Both.

Leeds do targeted emails, local radio, social media, mobile billboards. I’m not saying they couldn’t do more, but they do some marketing.

I'm not calling out any club in particular here. All clubs are guily of under-selling the sport to different degrees, but the game between Leeds and Castleford at Elland Road demonstrated that the sport can sell an event when the host club (and to be fair, Castleford did their bit as well) can be bothered to do it.

But it's just frustrating that whenever the debate about marketing the sport comes up, the focus automatically falls on the RFL when it really should fall on where the blame actually lies - the clubs. Like I said, Bristol probably had zero support from the RFU and zero support from Premier Rugby, but they went out themselves and did nothing that any Super League club shouldn't be able to do. Just look at Bristol's social media presence - it is literally full of content and it's getting tons of audience engagement that (admittedly based only on the evidence of one game) is translating into ticket sales. In the last 24 hours, the only Twitter post from Widnes is an advert from their official gumshield sponsor. That's the difference - in one code a lot of the clubs [ican[/i be d, and in the other a lot can't.

1. During the 2017/2018 AVIVA Premiership, London Irish played 11 "home games, none of which got below 4,000. Their Lowest gate was 4,457, which puts your "Tumpesque" and therefore false claim in the correct light.
5,502 - 6,188 - 7,538 - 7,775 - 10,019 - 4,457 - 5,250 - 15,274 - 7,848 and 7,628 were the declared crowds at Reading in their relegation season, delivering a true seasons average of 7,748. To be clear, that puts them ahead of Saldord, Wakefield, Huddersfield and Widnes in terms of regular season attendances, whilst putting them 150 behind the 2017 SL Grand Finalists, Castleford and only 270 or so behind the hoards of HKR!



Let me get this straight

Because Bath, Quins and Sarries took games on the road and created an event, you think their attendances shouldn't count?


Quins got the biggest gate of either code that year for their Boxing Day bash, Bath got 61,000 for their visit to the capital, whilst sarries got 50k and Newcastle got 30k...all to regular seasons where they decided to make an "event" and their marketing department delivered!
To be clear. Bath took 5,000 fewer to TW2 for a regular season game than HULL FC and Wigan got for the 2017 CC Final


Let's remove the twice counted double header and the "events at Newcastle, London and Twice Twickenham then....just for you.
1,901,353 is the declared season attendance prior to play offs. 22 rounds of 6 games gives us 132 games....divide the 1.9 million figure and we get 14,404....but it looks like those nasty Union folks have counted the double header.....so let's remove that figure....1,901, 353 - 56,532 = 1,844,821/131 = 14,082.
The other event games at Twickeham (2), London and St Jame's total 224,208 so let's rip them away too and we have 1,844,821 - 224,208 = 1,620,613/127 = 12,761.

Now, I'm not sure about you, but that's not a drop of 3k....it's a lot nearer half that figure.

I'l leave you with 2 thoughts here Easty.
Firstly, only in RL could someone find a way to slag off clubs who manage to put on successful events, because it makes them feel inferior about League. Yeah. We all know that the Unionistas play dirty, but if you're going to try and paint them in a bad light, then use history, because the statistics will always bury you.


Secondly......that abysmal London Irish average that you tried to promote as being raised from your imaginary 4k to 12k on the back of one event in another Trumpesque off the cuff remark is just Wrong......The Exiles, who were terrible and rightly relegated averaged a mere 10% fewer fans in attendance of their reading games than SL managed as a comp in the 2018 22 regular game season.

So to answer the OP.......yes, we really are that far behind, even when you surgically remove attendances to suit your bitter and bias agenda as Easty tried here.

When we started as a Summer Sport we held all the cards and all the SKY/PAY TV contracts and relationships.......without a doubt we dropped the ball and we have yet to regather it. Union will always carry more debt, but in the vast majority off cases they can afford to. Wasps, crippled with terrible crowds and ever mounting debt made a tough decision to move to Coventry.....looks like that is paying dividends now with the average crowds being 17,641, or in other terms triple what they used to get at Adams Park. This is an example of the evolve or die mentality our sport needs......if we let the smaller clubs hold us back or if we bemoan change, then the decline we are experiencing will continue.

Why would you not count games held at Twickenham? Any club in Rugby League or Union can choose to take a fixture to a major stadium.

Because it makes the poster in question feel uneasy?

Well said Call Me God.

