As of the 2015 annual report the RFl had over £10m in cash in the bank excluding reserves and excluding creditors which amounted to another £10M.
2016 and it would seem the RFl handed out £7M in loans and the cash in hand dropped £7M with creditors owing £17M, the massive increase in costs seems to have come from 'administration' which jumped £920,000 from £10.55M to £11.47M.
Profit on ordinary activities dropped from £200k to £6k in one year.
Sorry but the RFL is mismanaged and wastes money as well as paying massively over the recommended pay rises by the independent auditors for its directors and CEO. This extra-ordinary pay rise was voted for by the panel made up of those directors and CEO of the RFL!!

To suggest that they can't afford a bit of money to invest in the game is not only ludicrous but also that it would take them time to get it back is failing to understand how the RFl generates its money from the sport and it isn't simply just through a few events!

I'm not suggesting the RFL can't "invest in the game", not am I arguing that it doesn't have problems. But that doesn't absolve the clubs, who are private entities in their own right, from not marketing themselves properly.

The onus is on the clubs to grow crowds and ticket revenue, to sell merchandise, to sell corporate packages, to find new commercial partners, to expand their catchment areas, to find new audiences that advertisers want to reach and to increase their revenue.

I can't think of any other group of businesses where people expect somebody else to do their PR, sales and marketing for them, and yet rugby league clubs seemingly get a free pass from supporters.

McDonalds?
Every branch of this chain in the uk is a franchise with the corporate entity not only paying for, but rolling out a strategic marketing plan across all mediums



I can see a similarity with RL but we don't like to use the word franchising

Marketing costs are ultimately built into the franchise fee. The franchisees are paying for the brand, and McDonalds is reaping a direct proportion of the revenue generated from that marketing. The RFL, by comparison, isn't creaming a percentage of every club's ticket sale profits.

Like you say, if we want to get into a position where the clubs become "franchises" in the strictest sense of the word, it might be comparable. But I can't see many chairmen going for that.

Do you ever see football fans kicking up a stink at the Football League because their club isn't selling tickets, or do Sale Sharks fans blame the RFU for their empty seats? Why is it that RL fans direct their anger at the governing body, and away from the clubs? After all, it's not the RFLs fault that Salford can't sell tickets, or that Huddersfield have to sell tickets well below market value.

But the RFL profits are derived entirely from the work done by the clubs, in that if the clubs didn't provide the entertainment, there would be no RFL. As the governing body, there is a duty to promote the game they govern, using the money they have obtained from governing the game.

How a lack of proper marketing can be justified in the week that Nigel Wood trousers half a million quid from the game is beyond me.

I haven't disagreed with your philosophy regarding the cost of marketing, I've disagreed with your comment about no decent company adopting a centrally funded strategic marketing rollout



I have a slight marketing background but by no means an expert, but I would say that with a business model such as RL, I would have a strategic plan in place that involves the support of the members but controlled by a single entity, clubs just don't have the resource to employ a marketing professional, I doubt Coventry all golds could even afford me and I wouldn't be the best person for the role, however the RFL currently gets a big pot of cash from Sky/sport England and other income streams, some of that is paid out to clubs and some retained, IMO a % of that figure should be spent on marketing as in effect the SL Clubs (and other clubs) are actually paying it in to the RFL, then a fully costed marketing strategic plan be rolled out and supported by its members, much the same as say the "Respect" campaign that was centrally funded and rolled out to "All" clubs including amateur ones. I don't think that's a difficult thing to ask for or to gain any support. It just isn't going to happen if you ask 12 SL teams to do their own thing and then everyone else do nothing because they really don't have the cash/resources. It's has to part of the "BIG" plan, the overall plan to take the game forward, it has to be in the control and cost of the governing body.

The question is at what level the clubs are "providing the entertainment" at. The RFL could exist as an amateur sport, but I think we all agree that is not where we want to be.

The clubs (should) understand their own markets better than anyone. They (should) understand the markets that they want to grow into better than anyone and they (should) know how to engage those audiences. They are, at the end of the day, individual businesses with their own shareholders, their own investors and their own P&L. They should be capable of marketing themselves properly.

And when they realise their return on that investment (if they do it properly), we can have a better entertainment product, better sponsorships, better facilities and better youth development pathways.

Until then, the sport will continue this slow and painful decline.

I can understand the challenges for some of the smaller clubs, but lets remember that they're operating on a different scale. If the issues or poor marketing were confined to the lower reaches of the sport, then I think there's a fair argument for some wider central support.

