Except nobody is saying everything is perfect and they are certainly not stating...Perfect in fact. As good as it can possibly be. Like everything else in rugby league thanks to the new super smashing great system. They along with every other clubs have entirely fulfilled their potential and are now beyond criticism or any expectation. The entire game can now sit back, feet up, and do nothing but watch the good times roll. All our problems are solved....

My impact on growing the game is in a coaching and sport development capacity and has been at different levels of the game for over 12 years.

Out of interest, do you have any involvement in RL in your spare time?

Perhaps I indulged in some hyperbole to make a point, but it is pretty telling that there hasn't been one suggestion of what clubs could do, nor one example of what they are doing, simply a litany of the usual suspects shouting that it isn't a problem and we shouldn't talk about it.

And good work on your coaching. I've nothing but respect for people who devote time and energy to getting youngsters playing our game and to a high level. It's not really relevant to what we are talking about here though.

For what its worth, my view is that there should be a play off involving the top 4 for the Grand Final and the bottom 2 of SL and the top 2 of the Championship to decide relegation at the end of the season. There will always be 'dead rubbers' in any league format of any sport with teams neither playing for the GF or relegation, its inevitable. I suppose the biggest issue in reducing games and therefore having a more common sense system is clubs lost revenue, especially as its decided that we don't have 14+ teams who are fit for SL, its a catch 22.

It doesn't quash it, it merely shows what happened in year one. It may well be very different this coming season after how interesting the chase for the top was going into the final weekend last season. I can imagine that there may be a bigger chase for fourth this season too.

I thought the whole super 8s to me sounded like a mish mash.
Not one thing or the other as far as I'm concerned.
Perhaps some tinkering is called for to make it appeal more to the Rugby League public.

Cas got 1k less for their super 8s game v Saints with a play off place than they did in the regular season with nothing on it. Leeds got less for their games against Saints and Wigan than they did in the regular season

It's pretty clear that the correlation people drew between attendance and 'importance' isn't there and 'importance' in and of itself doesn't draw fans out.

It would be interesting if someone could work out an actual cash revenue from those games.

I can't tell if your being serious, desperate to bash the new system or just on a wind up. You've been very eager to tell people that they cant draw comparisons which counter the point made in the title of this thread and yet draw spurious comparisons yourself.

"Importance" isnt a factor that can be concluded on in the data you've presented. For all you know, playing a game on a Thusday rather than a Friday has a -2k affect on Castleford crowds - showing that the "importance" factor infact had a +1k affect on the crowd. It might of been its raining, or that it was in a month ending in R, or their were too many ginger haired players, or Jon Wilkin played in one but not the other and hes enough to put some fans off ... or a combination of them all, negating the positive "importance" impact and detracting further still. Or there is not an importance factor ... but thats the point - none of the evidence provided by anyone can support it one way of the other, as attendance have an immense number of variables that cant be all accounted for (without an immense amount of analysis).

That doesnt mean we negate paying attention to this failed revenue target of Castlefords - it just means that the new system cant be blamed immediately for everything.

Only to someone who ignores the existence of any other variables having an impact.

Good post and spot on.
Like i said in my previous post some tinkering is needed to sell it to the Rugby League public.
Lets hope for the good of the game the RFL find the right formula.

it's pretty common sense that you can draw comparisons between somethings and not others.


If the other variables negate the positive of 'importance' then there isn't the correlation between 'importance' and attendances that were drawn previously.

Both yourself and doom and gloom merchant have, in an attempt to argue against my point, in fact argued it pretty well.

If there are numerous other variables that also effect attendances even to the point of entirely negating the effect of 'importance' then there isn't the correlation between importance and attendances that was sold. We cannot say 'more important' = better attended because for multiple reasons even though a match is important it may not be well attended.

So you can sit here putting all the importance you wish on the game, making all the +/- guesses on the contribution of 'importance' that you think are necessary. But what is proven is that 'importance' does not correlate to attendance.

So what I can say, with some certainty and backed by evidence, is if I change nothing but the 'importance' of match, it's attendance may not go up. Because attendance does not correlate to importance.

There isnt a strong correlation between a games importance between importance and attendances.

Why that is is a different discussion. But that fact remains.

