No worries.......it would take a bright spark to set it off........something you won't find in these parts





So, what you're saying is the reason the RFL can't get the cash you believe it deserves is because the fans numbers aren't there.....how is that anything to do with the OST network or the RFU?


Australian RL fans in London have been asked to come and watch the London ESL club and have not turned up.....ask them to support their country whilst overseas on the other hand and you will get a different response. Your average ANZAC will pay to watch their country.......but not a bunch of guys they have no affiliation with and who they will have forgotten in 8 months time when their visa's expire.
Warrington and Leeds based RL fans will be spending their cash on following England (in theory)....do you reckon they will also fork out for games they know the result to before KO involving teams they have no affiliation with? Do you expect hoardes of Anzacs to pay stupid money on trains to watch their teams hammer countries or will the plough into the nearest walkabout and spend their savings on grog?




My existance as an advocate (more vocal than those paid to be so) of Londons RL team? My existance points to nothing......I am a marketing professional and as such, I call it as I see it. The RFL are crap at marketing...they get it wrong far more times than they get it right and as usual, the flatearth society will attempt to blame anyone and everyone other than the RFL and the fans......



BTW...where I went to school and what games I played and at what level have no relevance in this thread other than a shoddy attempt at point scoring......I expected more from you JD






But they will when Australia are playing in Warrington?
The RFL are compounding the error from last year.......The RFU hosted the Australia v Babas game in London......why do you think that was?


Never said anything of the sort. Of course the owner of the club spent money promoting his team.......are you insane?
What I did say was that there was no evidence of Public Schoolboys influencing their companies marketing and sponsorship teams to sponsor Union and not League......I asked for evidence, but you'd rather play the fee paying school card........




I was bitter, but I got over it....unlike the majority of RL fans with their attitude towards the bigger code





Wembley gates are designed to attract attention to the game, the club and generate, if possible, more revenue than they would have got for the 6,500 at Watford the game would have attracted.
Proof of the attention being won can be seen in all the drooling over the "record" crowd......the club will have (finally) made a profit and may well get a few extra fans to the next game back at Watford.....

Interesting stance by some on here with regard to Sarries and "what's in it for them?".

66,675 people rolled up to watch 7 games in the ESL this weekend.......yet RL fans try to belittle a single game of Union that got nearly 17,000 more fans through the gate, pages and pages more press coverage and considerably more TV exposure........
.....of course the 2,268 fans at The Stoop should have commanded more coverage......it's a conspiracy I tell thee....

I think people are more upset when they see a crowd of 5,000 at Newcastle getting s full page in the Guardian, while a crowd that breaks a 38 year Warrington record isn't even mentioned.

Why?
not sure about you, but if pushed, I would describe the average guardian reader as grammar/public school educated, left leaning, inverted snob, middle class on a decent income with a green tendancy........not really your RL demographic!

Rugby Union is in the public psychey......ask your average man on the street who kicked "that" drop goal and he'll know....ask him who Jason Robinson is and they'll say he's a union player who scored a try in the RWC final.........as I continue to repeat, but am ignored by fox mulder and co, the Guardian as well as the rest of the press and media in the UK and globally, will print what they believe their readers want to read.........becaus that attracts advertising revenue.

5k at Newcastle is over twice what we got at the stoop.........and the BBC took over 14 hrs to get our match report up and when they did it was tiny.......it's a simple fact of life that a team in England that attracts 80k to international matches in the capital city is going to command more attention than one that gets 11k in a small pit village!
[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/17526708[/url

I suggested lack of support is one [ipart[/i of the problem...the OST is another.


Obviously not or the Wembley dbl header would have sold out.


So prolly better to have the bulk of the games in stadia within easy reach of where the majority of support is, yes?...maybe the fella from Man City does know what he's doing and is trying NOT to repeat the cluster from 2000.
Just a thought like.


...must resist urge...



Sorry if my point came across wrong, I wasnt actually having a dig at you gf...go back and re read Him's points about the importance of being in schools.
We've had a similar conversation before about the difference between suppresed and banned.


lol, of course it has relevance...we were discussing education. You are a former public school boy who gained a lifelong interest in union after playing it at school...not sure why youre playing for sympathy?


Well Im doing me best to agree with your points.


Because the arfu are skint and needed to maximise the income from the autumn internationals would be my guess, so they played it were the union audience is?....amirite???


Dont make me go quote mining gutts!


The 'owner' being a former public schoolboy whos best mate at school would become chairman of the rfu, does fit the description...lol, gutts has been caught out again...self righteous indignation in 5...4...3...2...1..




[size=50the answer is yes btw, i cant even get tags rightsicon_lol.gif [/size


Fee paying schools tend to play union..you should know that gutts, you went to one (as did MrsD btw)


What were you bitter about gutts?

Remind me again exactly what the OST and the RFU did to prevent the remaining 40,000 seats at Wembley to be filled?


20,000 + seats were sold to addresses in the SE and London. Aussies become very patriotic when overseas.....they will follow their country, but not a club they have no connection to....they are, in the main, here for a year...so why would they?


The Guy from City had no say in the scheduling of matches...he came on board only recently. Australia v Fiji at Loftus road or the Stoop would get a better crowd......god only knows what the attendance at Thormand Park will be



That said, as he single handedly made City the club it is today, maybe he allocated games before he was employed........using his super powers (and a few million of some Arabs cash)





It's what seperates us from the animals....the power to think.