But they're not confined to the lower echelons of the game. They're glaring at the very top. We have clubs that can't sell tickets without massively underselling them (remember Ken Davy's "biggest announcement in Huddersfield's history", which was a discounted season ticket?), we have clubs that haven't grown crowds in years, clubs that can't get eCRM right, have crap ecommerce systems and don't know how social media algorithms and content marketing work.

These aren't small part-time clubs run by volunteers. There are multi-million pound businesses with dedicated marketing and commercial teams.

Personally, I don't think that centralisation is the way to go for the reasons in my post above - the clubs are seperate entities, they have their own P&L, and should know their markets better than anyone else. What I would say is that yes, the RFL has a duty to market the concept of the 'competition', and in some areas it's actually not as bad at this as many people claim it is - although this year has been poor.

I personally do think that the RFL should be setting some stronger targets and KPIs for the clubs, and making elements of central funding performance contingent, but I don't see the clubs accepting that, and it would be hard to do without licencing.

But what this constant shifting of blame to the RFL does is perpetuate the problem. It makes people think that Barry and Eddie Hearn could solve the problem, when I think even they know that they couldn't sort this show out because it would need the complete and equal commitment from all 12 clubs - and they have never promoted a sport where they have to contend with that sort of power dynamic.

I've worked in marketing for a while and I've seen clients with many of these problems. If I thought that the RFL were really the reason why Salford can't sell tickets, why Wigan don't have an online store that works on a mobile device, or why Huddersfield can't grow crowds despite selling season tickets at half the price of their competitors, then I'd call the RFL out. But they aren't at fault for that.

But the RFL is the body who has negotiated contracts with broadcasters, to provide a platform. It is for the RFL to market properly with those broadcasters. It is for the clubs to attract fans locally who have been attracted to the club via broadcaster-led programming.

The complaint on this thread was about the lack of marketing for the season ahead. If, for example, Wakefield marketed heavily in Wakefield, what benefit does this have to anyone in, say, Warrington? None whatsoever. Game-wide marketing, however, would benefit every club.

The clubs do market locally. It is for the RFL to sell the game though. They are the governing body. Like the comparison made with McDonalds. The RFL provide the brand. But they are not.

Here's the disconnect.

The clubs are the primary point of consumption for the product. They are the ones selling the tickets, building the audience, and growing the game at a local level. In short, it delivers the "audience", which is the single most important word in marketing.

When the RFL goes to broadcasters and sponsors, it is selling that audience. That's what broadcasters and sponsors are ultimately paying for - access to the people that we talk to. In that sense, rugby league is no different to a radio or TV station - audience is everything, we have one, and we want to charge people to come and reach it.

So Wakefield marketing in Wakefield increases our audience in Wakefield, and Warrington marketing in Warrington increases our audience in Warrington, and so on. That, on paper, makes us more valuable to broadcasters and sponsors. But here's where rugby league has a problem. It's not simply an issue of numbers, it's an issue of quality.

Rugby League is predominantly played in towns where the local High Streets are full of bookmakers, fast food takeaways and pawnbrokers, and that's why our sponsors include online bookmakers, tinned mushy peas and pay day loans firms. It's not a coincidence.

The cost of advertising has been falling consistently for the last ten years. It has never been cheaper on average to reach people by the thousand than it is today. That means that the value of any form of advertising, whether it's TV, newspapers or sports sponsorships, is falling in real terms. For rugby league, that problem is even more acute, because the sport predominantly reaches what marketing people term "C2DEs", and the cost of reaching those audiences is falling at an even faster rate than the average.

Sponsors aren't interested in paying a lot of money to reach our audience - some because they can reach that audience much more cost effectively elsewhere, and others because they aren't interested in an audience that may statistically have less spending power than the audiences that other sports reach. That's why Betfred pays us £1m a year, and Aviva pays the RFU seven times that amount to reach (broadly) a similar sized audience.

That impacts our TV broadcast value, because part of Sky's calculations when it offers to buy the rights to rugby league will include the value of ad slots around RL content. One of the reasons it pays a lot for the rights to content like football, F1 and golf is because the ad slots around that content are extremely valuable. They're not so valuable for RL content.

So it's not just an issue of Wakefield marketing in Wakefield, but of Wakefield marketing to "the right audiences" in Wakefield (or indeed, outside of Wakefield). That's the biggest problem (and why I'm in favour of expansion). It requires clubs to look outside their postcodes, look at whether they offer what a family is looking for in a day out in 2018 (hint: sitting on a wooden seat with an obstructed view, paying £5 for a boiled burger and ing in an outhouse isn't it, but that's what many of our clubs still offer) and look at what they are offering to prospective commercial partners.

