NZ v Tonga at Newcastle in RUWC - £75 for a ticket.
ENGLAND v NZ at Olympic Stadium London - £10 per ticket.

Seems to me that RL is underselling itself. Immediately pre-Sky we charged proper prices and got big crowds fir internationals. What went wrong?

International RU especially the World Cup is massively popular. Playing at big venues (Olympic Park) and on the bbc will help improve RL internationally.

And tickets are £22-£45

Mine was £10 (or so I am told).

If the RFL made tickets to the England vs NZ cost £75 then they'd be fury and frothing at the mouth of RL fans and saying they'd messed up the chance of having the Olympic Stadium as full as possible (makes the sport look more impressive/important on TV) by off-putting prices.

If the RFL charged (or tried to) £75 a ticket I suspect you'd struggle to get 5,000 in.
At £22 a ticket you'd need 17,000 to get the same revenue and the 17,000 would look a lot better on TV.
If tickets were £10 (concessions are BTW) then 37,500 needed to get the same revenue as the 5,000 wealthy sods and the stadium is half full.

The RU world cup has grown to such an extent now that it is far bigger than anything our game has to offer or can be compared to, so this is a ridiculous and obvious argument imo. People are willing to purchase tickets to watch any match really, just to say they attended, it wasn't the same level the last time the RU World cup was held on these shores in 91' that is for sure. Just shows how well Union has done expanding its product over the last 25 years compared to us regarding international rugby.We are small fry in comparison.

the awful truth is that RU can afford to set ticket prices as high or as low as they want,
because over the years they have spent a fortune ( what we will never have) on extreme marketing,people were hooked on 'rugby' and we did nothing about it, except change to a summer season and brand ( not directly) our game as 'super league', they know that they can pull crowds in with money being absolutely no barrier to the thousands who want to see this "spectacle"

until we are on that level then RL fans won't or can't pay those sort of prices.

It ultimately boils down to the audiences that the sports sell themselves to.

It's no secret that RL has a 'family sport' image, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. However, it does mean that you have to offer your sport in a way that is accessible to those audiences - and both the availability and pricing of tickets is a major factor in that. Look at any RL event and it's not sold as a 'pinnacle of sporting excellence'. It is sold as a family day out. That puts it in competition with a lot of family events and attractions - which are all price sensitive.

RU is very different - certainly at international level. Large sections of Twickenham are sold to debenture holders and, unless you're part of a membership or affiliation scheme, it is very hard to get tickets. That scarcity influences pricing.

It also helps that, certainly in my lifetime, the England RU team has been very successful at both the Six Nations and World Cup. At the same time, all of the major nations have had players who are extremely marketable and eloquent infront of a camera (the latter is an area where RL seriously struggles). That draws people to the sport and creates a clamour for those scarce tickets. Of course, that does have its drawbacks as well. Football is going through a phase where expensive tickets are discouraging young supporters and, whilst I don't know for definite, I bet you don't see many youngsters at Twickenham during the Six Nations. That's a challenge that targeting a more mature audience creates.

RL can achieve this if it wants to, but it will take a lot of time because, primarily, it is talking to the "wrong audience". We're not dealing with a largely affluent audience that has, and is willing to spend, £75 on a ticket because it is difficult to get one. We're talking to an audience that was/is constantly searching for discount codes for world cup tickets, even though those tickets were only £10 to begin with.

Think that covers it quite well.

Ive been to watch Wales abroad and at Twickenham (and seen loads of kids there btw) with mates countless times and paid stupid amounts for the privilege, same as my colleagues who follow Cardiff City, and we are all non-affluent, yet we find the money.

Two good games this weekend on free to air TV at prime time slots thats how we start! Union built up its tv audiance over 30 to 40 years before uping its game & selling its coverage to pay to view & it still ensures a good amount of its internationals are free to air. We have a lot of catching up to do.

I think Rugby League sells itself short across the board, and not just on money.

Union built itself on a solid domestic game followed by regular, consistent competitive internationals.

That's the way to prosperity as a sport. Which is why international development is so important.
Unfortunately RL has treated internationals like its spotty, ginger, annoying, 6 fingered, 3rd cousin. So we never know when England RL will be playing, where, against whom or in what competition.
The biggest step forward the sport has taken since moving to limited tackles was when we got the World Cup on a set 4 year cycle. Now we at least know when there'll be a World Cup. What we need now is to know about the other 3 years in the cycle.

