One final point, not sure if it has been raised here in this thread, but certain comopanies are very precious about their brands. Stobarts appear to be one of these companies that are very proud of their brand.

One thing that all brand managers will do is to monitor mentions of their brand, and tbh if I was connected to a Rugby League sponsor I would generally recommend supporting a different sport.

In RL, no matter who gets involved, either the company, or the deal is not good enough.

Sky get slated for their coverage.
BBC get slated over almost everything.
Gillette get slated for no mentions of RL on their products.
Stobart get slated for not driving trucks to each fan's house personally to let them have a gander.
Irn Bru get slated for not being Coca Cola
Heinz get slated for pushing a small product from their range.

When you get people like Jamie Peacock pushing jokes about the Stobart deal on Twitter (one of the first places the Sotbart Brand Manager's will be searching) then you wonder why these companies bother.

I'll bet a fair few of the above companies or their agents take quotes from this forum in particular.

I understand your point fully and you do appear to have some good knowledge on this subject. However, would you not agree that Stobarts are themselves getting some excellent exposure from sponsoring our sport.
I'm not clever enough to do the numbers for this, but they get their name/brand mentioned on many differing forms of media at different times of the day/ week and the numbers of viewers and listners in colossal.
My point really is about the cost of the deal vs the reward. IMO Stobbart appear to have got a cracking deal for very little cost.

Aye. If the 100 branded lorries were being used for jobs/routes that are confined to the M62 corridor and being seen by lots of RLFans members, there would still be criticisms. The first of which being "I thought this was about increasing brand awareness, they're just preaching to the choir!"

On the surface you could absolutely make that point (your last line) because there has been no cash change hands, however that doesn't mean they haven't paid anything.

They will have incurred quite considerable costs to kit out the trucks, and then giving us that space has a value. Naturally none of us know the true value, but the figures touted have been between £1.5m-2.5m worth of advertising. Again, I repeat there are questions about whether this is the best kind of advertising out there, personally I believe this works as part of a multi-media campaign, so you need activity to support it, but there is clearly a value.

We should not over-state the value of the mentions Stobart will get. Firstly, to the masses watching RL each week, the vast majority of us have no need to use Stobart, secondly we all complain about the lack of coverage the game gets, finally engage paid £1.2m but this was for far more.

The value of our game is what companies are prepared to pay, and unfortunately that is not very high at the moment. It is the main reason I brought up the negativity around brands associated with RL.

Of course Stobart will be getting mentioned, and so they should, but it is up to us to decide if the truck deal is beneficial to us, and indeed to complement it with additional activity to make it a resounding success.

Truck with a Widnes player on it spotted in Sheffield this morning

Seen many a Stobart truck along the many miles of the M25 around London, yet to see one with a rugby league footballer on it, are they planning to send any down this way at all?

On a thread elsewhere I know somebody spotted a Wire truck on the M25.

I make my first journey since the deal started next week. Travelling from Edinburgh to Warrington sticking to motorways, so will be interesting to see if I get my first spot.

You need to get out more

I've been feeling rather left out of all this Eddie-spotting fun for the last month as I've been stuck with a broken ankle!

If I drive for four hours solid and don't see one though, expect to see my attitude to the sponsorship change!

Is that apart from the million quid or so that the bookie was offering?

Interesting that you're so positive about the deal; a story in this week's LE states that a meeting has taken place between SL club representatives and the RFL, specifically to discuss the Stobart sponsorship, with rumours of a vote of no confidence in the offing from some quarters. I don't know how true that is, but it wouldn't surprise me, particularly given that one of the stated benefits of the arrangement was that it would leave other properties available to sell, such as post protectors, ref's shirts etc - as far as I know, those properties remain unsold.

My view is that Sky and Stobarts will do well out of the deal; the benefit to RL clubs is questionable, regardless of the theoretical benefits of this type of advertising - in the meantime, a big chunk of cash that could have trickled down into youth development, growing the lower tiers or buying iconic landfill sites has been lost to the game.

If you have proof that the bookies were offering a million pound a year then I will retract all my support for this deal.

I have never seen that figure mentioned anywhere, and if we were being offered a similar monetary value to the engage deal then I suspect that the clubs would have ripped their hand off, betting company or not.

Rumours mean nothing, especially in RL who seem to specialise in them. This was voted in by the majoirty of clubs, and is a 3 year deal. Why the hell would they have a vote of no confidence in it? What can they do about it?

One of the stated benefits is the additional freed up space, however we are 6 weeks into the season, and 7 weeks after signing this deal so we knew the space would be free.

If at the end of the year we have no further sponsors taking up this space then the criticism will be valid. At this stage I don't think it is.

One final response to your post.

I'm not actually positive about the deal. I'm waiting to see how it goes.

I just disagree with people writing it off within weeks of starting, before it's even up and running properly, in many cases simply because they haven't seen one themselves.

Quarter of the season gone and I saw my first one this evening the Huddersfield Giants. Found it very underwhelming in the seconds I had in passing, the immediate impression I got it was Stobart sponsoring SKY SPORTS FRIDAY NIGHT.
I guess the deal is more like Naming Rights Only with 3rd Party Sponsorship, can't see Nigel Woods £2.5 million benefits from the deal.

It's been widely reported that a bookie was offering a sponsorship deal at a very similar value to the arrangement with Engage, but the RFL didn't fancy getting into bed with a gambling company; Magners cider and a tax-dodging scheme seems ok, but not gambling.



It was voted in by a majority, but that included the RFL, 3 clubs who were absent and gave their votes to the RFL and Widnes, who should never have had a vote, given Mr O'Connor's conflict of interest. As for the vote of no confidence - why the hell shouldn't they? If several clubs are unhappy that naming rights to the elite competition have been given away for nothing, they have a right to make their feelings known to the governing body who made that deal.



I think it's valid now; if there were no offers on the table for the the additional space at the time the Stobart deal was done, it shouldn't have been done, particularly by an organisation that was about to bail out another SL club, make a large proportion of its development officers redundant and take on a fancy new office alongside the displaced BBC employees at Salford media city.

The RFL didn't have a vote. And voting by proxy isn't quite the same thing as "giving your vote to the RFL".

Agreed - typed that in a hurry; the RFL did however make it very clear which of the options they preferred.

I got my first 'spot' tonight. On Sky Sports, driving around the Odsal pitch at about 5.00 pm

I 'might' have seen my first RL truck.

It was different from the 'bog standard' Stobart truck, though I couldn't make it out in the distance. It was going westbound on the M62 near Milnrow.

Seen one !, finally spotted one, going eastbound on the M62 near Warrington, yesterday.
Sam Tomkins.

Spotted one this morning at 10am going under the new 'Saints Way' bridge on the link road in St. Helens. It was the Leeds Rhinos one and was seen heading off towards the M62.

A Warrington lorry spotted in Leeds yesterday!

Spotted one yesterday on the M6 promoting HKR. Difficult to know it was rugby league and wonder if "ordinary" public would know what is been advertised!

a few days late, but on friday i saw the warrington one with briers on it traveling on the M55 towards kirkham and later the Huddersfield truck with crabtree on on the M65 near accrington.

M20 on Wrotham Hill heading towards London. Thursday morning around 8.30am

St.Helens truck in Bradford yesterday