My guess would be that RL has a large amount of season ticket holders who would attend regardless of importance so the difference between a good attendance and a poor one are secondary to the context of the game itself.

And in fact many of those factors have been mentioned, notice, weather, the day the game is played, when it is played, the marketing of that specific game, etc etc etc.

And that is the question I have been asking. We know that just increasing the supposed importance of matches is both limited in its scope and doesn't correlate to higher attendances, so what are we as a game doing to address the factors?

From the responses on here, it seems a substantial part of the game are yet to accept there is even an issue, never mind other factors that can be addressed

This bit would worry me if I was a Castleford fan:



Sorry, but this is Marketing 101 - Know your audience, know their behaviours and know how they react to what you offer as a business.

You can't judge the success or failure of the Super 8s on the attendances without considering external factors. I don't know how Castleford marketed these games, but Steve Gill's comments suggest that whatever they did do, they didn't do it particularly well.

The RFL gets a lot of stick for the way it markets the sport and it is very easy target. However, I'd argue that the majority of the game's marketing problems stem from the clubs, not Red Hall. Comments such as "we don't know why it happened" don't really help me to change that view.

Marketing's something I know next to nothing about but it wouldn't surprise me if clubs couldn't do a lot better.

Neither does it surprise me that as usual some club chairman or another starts the ball rolling by hinting they're badly done to. The ploy of threatening to withdraw support from those tasked with taking the game forward seems to levy far greater windfalls and involves far less expense and effort than the actual marketing of their clubs. Won't be long before the usual suspects are doing likewise. It'd be the case whatever the system.

I actually think that the RFL does a better job than it's given credit for.

The RFL is only directly responsible for marketing a handful of events each year. This year, it has presided over a sold-out World Club Series, sold-out Grand Final, a record Magic Weekend crowd, a well-attended international series and a strong attendance for the CC Final.

People use Super League gates as a way to claim that the RFL doesn't market the game, but those attendances fall under the remit of the clubs themselves, not the RFL. The RFL simply provides an environment in which the clubs can market their products.

If the environment wasn't right, every club would see dwindling crowds. If some clubs are increasing their gates (and some are) then that suggests that the problem (or the greatest proportion of the problem) lies at club level.

Where I do think that the RFL gets justified criticism is in the way if markets the sport commercially, but that's also something where few clubs are leading the way.

Agree with this. Like Clearwing I'm no marketing expert or anything but I've always thought clubs marketing is generally very poor with maybe a very small number of clubs reaching the heady heights of "average".

The clubs receive the vast majority of all RL TV income in this country so the main burden of marketing has to fall to them. If the RFL kept more of the money then ok they should do more for the clubs, but they don't. So it's up to the clubs.

I think Leeds, one of the better clubs at marketing, could do more and some could do a lot, lot more. For instance at Leeds (and all the pro clubs) the players can be used a lot more for going round to clubs and organisation and drumming up some support and marketing.

And it's not always about money. In RL, especially the lower down the leagues you go, money is incredibly tight. But, for instance, I live less than a mile away from York City Knights home ground. If I wasn't an RL fan you'd barely know they existed. They're fortunate that there's basically only football and RL in York so they get some column inches in the York Press. Other than that there's nothing really. And their social media accounts are woeful.
As I said I know money is tight so I'm not expecting huge advertising campaigns, but York is quite a small place really and they're bang next door to big housing estates. Why not print off a load of leaflets and use a volunteer(s) (one thing RL is rarely short of is volunteers) to post them through people's doors, maybe offering free entry with a paying adult or something like that.
I understand every club is different and has slightly different challenges re it's marketing but my general experience is that clubs websites and social media are quite poor and they often seem to think sticking a sign up outside their ground and a post on their website is adequate marketing.

I've long argued that they should; for example, the Extraordinary Rugby campaign from a couple of years back; like or loathe it, it made a decent attempt at creating a 'brand' for RL and for me, it focused on exactly what a RL marketing exercise should focus on; the unbelievable physical skills and attributes of the players involved. If that had been rolled out to all clubs and a unified, sustained campaign delivered, with brand guidelines for all clubs to use in their local marketing - it may well have attracted some new support from outside the existing fan base. If not that - something like it - with a genuine marketing expert overseeing the whole thing from Red Hall - that's the way to go, and I agree that clubs should forego some central funding to pay for it.

