







just visionary.

Whether indirectly or not there are mentions of both in particular during the course of this year when you go on about marketing a club. Like I said, you continually pull Trinity up but hardly a mention of other better financed and stadia clubs are brought up, so what am I supposed to take from that? how do you think it comes across over the past year or more?

Do you know how many staff Trinity has at its disposal, especially compared to Leeds or Wigan? it's literally just a handful of non-RL backroom staff to do everything at the Club.

I completely acknowledge that Trinity and most other RL teams need to improve this side of their business and make sure things you pointed out, like being top on the Google index for relative parts of the clubs they want to sell is a start, but it's not as if it Hospitality isn't relatively well advertised, it just happens not to index well on a Google search for whatever reason.

It just seems to me that Trinity is a very easy target for Leeds fans especially for whatever reason and a few posters go out of their way to pull them up when they could quite easily pull up several other Clubs but never really do.

He certainly does and it's probably the reason why the other SL owners all got him to analyze what money RL was getting, when this process started months ago and whether we were getting value for money for it and if it was being used in the best way possible etc.
He talked about it on RL on RY or proper sport or whatever it's called nowadays a couple of times earlier thisn season and got quissed by Caplan etc about it.

Carter is undoubtedly good at what he does. If you want a bean counter, he's your man. But going back to my original point, as an accountant he should know as well as anyone that correlation is not causation.

If we could say with certainty that Wakefield's hospitality offering was still relevant to the needs of the market, that it was attractive to clients and if the club were selling it as hard as they can through modern and relevant sales channels, he'd be speaking from a position of strength in claiming that the S8s are the reason he can't sell them.

But a very quick Google search shows that isn't the case. It's therefore only right that his claims get called out.

I will more than happily call out Leeds or any other club, but Gary Hetherington is not publicly on record as saying that the league structure is the reason why parts of his business are not performing. Far from it. Carter, on the other hand, is one of the more vocal of a group that is.

As for the number of staff at Wakefield, I've no idea who works there but I do know that in both sport and various other lines of business, small marketing teams with small budgets achieve a hell of a lot more than most RL clubs seem to. Things like basic SEO, digital marketing and ecommerce and eCRM (something a Wakefield fan called out on here) are all things that do not néed big teams of marketing experts with a massive budget.

All RL clubs, Wakefield and Leeds included, have to decide whether they see the development and marketing of their product as a cost or an investment. If they decide the former, that's up to them, but nobody show owe then any sympathy for the consequences of that and they should not be blaming others for things that they should be getting right.

Is that because the super 8 format was championed by Hetherington. I'm having a pint to celebrate his loss.

And voted for by many others. Despite common folklore, GH had no more influence than any other SL chairman. He had one vote, the same as the other 11.

And as far as his comments on other clubs using the eights as an excuse, I have a strong feeling that he won't be proved wrong.

Like Elstone says, the pressure is on now. Any club that is still playing in front of poor sub-5k gates, or has to resort to raffling off sponsorships as if they're a bag of meat at the working men's club next season only has themselves to blame.

What is Leeds average attendance in relation to the population of Leeds? Less than Wakefield isn’t it? Utterly embarassing and no wonder Hatherington is treated with utter contempt by everyone else

Regards

King James

I fail to see how that's relevant to this discussion but anyway, have at it.

I think Leeds can and should be doing more in key areas. However, it's probably something that the club is addressing given that it recently recruited / advertised for a marketing manager focused on new fan acquisition. Instead of blaming the structure, the club is proactively addressing the issue. That's the big difference here.

But let's not pretend that population size isn't a red herring, because you know it is. The population of Leeds is much more transient than other parts of RL land (how many students / professionals move from elsewhere in the country to study or take up work opportunities in Castleford or Wigan?) and the Leeds leisure market is much more competitive - there are lots of things you can do in Leeds on a Friday night for £30.

Like I said, Leeds aren't beyond criticism - not least this season - but instead of blaming others for their problems, they're being proactive about addressing them.

Isn't Wakey the biggest city without a football team ergo the rugby team have a monopoly on the populace if we're sticking to this "everyone within the city should be at the game" nonsense? BTW I don't live in Leeds, am I still allowed?

Elstone can say what he wants , who will be replacing any of these ' under performing ' clubs ?