To put it further into context PRL (Union's top club league in England) has been offered £275m for 51% of the league by CVC (former owners of F1). Regardless of whether you think CVC did a good job with F1 or whether it is a fair price (some Union club owners are desperate for cash, others think it is a gross undervaluation!) I don't see anyone rushing to SL with a similar offer.

Not sure how anyone can support what wasps did. Okay it's working out for the club but they kicked there existing fans in the teeth with that move. It's similar to what Wimbledon did when moving to Milton Keynes. Not giving a damn about the existing fan base.

I don't wanna see any rugby league side move 80 miles +. That's not right at all

The problem is that the existing fanbase was not enough on its own to sustain the club. It was simply a case of "do something or die". That is very much the position that RL finds itself in in many respects. We have supporters demanding that the door to Super League is left open and that clubs chase success, but the financial performance of many of our clubs show that those support bases cannot sustain that. Worse still, they're actively opposing attempts that the sport makes to try and make itself sustainable because it harms their team's chances of delivering the success that isn't sustainable.

Wasps had to do something in order to remain a competitive, viable club, and moving was one of I'm sure many options that they considered. When you consider the cost/difficulty of building a new stadium in the South East commuter belt, the local competition (competing for the same local audiences as Harlequins, Saracens and London Irish), I can understand why they saw the opportunity of an under-utilised and available stadium close to the second-biggest city in the UK.

Yeah, I get that for some local supporters, that sucks, but as heartless as it might sound the club has to keep itself relevant and viable. Wasps has been a somewhat nomadic club for most of its modern history - playing at Loftus Road and Adams Park, and taking bigger games to MK and Coventry. It comes down to what the sport and the clubs want to be - progressive, foreward-thinking and successful, or looking back at how good things used to be. History is what people cling to when they can't look forward to the future.

WASPS wouldn't exist if they hadn't moved...... But you'd prefer your club died than evolve?



Spot on

RL fans are skint
RU fans have disposable income

No I am not
...not according to my wife



If we are to remain as the Poundstretcher Superleague, then at least exhaust that avenue....a few years back we had some action with Big Soup, Foxy Bingo and about another half dozen being associate sponsors, but now it looks like were Betfred and Peas....dacia are there purely for the WCC (any news on 2019 yet?) whilst the other declared sponsors have been there for eons, with specsavers, Rhino and northern rail.....and I doubt they are paying more now than they did when they started.

Aviva, after 8 years have been replaced by a bigger brand in Gallagher in the Union comp.....and their stable, whilst also emptier than before includes The Times and Sunday Times, Land Rover, Citizen and Ricoh as well as their FTA broadcast partner, C5

the bit in bold is key, IMHO to our sort progressing on the media front. We need FTA games included in the next TV deal. It's doubtful at this time that SKY will offer more, so we need to get better value from them and 1 FTA game on BBC2 on Thursday evenings would be a start......even if it's Toronto at Wakefield, the exposure would see us as being an international sport, if one that plays out of a bomb site (only joking guys)......but we need to push ourselves more.

Ha! You're the exception. You don't live in a council estate in Hull or Doncaster.

The Wasps situation wasn't really relevant as sign of how RU has gone anyway - as others said they always struggled to build a fan base as they were forever moving around and lack of their own stadium was killing them. Coupled with the mess that Coventry FC and the stadium owners (council?) got into, Wasps spotted an opportunity and took it and fair play to them. It has really paid off for them.

The double header international a couple of years back at the Coventry stadium wasn't full by any means but at least it was people trying to do something different and innovative.

8 months in......
are we competing yet?
[urlhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/07/super-league-clubs-transformed-adam-pearson-hull[/url

I agree re the international at Coventry, however as usual in RL we didn’t follow it up with any kind concerted effort or strategy. So if we want to expand/engage people in Coventry we need more than a one-off international. We need to regularly take games there be it internationals, SL games, Cup games etc.

We often have good ideas in RL but never see them through properly.

Indeed......the only thing we've stuck with is Magic, because it pays some of the top heavy wages at the RFL. Every SL side should be made take 1 game OTR each year......same venue each year, for a minimum of 5 years.

If you made Leeds take a game to Leicester each year for 5 years, I have no doubt they'd build gates year on year.......same for Wigan, Wire, Saints and FC.....but the rest????? You'd have Carter and the rest of the "smaller" clubs whining about lost revenue rather than seeing an opportunity...