Agreed. All but a very few of the clubs can actually run decent marketing departments so ideally I'd like to see some of it centralised to save money across the board.
Almost effectively like an income tax. So everyone contributes but the richer/bigger clubs would contribute a bit more than the poorer/smaller clubs. And then the sport as a whole benefits.

In a similar vein I'd like to see clubs forgo more of the TV money to be put toward, firstly, professionalising the RFL, and secondly a special fund to properly run an "expansion club" starting with either Newcastle or London then when theyre able to run on their own, either Sheffield or a Welsh team. But that's a different argument.

As for the Super 8's themselves, I like it. I think it provides a run of 7 tough, important games for at least 8 clubs each year. We generally don't get that in RL in this country so I think it both provides an interesting end to the season but also provides an environment where our top players have to be in an intense, professional mindset for an extended time. That should help us in internationals eventually.
The only change I'd make is, if possible, make the Magic Weekend the first game of the Super & Middle 8's.

its ok blaming the clubs, and im not trying to absolve them of responsibility, but the RFL insisted on this system which risks clubs relegation, and de-prioritises marketing, for example, on the back of last year, if you are Michael Carter, working to a budget at Wakefield, are you spending 100k on marketing the club? 100k on youth development? 100k on Belle Vue? or on an Anthony Tupou?

This is the environment we have created and the Wakefields of the world dont have the money to be shelling out for marketing themselves, never mind the game as a whole, and certainly not when they may not be in SL to enjoy the dividends of that investment.

But it does need to come from somewhere and the only other two places it could come from is either the RFL or Super League. The problem there is the RFL then parachuted their man in to run SL, without the agreement of the clubs.

Over the course of the new contract, the RFL will take about 35-40m all told and their man will be running Super League under their system. They can't now, even though they are trying their best, just shrug and say its down to the clubs.

As I'm a cas fan who attended both saints games my experience was that the super 8 game being on a Thursday made the difference.just from the few people I know with kids only Me and my daughter went to the 8's game.i thought the super 8's were overall a good thing unfortunately the timing of games can have a massive effect on families being able to attend.

Would be hard to do but something that would be possible to see if the new system has interested people will be to compare Season Ticket sales from last year to this year once the season kicks off.

The original problem the new system had is that people either struggled to understand it or just plain didn't like the look of it when they read about it and will have impacted on ST sales for people who'd grown bored of the product over the previous few seasons. But as has been seen on this site a common theme as the year progressed has been fans saying "I wasn't keen on idea at the start of the year but now that I've seen it I enjoyed it".

The Super 8's problem was that a significant number of fans still didn't know what it was about even as we approached it. Just before the Round 23 games their were Leeds fans asking if do we win the LLS if we won our game vs Catalans that week.

We also had people asking......

- if their was a separate trophy for 'winning' the Super 8's.
- do the points get reset to zero
- how many home games do we play
- who do we play and how is that decided
- do these extra home games count on the Season Ticket

All these questions and more were still being asked by many people the week of Round 23 and in some cases in the gap between that Round and the Super 8's kicking off.

That's why I say it can't be properly judged, not as some excuse, but because many fans of the game didn't really fully know what they were getting and what was going to happen and what to expect and you aren't going to get great result in those circumstances. Now people know what the score is with this format and how it all works, this is when you can properly start to judge it. Not off one single debut season when people were still trying to figure it out as the Super 8's kicked off.

100% Cas as a club need to really work on our marketing and do our bit to boost crowds in particularly on Thursday Friday night games. On a Sunday I'm generally not worried about our attendances. On the whole there's more we can do. Hopefully we will improve because crowds of 5k v Warrington during the super 8s during a fairly positive season in the summer is simply not good enough. And while I do sympathise with the blame sky element , the club have gotta take some responsibility to get more people through the terraces, perhaps a new ground might help...

The Tigers are not the only Super League club who need to work out their marketing.
As a game we are still coming up short here.

I'd be interested to hear Wakey fans' views on whether the marketing of their club has deteriorated as a consequence of abandoning the franchise experiment. My own view is that their club would spend as much as they possibly could on players regardless of the system, as no amount of marketing obscures the fact that a club is seriously under-gunned. Just my impression, mind, and I stand to be corrected by those who know better.