Everyone in the country must have seen the amazing build up to the new Blue Planet on tv and radio that will be on the BBC this weekend.

I've seen one advert for the World Cup which was at the end of match of the day.
It's like a kids cartoon that is pretty hard to understand.
If you walked in after it started with the sound down you wouldn't have a clue what it was about.
Why hasn't it been made with real footage from past games.
Big hits, players covered in mud and blood, trys and celebrations.
When I was in Australia for a series in the 90s the build up on tv and in the paper was impossible to go unnoticed. There was even a tv ad with all our players (actors) shackled together in a mok up court room and sentenced to playing the Australians at rugby and they were all sat there shaking.
It was funny but 30 years on I still remember it ive already forgotten the one that's on here now.
Tournaments like this need as much exposure to the general public to lift the profile of our game but sadly it will go unnoticed by the general public and another chance will have gone to promote the game

Because the world doesn't care about RL anymore, simple as that unfortunately.

Unless you live in the RL heartlands in the UK or up and down the east coast of Oz, I'm afraid we don't stand a chance against the boys of the footballing world any more, or even cricket these days with the introduction of T20 competitions.

TRUE what we need is to win the bloody thing and then and only then they might start to talk about it and it will help if we win it in OZ yes I know we did win it once but that was years OK and in (black and white )

The BBC isn't the RFL / RLIFs PR agency. It isn't going to give us disproportionately high coverage just because we want it to. It's up to the people running the World Cup, and the England team, to give the BBC and the wider media reason for them to talk about us (aside from players doing things they shouldn't be doing).

What marketing activity is going on in the England camp, or in the Australian camp, or any other camp? What stories are they creating for people to talk about? How much content are they releasing to the media? So far, the social media accounts for England seem to be nothing more than the players larking about in their time off and stepping off buses. There have been videos of two tries from the CAS warm-up, but what else? What else is there for the media to talk about?

The last BBC nature documentary series was the most watched show for 15 years - of course they're going to promote Blue Planet heavily (not least because the production costs will be enormous). Even with the best promotion in the world, the RL World Cup would get a fraction of the interest that Blue Planet gets.

The BBC could easily do more if they wanted to, given how much RL they've had over the years and must be in their archives, but they simply don't want to because they know it's not worth spending the money on it because it's not going to make any real dent in the viewing figures.

Do you really believe that if the BBC poured the same money into advertising the RLWC as they do the Blue Planet, that the viewing figures would be increased by anything more than a few percent? And given they will already be tiny in comparison, it's a no brainer as to why there is no advertising.

One nark is that whilst I can understand (for the reasons above) the BBC not doing too many promos, the RLWC isn't even getting mentioned in the sport bulletins.

what is there to mention?

The problem of the profile of the game lies entirely with the game.

The BBC Sport RL site is pretty decent, with daily updates, such as recent interviews with Ryan Hall and Sam Burgess, and squad announcements.

I'm pretty sure if it was the RU World Cup or even 6 Nations they'd be mentioning it in the BBC TV & Radio sports bulletins in the run up to those events, but there's obviously an editorial decision been made to omit pre-coverage of the RLWC.

For a major international event in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have teams competing and given the BBC's planned TV coverage, it seems somewhat bizarre.

It's not a 'decision to omit' as such - that makes it seem like a snub. The BBC is simply reflecting the national interest in the tournament.

On the list of organisations that are responsible for promoting our sport, the BBC is way, way down the list.

Can’t wait for Blue Planet 2.

I'm pretty sure that the "national interest" in women's football is still pretty low, but that seems to do alright for coverage on the BBC sport bulletins nowadays, for their domestic, European and international fixtures.

I don't expect the BBC to promote our sport unnecessarily, but a major international sporting event is (usually) a newsworthy event, and I find the lack of coverage, so far, is odd.

Because womens football has the potential to piggy back on the mens game given the global exposure of it and the tournaments the women play - and if it takes off there is a bigger market and more money -and that is the bee all and end all I'm afraid. Cash is king!

Snap



Lets face it we as RL Fans don't give two hoots about our game never mind the wider public, when our Massive clubs get attendances of 7-14k and we have one of our showpieces Wembley two thirds full and that Magic event two thirds empty says a lot about the interest or lack of.

Maybe there would be more media interest if the tournament was over here and matches played at prime time who knows ?

I'll be watching all the matches on Premier with interest but I'm fairly sure I know who is going to win .

I understand the points you raise, but against the context of whether or not an event should be covered by the BBC sport bulletins, then the potential to make money shouldn't really come into it.

We'll just wait and see whether the Womens RLWC, commencing 16 Nov, gets any mention at all in the next few weeks.

No and I agree - but I'm sure it costs them money to discuss in news/sports bulletins, but as no one wants to hear (or the audience that does will be very small) they don't bother and give the attention to a wider audience that they assume will probably be watching.

We'll probably have to agree to disagree on the word "major". For most people watching the BBC, this event simply doesn't register.

The average attendance at the last World Cup in Australia was 16,000 - less than the average attendance watching League 1 football at Portsmouth FC so far this season.

I do love Attenborough, have most of the boxsets, plus sea creatures are my favourite animals, especially cephalopods.

On the subject of rugby league coverage, I haven't even seen an advert for it yet on the BBC. Decent enough coverage on their website and I have found my new favourite hobby, reading the comments sections on BBC RL articles, the union trolls on there are hilarious!

Are the BBC going to show Blue Planet on a Friday morning when everyone is at work?

Absolutely can’t wait for the new Blue Planet

Regards

King James

Whilst I agree that RL is often short-changed in terms of media coverage, if we want to improve it we have to make the sport more relevant to more people.

We are a relatively niche sport that is watched by a small number of people and played by a tiny amount.

We need to drastically increase the amount of people involved in the sport. The amateur game fails dramatically in this regard and we need to find ways of getting more people involved.

Unless you live in Hull, West Yorkshire or parts of Lancashire/Cheshire it’s difficult to watch our sport live and even if you do live there it’s not easy to take part in our sport.

We put significant regional and social barriers up to people who may get into our sport. We need to remove these and then more people will be interested in RL and the media exposure will increase.

TaDa........we have a winner.
200k on SKY watching and less than 10% of a soccer-football Audience on FTA and still we whine and moan about people not bothering to watch us......the BBC will syndicate Blue Planet and make more from domestic DVD sales than RLWC 2017 cost them........it is up to the sports governing body to get us noticed...no more "it's not fair'....."It's the BBC/Public School" crap.....social media is our route to an audience....we need to out kardashian the Kardashians.....not wallow in our misery.
Even the NRL didn't fully leverage the Burgess Bros thing........if the RFL/NRL had pitched that to a production co promising 1 million viewers to start with it would have made C4 at worst.

Perhaps you might live near Wrexham, Bridgend/Llanelli/Merthyr, Cheltenham/Gloucester, London, Hemel, Coventry, Oxford or Newcastle ?

It always amazes me the amount of marketing experts we have on here. I don't know what the situation is with funding etc or who is in charge of it but I'd guess the budget is very small relative to the demographic and the viewing figures, and to produce high quality advertising you generally need alot of money behind it.

Whilst I agree, I think the assumed lack of any clear advertising/marketing campaign to promote a major international competition, which occurs just once every 4 years, makes people wonder just what the "powers that be" (whether that be RFL, IRLF, NRL or broadcast partners) have been doing.

Considering that the RLWC has been around since 1954 then its somewhat galling the amount of promo that the RUWC, formed in 1987, gets.

Don't know what all the fuss is about.
Attenborough needs to bow out like Stevo.
Lebanon v France was miles better.