The clubs are really the starting point in all of this. The RFL can only really market and sell what they provide. They really need to look hard at what they're offering their prospective audiences, and how they can expand that audience not only so that they want to spend money with the club, but so that sponsors want to spend money to reach that audeicne. That, to answer your question, is how Wakefield marketing in Wakefield helps Warrington, the other ten clubs in Super League, and the clubs and game beyond.

You say that the onus is on the RFL to provide the brand. 'Super League' is the RFLs brand but as a fan, I don't buy "Super League", I buy "Leeds Rhinos". Corporations and broadcasters might "buy" Super League, but the only thing that Super League has to offer them is an audience, and so we're back to the clubs.

Is this going to be easy? No. It's not supposed to be easy. And it's not supposed to be cheap either. But the longer we leave things, the longer we keep deflecting blame and not doing anything, the harder and more expensive this is going to become.

You seem like a bright bloke Bramley and you clearly know more than me about marketing, so you must know that any company that's runs a fully costed P&L when budget cuts need to be made, it's the marketing that get cut first, it's because you can't put a value/accurate return on that investment and the accountants will win the argument in the boardroom, so any RL club that is struggling to make a profit is always going to have their marketing budget cut to the minimum, it therefore needs to be centrally funded.
Also you mention "multi million pound businesses" in a previous post, how exactly do you define that as me personally wouldn't count a business as "multi million pound" unless it's turnover was £10m+, on that criteria how many SL clubs have a turnover at that's level, also how many are less than half that, then tell me how many actually turn a profit

huddersfield only have 2 people working for them on the marketing front, boy does it show!

the marketing and commercial team will be much bigger at leeds and co, ken davy has to save some money in areas and this is where he tries to cut costs, cant blame him really.

It's a conundrum that I have clients coming to me with all the time and you're right, often it is the marketing budget that is the first to suffer at the bean counter's axe. However, its an argument that can be won and marketing is absolutely something that can be measured if it is done right, and has some clear objectives.

I get that things aren't currently easy for clubs, but my view is that they aren't making it any easier for themselves by failing to invest. There are lots of things that can be done without a huge capital investment - many of the problems are down to a failure by clubs to properly use the tools available to them - but yes, other things will need a bigger injection of resources.

But again, I don't think that it's the RFLs place to centrally dictate how 12 clubs in 12 different markets with 12 different financial positions and 12 different ambitions should be dictating how they market themselves. If that's the route we want to take, we may as well just have the RFL take complete ownership of all 12 clubs.

To me its a question of where this sport goes. Do we want to be a sport that keeps cutting corners, that fails to grow, that falls further behind our competitors, that keeps losing talent because we can't pay them their worth and keeps losing supporters, or do we want to be bold, take some calculated risks, and push to improve?

If it's the former, then we're opening ourselves up to some serious issues further down the line. There's a bloody massive construction project going on at Headingley as we speak. That project needs to be paid for, and it is going to need growth in order to do that. I can't imagine that Leeds, as one example, is going to be happy with the "stand still, regress and blame someone else" approach that many clubs seem to be happy with. We've already got two clubs voluntarily taking fixtures to Australia, we've got others doing work in North America - We're not that far away from the situation that the BDO found itself in the early 1990s.

Hmmmm......Sir David Hughes at London has never been a fan of marketing and therefore when his toy....sorry, Team were eventually be watched by 1,200 fans after 20 years in SL, you'd have thought that the penny would have dropped and he'd have understood that if you don't invite people to come and watch your side, then the chances are they won't.....there is no marketing department at the Broncos any more, only a part time/freelance media guy who also call the game at London Scottish......there's an advert for a part time commercial person which when you read the description, it's actually an office manager they are looking for....so there is very little in the way of any work towards lessening the reliance on the health of our single benefactor....because as it stands, when he goes, so will the club. THIS IS NOT A BUSINESS MODEL THAT IS SUSTAINABLE.

Mr Davy is of a similar ilk. His team struggle around the 6k mark and unless he spends considerable funds on marketing then that is where they will stay.....if they won the GF I suspect they'd still hover between 6k and 7k as an average...he's tried free/cheap tickets and failed, so thinks that there's no point.......so he'll continue to fork out a couple of mil a year for a side that nobody really wants to watch........rather than concentrate on what will happen once his 2 mil isn't available....THIS TOO IS NOT A BUSINESS MODEL THAT IS SUSTAINABLE.

