There is a rugby union thread in the 'other sports' section of the forum, if you wish to further discuss the RU World Cup.

Why compare the two? We all know what you are telling us. Lets concentrating on making OUR World Cup as good as it can be, and let the Union boys do their thing.

Well since the 2000 including the World Cup if you exclude games against Australia and New Zealand but include "bigger" Nations like France the average crowd against the rest in England has been 9,500.
If you include all teams the average is 20,000.

Maybe it will be double that this year, I hope so.

who cares. RU can do what they want, we dont earn any more money by being better than them, they dont earn any more by being better than us, we arent each others benchmarks.

We arent staging a world cup to be like RU, we arent staging one to compete with them, we are staging one so that RL fans can watch RL nations play RL and make as much money as we can whilst doing it.

as long as the WC makes a bit of money and everyone enjoys it, then it has met its minimum targets. IF we make money, we spend it toward the next one, and make a bit, and so on and so on until we build it to something bigger and better.

What has that got to do with anything?

Rugby League fans. Being negative about the sport since 1895.

Excellent post. I think we need to stop comparing it to RU as they are light years ahead of us internationally.

Lets compare it to previous RL world cups. The last World Cup held here was a disaster. Massive financial losses and a final attended by 40k. This time around we have sold 35k in under 4 months and the other games are selling well.

Lets compare it to the successful 08 WC. It was well attended and made a great profit. Gutter fax, you said this Aussie WC was a huge success and we won't beat. You said you expect the opening ceremony, semi, fina and all England's games to sell out. But didn't the Aussies only sell the final out?

You keep mentioning average attendance, but if we get more fans attending, but less average attendance over more games, surely this is a success?

Just out of curiosity, how many tickets were available 8 months before the last World Cup, and how many were sold?

Maybe that will give us a better indication of were we stand in relation to the last competition.

That figure is a little flawed.

For a true comparison vs the 2008 World Cup, you can't simply add on 10 games at the 2008 average (for the whole tournament). Afterall, both tournaments have the same number of Finals (1) & Semi-Finals (2), the extra games are coming in the group stages and quarter finals.

You've basically included figures in your average for games at the Suncorp and the SFS and applied them to Derwent Park & Spotland.

Nail. Head. Hit.

For mine, I have bought my ticket for the final as one of a group of 10. Im planning on attending at least another 7 games, again probably in a group of 4/6 ish, and will hopefully be organising a bit of a club day to the semi final.

But as a tight RL fan, I

a, want to keep my money in my pocket for as long as possible,

b, dont want to pay a transaction fee every time if i bought tickets sporadically as some folk on here have mentioned.

c, im trying to give my friends a chance to buy tickets at the same time for games at the John Smith/ DW etc. so that we can all sit together,

The article cited states that the vast majority of tickets bought so far have been bought by people that have never attended a major RL event before. When the rest of us decide to get ours, ie mid October, then is the time to break out the doom mongering, surely.

All in all, there are alot of positive signs for the 2013RLWC, especially in comparison to the 2000 RLWC.

Firstly, I'd say they do earn more money than the RFL.....not because of them having a better game,but because of them having a much better management in place. An example of this would be the 6 England internationals played at Twickenham in 2013 that will attract a minimum of 480,000 fans paying on average ₤65 a ticket...₤31,200,000 in ticketed revenue alone.Their domestic competition has similar attendance figures to Superleague, smaller TV audience, but a ₤5,000,000 a year naming sponsor.

We can only pray that the RFL has at least learnt one thing from the IRB over the last few years and that is the importance of FTA coverage.........ITV offered less than Uncle Rupert last time for 2011/2015 rights, but the IRB took the hit for the benefit of the sport in general.....IMHO, whilst Sky has been vital to the creation of Superleague as it is now, it has also prevented true growth that could be achieved by FTA coverage.

I thought that this thread was about RL World Cup ticket sales. It isn't. It's been taken over by a couple of overgrown schoolboys who want to score points against one another. Grow up.

Actually,if you re-read the thread, you'll see that I wasn't the one who first mentioned the other code.....I am simply answering the questions put tome and debating their values
BOT
The ticket sales to date are a worry IMO......I am happy to post a retraction/apology on here if the RFL managed to get 300k to the 28 games, but from a professional standpoint, the "extension of the early bird" offer, together with the declaration of 40,000 unsold seats for the final is not good.

Pursuing a strategy of FTA, and absorbing the reduced income thusly is all fine and well, but when the RFL are releasing development officers due to reduced funding, the opportunity to exploit extra coverage and an uptake in interest is going to go unmet surely.

It's a double edged sword. Yes, getting a few bob extra from SKY for the broadcast rights is a good thing, but there is a massive difference between 200k viewers on PAY TV and over a million on FTA. Also, there is a lot of stuff competing for attention in November next year.....wendyball, the other lot as well as the RLWC 2013.......having games on the BBC would be more beneficial in the long term IMO.

My advice would be to wait for the desperate sales pitch offering massively discounted World Cup tickets throughout the months of October and November.

Always a worry that one , I really dont understand the way they work , what exactly does ' extending ' a cheap offer achieve ? , it gives out completely the wrong message

But they don’t earn that money by beating any benchmarks set by us, and we don’t earn money by beating benchmarks set by them.

We are two different games. We don’t exist only in relation to RU, they aren’t the right to our left. We don’t need to measure the success or failure of what we are doing in relation to them. The success or failure of our World Cup should be judged on its own merits. If it makes money, if people enjoy it. It is a success and we build on that. Our benchmark is the RLWC in 2008, not the RU WC in 2011 or 2015.

Believe me, I appreciate the quality of some of the work done at the IRB and RFU. For some reason, at some time, everyone in RL seems to have forgotten the game exists at a professional level to bring in money. This is why I can never understand why someone would be against the expansion of club world challenge, or when RL fans moan about the Magic Weekend, or play-offs or cost of tickets (Which if anything are too low).[ They seem to want a fully pro game but someone else to pay for it. And yes FTA is integral to us, as a game and I expect that we will see the BBC as primary broadcaster for the WC and I think an expanded World Club Challenge on FTA every year, would be the biggest boost possible for the game in this country. But the success or failure of that isn’t in relation to RU>

Why? What will that achieve for me?

I want the RLWC to be a success, I want to see it, I want to see it next time as well so I don’t mind contributing to the cost of it. I hope they do make money off my money, I hope it is put back in to the game. The cost of the tickets aren’t onerous they are pretty fair, Im happy to pay full price.

This is just boring now, people who come on these pages without a single positive thing to say about the game. It's not about people 'like me' not wanting to hear anything negative said about RL because yes we know it's not perfect, but this constant putting down of the sport without a positive balance is tedious.

When people say wait for discounted tickets are they wanting tickets for free? PNG v France is £10 for adults. That is very cheap already. Also if you can get to both games at Craven Park they offer buy one get one half price so PNG v France and PNG v Samoa is £15.
Absolute bargain! To go and watch any SL club costs more than that.

Agree with this, tickets are cheap enough. No need to reduce prices.

Ticket sales will be so so.
English fans do not support International Games that well, for a whole different set of reasons neither do Australian Fans.

Yeah, you're right, we should pack in trying to improve the sport and just give up now. I'll fetch the cyanide pills.

This is correct.

World Cup tickets will have to be offered up for sale again at discounted prices (or even given away) or stadia will be embarrassingly half-empty or more throughout the tournament.