AND

No, go ahead. My existance doesn't prove "hims" posts to be correct........I am an ex-public schoolboy who has an interest in most sports, but because one of those sports is the other code, I am branded.
FWIW, I played Gaelic Football to a higher standard than I ever played Rugby and was the first pupil in my schools then 150 year history to play for his county as "the ban" on English games, although lifted, actually still existed.
Given I was born in London made this more incredible........I have never been one to fit into a stereotypical pigeon hole Joe......don't make the error of thinking I am an upper class toff......those on here that have met me know differently





him says that Rugby gets better coverage across the board based on the demographic of it's players, fans and governing body, including their education. I say this is unproven gash that gets rolled out as an excuse for the failings of the RFL............
83,000 at Wembley, regardless of if they were paiud to turn up, is something that the RFL can only dream of and no amount of bitching about money, education or simplistic social pigeonholeing is going to change that.
[size=50
Rugby League was supressed in the armed forces.......it wasn't banned. It wasn't on the list of approved sports......that's not a ban, it's supression![/size




Try harder!!



The ARFU are skint and yes, The south East has a good record of attendances of Union games......but it's also because there are more Australians living there than in say, Warrington or Leeds......
BTW....when England RU took games on the road to Old Trafford and Huddersfield they sold out......maybe because they knew their MARKET and Targeted them....



Please do. Regardless of how you want to try and twist what I said, the fact that Sarries owner marketed his clubs game at wembley has no connection as to where he went to school or the fact that the head of the RFU was a school mate.
Rusty Crowe is an actor and owns a RL team.........David Gallop is a big girl......surely theres a conspiracy there



There are around 2,500 independent schools in the UK, which educate around 615,000 children, just over 7% of all British children up to GCSE level. This figure rises to around 18% of pupils aged over 16 for A-level and Uni entry level.

82% of the kids in the UK over 16yrs of age don't play Union using your argument........IT'S A CONSPIRACY i TELL THEE



....I turned down the RFL when asked if I'd consider working for them/Quins to promote the game and increase crowds at the Stoop.......Then when my circumstances changed and money wasn't as important to me, I applied for the Marketing Managers job at Quins RL and got knocked back. Strangely, I speak to the club on a weekly basis now.....maybe it's because I am a safe distance away (12,500 miles)





Back on thread

The RFU would pay the same page rate for all media as the RFL........it's just that the RFU get a volume discount because they actually market their game.
80,000+ at all their internationals at Home, gimick games like the London double header at TW2 and the Sarries Wembley game, as well as the conduct of its players when on tour or at World cups all keep the game in the news........

The RFL get 11k for an international, can't half fill a stadium for Magic weekend, get just over 50% of wembley filled for the best 3 teams in the world, award a world cup game to a country with no professional league (Ireland) to be played in a Union heartland (Munster)

............the list goes on.

2 Rugby World Cups, 2 years apart........which one will grasp the attention of the country most?
Union will and it has SFA to do with the 7% of kids attending paying schools from the age of 10.........



Given the BBC will get to show a RLWC game or 2, but not one RWC2015 game, surely they will remove the Union tab on their site.........or, will they keep it there because it's what visitors to their site want?
SFA to do with where anyone went to school

This is the heart of the matter. Saracens spent a great deal of time and money (full page ads in the Metro etc) promoting the Wembley game and clearly had a discounted ticket policy to get the attendance required to grab the attention of the media/public

They achieved this and very well done to the them

But the next point is not so clear yet. Will they attract any more fans to the next game in Watford? Only time will tell but the gates that the London clubs have enjoyed at the Twickenham double headers have not led to increased gates at Watford and Wycombe as far as I can tell

As for the profitability of the event – I have no idea if 80k plus at free or discounted ticket prices will lead to a profitable event when you consider the outlay of the marketing campaign and the staging of the game itself. Will this become public I wonder

The Wembley games are an event - much like the NFL ones. They are marketed as an event, a chance to say "I was there" rather than on the basis of what will be on offer on the pitch.

Going to Watford on a wet Saturday in December to watch Saracens play Newcastle in a kicking contest isn't an event, and as a result is much harder to sell.

That's the challenge facing the "London" clubs.

There's nothing stopping clubs actually going and doing some promotion themselves or contributing towards it for the sport. I've been saying for over ten years now that with all this money coming into the sport from SKY there should be a central marketing team which is a resource not only for the sport but for individual clubs i.e. a professional team that can offer advice/support on effective marketing techniques etc. A centralised resource in the same way that other branded franchise businesses provide infrastructure for their businesses.

If we believe the Stockport fan who is posting in the Other Sports thread there were no free tickets (this time) just very, very heavily discounted ones

...and like you, I would like to know how many tickets the premiership sponsor bought – they really wanted the world record attendance for a club rugby game...and even failure hasn’t stopped them claiming it.


Andy, assuming the development by Sarries of Barnet Copthall gets the local green light, would it be feasible for London RL to go back to their Crusader roots? I’m assuming Sarries would be interested in a paying tenant?

I know of at least 10 people who went to that game for free. Was a cracking game though.

Listy...as many will tell you, I rarely paid for entry to the Broncos or Quins RL games, but I was counted as being there all the same.

Something Wigan have been doing for four years:

The Big One Events.
ITV Adverts.
Annual Community Day (Local business buying up whole North Stand tickets).
Recommend a friend season ticket schemes.
Scrum Ticket Offer - Each season ticket holder can bring 6 friends to one match for £30.
Take a mate for free scheme - Each season ticket holder can bring 1 friend to an early home SL game for free.
Group Tickets - various discount for large groups.
Regular radio adverts and large billboard posters around tow on forthcoming games.

Our Marketing Department is probably up there with the best, but there's no reason why all SL cubs couldn't implement all of the above without it costing a fortune.