Ian Lenegan at Wigan however, as continued to try and grow both the commercial and attendance revenues at the 2nd biggest club in the country because he understands that a modern RL club is ultimately a Business first......this is a sustainable business model!


If you don't market, then how in christ's name are you supposed to grow?

That's a fair point, but if you've effectively saturated the market with a product then marketing becomes a drain on costs rather than an asset. We need to be realistic about the game. We've tried moving into other parts of the UK and failed dismally every time. Why should it be different now, whether it's in the south of England, Wales, Scotland, Canada, USA or Timbuktu?

Ready to be shot down in flames, but what the heck's wrong with strengthening what we have now (from grass roots upwards) rather than chasing the holy grail of northern hemisphere sporting dominance?

What does "strengthening what we have" look like? What is "success" in that regard? That's what it comes down to.

In my view, the potential of "what we have" is waning by the day. The value of our TV rights and commercial opportunities will continue to fall if we keep on offering audiences that potential sponsors aren't interested in. And that will accelerate the talent drain to the NRL and rugby union, it will impact what we can invest in youth development to replace that talent, and that will see crowds and revenue fall further and further.

At some point, several club owners -a Pearson, a Lenaghan, a Hetherington or a Moran for arguments sake - may, just may, get a bit bored of this "happy with what we have" mentality. And that opens up a whole new can of worms. If the smaller clubs think that life is hard now, what on earth does their future look like if the sport's few big draws for broadcasters and commercial partners decide that they don't want to let the tail wag the dog any more?

LOL, does it matter anyway? Wigan generated crowds of 20,000+ in the 80's with a mixture of p/t and full-time players. The game would still be good to watch without needing full-time players. Admittedly, this would mean that we'd never be able to beat Australia & New Zealand, but tbh we can't now regardless. We need to live and breathe within our means.

The difference was that back then, most sport was part time or semi-professional and there was much less competing for your average punter's leisure dollar. Times have changed.

I want to watch the best players competing with each other week in, week out. Not the best of what Australia has decided it doesn't want. And I want people to be enthused by the sport, not one of the million other things they can do at the weekend.

There's a big difference between "living with our means" and "being devoid of any vision".

Indeed they did (albeit 20k only on a couple of occasions)....as they swept all before them, until other sides tried to copy their model and "buy" silverware which nearly bankrupted a few of them.....AGAIN, NOT A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL!

If Wigan, Leeds, Hull, Wire, Saints and Catalan decided to leave the SL/RFL and join with a North American/French consortium including Toronto, Toulouse and maybe even London, what would be left "to strengthen"?
Those 6 SL sides averaged 11,775 per regular season game in 2017 between them....the other 6 SL clubs averaged 6,154! Are SKY going to continue to pay top dollar for a league made up of Castleford, Wakey, Huddersfield, leigh, Widnes and Salford combined with Halifax, Featherstone, Batley, Barrow, Hunslet and Whitehaven? Are they heck.......and god only knows how low that average attendance would plummet to.

BTW....I don't think for 1 second that North America is going anywhere in a hurry....Toronto are a shambles compared to last years bluster and stories of debts and misbehaving players are rife, but the simple economics of it dictate that without expansion, the game will contract, shrink and become worth less to advertisers, sponsors and Broadcast companies.......and without the TV money we slip back to semi-professional with Union and the NRL able to plunder at will......

I guess we'll never agree about this, as I'll always have a "fans" perspective on the matter, and was very happy, nay passionate, attending games in those semi-pro days to follow my team. The players were certainly less fit and less athletic then, but had a skill and guile that is maybe devoid in our game in many ways now. Is it better now? Could it be better now? Who knows, but it's certainly a different game.

Income is important for all RL clubs whether from TV or gate receipts, but for the fans it's all about what happens on the field.

I have no issue per se with expansion, but there is no visible and coherent plan to make it a success. Other than Catalans (who escaped by the skin of their teeth last season), we've just seen a catalogue of failure anywhere outside of the heartlands (Toulouse are limping along in the Championship). Let's have another club in France. Hey, one in Canada would be a good idea. What about USA next? No sensible plan and hence doomed to failure.