Yep. Although even with the Magic Weekend we don’t maximise its potential. We’re at Newcastle United’s home ground, why aren’t we tying in with them? Offer their season ticket holders discounted tickets. Get a famous Newcastle United player to attend and get it all over the tv coverage. Tie in with Newcastle RL and get them at the games. Have them play a curtain raiser, have the club marketed heavily at the game. Have anyone with a magic ticket be able to get in free to the next Newcastle home game etc and then target any magic ticket buyers in the Newcastle region with marketing for Newcastle RL. And we should take an international there to back up the presence.

Instead we have a game in Coventry a few years ago, the odd game in London, the odd game in Liverpool with no concerted plan.

Like you say, take a game somewhere every year for 5 years and market it properly and it’ll grow. But we never commit to anything.

Exactly, I remember seeing a news broadcast about the Magic Weekend when it was in Edinburgh and none of the people interviewed in the street knew the event was even on let alone that there was virtually no advertising around the town.

The best thing to do with events like this is, until the sales start to remove the need, to paper the crowd. I mean how many times has the Magic Weekend actually sold out? Surely you could look at giving away a few thousand tickets especially if you're given those tickets out in schools and offering rugby league sporting equipment and support to those schools on the understanding that they include RL as part of their sporting curriculum. Be like the tobacco industry - hook'em young

Gallagher Premiership 2018.19
Week 1: 12,764 average
Week 2: 12,529 average
No event games, each team has played 1 home game at their regular home stadium....smallest gate at Sale, 7,145 largest at newly promoted Bristol 26,079. Currently averaging 6 tries per game and only 4 penalties......interestingly, last seasons Champions and early pace setters, Exeter have not attempted one Penalty in 2 games so far!

So, they've got bigger gates for regular non event games than they had a decade ago, have increased the number of tries scored from 4 a game in the 2010/11 season and have a natural geographical spread from Newcastle to Exeter, a 6 to 7 hour trip. Their games are shown on BT sport as well as some on FTA on C5, they have one of the largest names in insurance as their naming sponsor.

In 4 weeks time they will break for the start of their 3 tier European club competitions, as well as for the Autumn international series that will see not only the usual ANZAC and South African teams in Europe, but also touring sides from Uruguay, Japan, Tonga, Fiji, Georgia, Argentina, Namibia, Samoa, USA and Kenya playing multiple games, Including a Double header in Chicago of Ireland v Italy and USA v the Maori Al Blacks.....many of these games will be on FTA TV as well as on SKY.

Meanwhile, later this week, the Superleague chairman minus Heatherington will attempt to force their will on the rest of the game by bribing the Championship clubs with more crumbs from their table in the forlorn hope that it will enable us to compete with Union (Adam Pearson's words, not mine). Widnes are in freefall, Leigh are in turmoil and Featherstone are suffering as a result of duel registration not delivering them a top 4 spot, so including the current 12 SL sides, we have maybe 16 full time sides in the UK (and France)...so to answer the original question, yes, were that far behind....we are light years behind them in almost ever facet of the game both on and off the park

Laughable how you see this as reasonable, and that you place Hull in the same category as them clubs

133,921 people watched Hull FC at home this year...they are the 2nd best supported side in SL XXIII....so yes, I include them whilst excluding clubs that deliver fewer than 10,000 as an average.....teams like say, HKR who had 46,307 fewer fans than Hull FC attend games in 2018.

what is laughable as you happy in your insular little bubble seeing avoiding relegation as success. Given your club has won nowt since the 1980's, it's no wonder you feel bitterness towards the bigger and more successful club in your city

Thus why the game doesn't need two clubs from one city hogging spots in the elite comp.
Merge or drop down.....

Mergers will be great, we could have a 4 club top flight and a "big" game every week


2 clubs in the same city seem to work well in the round ball game and they "sell" the derby aspect of the fixture.

Since the failed franchise experiment in RL, we have totally lost sight of the actual sport.

There was a time when people on here would be discussing the game but, not anymore:

I would go so far as to suggest that the derby games in SL are one of the few plus points of the game right now, for both genuine fans and armchair fans alike. We seem incapable of generating significant interest in the actual spot.

What’s laughable about a concerted effort to expand the game into an area of this country? What’s laughable about Hull being in that category? They’re a big club with decent support.