RL has the solid domestic league but doesn't have the international competition. We desperately need more than Australia and NZ to play against competitively. But whilst we only have them to play against we need to bloody know when and where we're playing next and make sure at least 1 England game is at a decent stadium in London. That's where the money lives.

Don't forget the "dark forces" at play in both the media and the schools,yes the schools,contribute to this.

If you don't think there's a southern, London-centric bias to the media then you must live in a cave. Because it's bleedin obvious.

So it's down to the media and the schools that RL fans don't want to spend more than 20quid to attend games?

Other way around.

I do not think you can compare the Welsh RU support to the English. Not the many I've met.

I tried to sell the RL World Cup at work to the many RU fans. A couple went (and enjoyed) the games but the common comment was "It's a competition to find the team to lose to Australia". Obviously we know different. But...

We're not under selling ourslves, we're the Aldi taking on the Tesco/Asda/Morrison's. And hopefully we'll be as successful.

I do think RL undersells itself.

That's because we're insecure as a sport always pandering, in fact, begging to certain sections of the market - to accept us, to "try us out". As such as we're always acting like a free trial, an introductory discount offer to untapped demographics.

It's not only internationals. But cheap season tickets. We have a domestic product we're ashamed of. Take the notion of expansion, which whilst good, also infers we're insecure about the geographical roots of the sport.

We need to grow some balls. Be confident and proud of our product and charge what it's worth, and at the same try to accept that some people don't like RL and never will. At least in this scenario, RL may come across as a product that's self-assured and confident, which maybe, just maybe seem subliminally more enticing to new folk.

Agree with all of that.

I agree to a point in that we keep slagging ourselves off and nothing seems to make an RL fan happy.

But I think the issue of expansion is a genuine one. Unfortunately pro RL is terribly located in the country. We only have pro RL in 2 major cities and no presence north or south of the M62. Add in that RL clubs are generally not in areas of wealth and often in relatively small places then we have a big issue in trying to attract people and money to the sport.

Unfortunately for RL, the decision makers in this country live and grew up down south. They have no experience of being in an area where watching RL is even a possibility never mind an enticing option. These people are then running the media that largely ignores us and the companies that choose to invest in other sports.

We desperately need "other" areas involved in top RL. To hopefully appeal to a slightly richer market and to widen the base of people exposed and aware of RL.

If we don't do that then all I can see is stagnation as we continue to appeal to the same, relatively poor market that has a myriad of other potential leisure pursuits shoved down their throats by the advertisers, marketers and southern based, southern biased media.

The game does sell itself short. I can think of no other sport that would charge £10 for entry to a major event at a major venue. For a sport that considers itself a major spectator sport, or at least did until a few teats ago, it's odd.

I am not sure there is a Southern bias in the media. MUFC get more than their fair share of exposure in the "southern" press even though they are a northern team and have not been especially competitive at the top level of late.

The media can't ignore football because it's so immensely popular. Of course they're going to report on one of, if not the, biggest sports club in the world.

The point about bias is to do with other sports and of course non-sports issues. Every major media outlet in this country is based in London. Their management and editorial staff are almost entirely southern bred, often from public schools and Oxbridge. Hence, lower attended sporting events getting more publicity/column inches than a higher attended RL game.
Its not an active bias, in that they look at 2 events/stories and think "well that ones up North so we'll run the other one" it's that they report what they themselves find more important in their lives. So RL (& other northern issues) go un/under-reported because those issues aren't relevant to the Southern media.

The best and most obvious example of this was the floods in Hull a few years back. Went unreported by all the national media for days.

It's not quite as simple as a North/South issue, as I said it's really a problem with the fact that the media is based in one place and recruits very similar people, especially at editorial and managerial level, who generally have a certain type of life experience. So other areas like the South West miss out too.

Unfortunately we can't change this type of bias, especially as national media is only ever looking to be more concentrated around the south and the wealthy, so we have to change the national footprint of our sport.
I'm not advocating dropping clubs into new areas, we don't have the money to make that work, but I would advocate financial and professional support for clubs in what I would call creeping expansion areas. The likes of Sheffield, Newcastle and Salford for instance.

None of your paranoid drivel has anything to do with why RL fans don't want to pay much for their tickets which is what this thread is ultimately about. And if its own fans don't care enough about RL to spend alot to pack out huge stadiums, why should the media care? Being such an expert on the media i'm sure, as always, you'll know the answer.