The thrill of attending was always the draw for many generations, but now it's so much more.....so very much more. The game was on its backside and semi-pro with little hope of surviving in a resurgent and developing entertainment/sports space, so the game moved to Summer and went "all-in" in terms of The Superleague.
Has it worked? I'd say it has, but not nearly as well as many expected or hoped. Paris lasted a heartbeat whilst other clubs such as Oldham weren't prepared for it....and after a few years of "bedding down" the new system" we ended up with about 14 sides that were worthy of a spot......Bradfords implosion showed that Heartland clubs needed to stay alert, whilst Wales showed us AGAIN that there is no quick expansion system.....it takes time and certainly more than the 3/5 years Toronto are working to.
If London Broncos exist in another 20 years, then I reckon they will be at the stage where you'll see 17 Local lads running out for them with plenty more playing at SL grade, but unless the game assists with marketing in these new areas, then the cubs can't be expected to foot the bill for running a club and developing local talent to an alien game.
Melbourne Storm is how you transplant a side into enemy territory.......but all we ever got from the North was unsubstantiated rumours and accusations of favouritism....distrust and lots of bitterness because we had taken the spot of a Pit Village team who had a "right" to be there.

As I have said, if anti-expansionists want to, then let them play among themselves, but I don't see the top cubs delivering 70% of the crowds being to enamored with paying for the bottom clubs to simply "survive".

I think you can still have a "fans" perspective on things and still appreciate that things need to change if the sport is going to improve.

I've been lucky enough to see some amazing players in this country. I'm someone who was introduced to the game just before the summer switch but I still remember watching amazing talents like Lauitiiti, Buderus, McGuire, Burrow, Sinfield, Schofield, Carroll, Morley, Peacock, Harris, Iro and Godden play for my own team, and talents like Steve Renouf, Trent Barrett, Andrew Johns, Jason Robinson, Jimmy Lowes, Va'aiga Tuigamala, Paul Sculthorpe, the Paul brothers and Jamie Lyon (off the top of my head) play against them.

My arguments for the sport taking a different direction don't come from me being some souless corporate shill. They come from me being a fan of the sport. They come from me wanting to see the sort of talent that I describe above more often. I don't want to feel that the only way I can see the best players that the sport has to offer is once every four years when the Australians tour here, or through my TV. And I want my young son to be inspired to play the sport. I want him to look at players and say "I want to be like him" and, if he's good enough, go on to achieve as much as he can in the game.

What worries me is that if things don't change, we won't be able to attract and keep those players because we can't / won't pay them their worth, we won't be able to inspire young people into the sport because we don't offer the facilities and pathways that encourage kids into the game, and I as a fan won't be able to see more of what I want.

I don't think you can compare the part-time era of the game, where RL was often one of the few tickets in town and when the 'business' of sport was so different, with the 2018 sport and leisure scene and say that we can go back to that without causing some serious damage.

It is a shame that Anthony Gelling has gone to NZ. He could make a pretty mean promotional video.

I also enjoyed it more than .
I feel the game has become to sterile in the way it's played (more sides seem to now to play 5 drives and a kick form), which is why Castleford were a breath of fresh air last year.
We need concentrate on sorting out the rucks, get the scrums back to being competitive. Possibly the side that kicks a 40/20 gets a tap rather than a scrum. Sort these things out added to the present rules about kicking we have a faster better game. Which promotes the product.
As no matter what you try to do off the pitch, or where you try to promote it what happens on the pitch has the final say on who you try to promote it to.
Have a system (I think you need to have p&r) that you are going to keep long term. Then you can promote to a new ordinance. Constant changing dosn't help in any way.
I would also like most games played on a sat/sun afternoon (I know most people will disagree, and that at some clubs it works). As I don't feel thurs/Fri games help bring in newer crowds, or attract away fans. Both of which I think are essential in trying to promote the product.

I think you're slightly wrong on the money thing. Fans do buy into the need for clubs to have more money, as look at the amount we spend on merchandising. On what we spend on at the ground. But you're right to us it's always going to be what happens on the field that's the be all and end all. And not for most clubs.

I also feel you're right about expansion. Until we have a system for the game that everybody buys into, and a philosophy with regards the game. Just dotting clubs in because there from here or there will never work.

That was the rule from last year re the 40/20.

These things are cyclical. Wigan won by wrestling. Other teams try to replicate the success of it. Game suffers. Over-reliance on physicality meant that Cas shook it up a bit, as it was different to the Aussie wrestle. Saints have pledged to follow, and I think Wire and Leeds the same. That will be the new style for a while, until someone learns how to defend better, and then its back to more biff and bash.

Competitive scrums is definitely not the way forward though. Scrums need rules to make them fair, which means technical penalties, and forever replaying the things. Scrapping them altogether would be real progress.