covid notwithstanding

I don't think anybody on here would object to the idea of promoting the club better and making the product more attractive to get fans in. The scepticism was that KF was going about it the right way.

Lets say you're running a pizza chain and the punters say your pizzas are not what they used to be a few years ago and are boring and predictable now.

At a board meeting, one of your directors says, OK lets focus on getting our core product right, focus on the pizzas. Lets change our head chef and switch up our menus. We need to review why our recruitment of staff has not been as good as our competitors, so lets get a new HR director in. We need to look at why our apprenticeship programme doesn't seem to deliver enough chefs coming through, get someone on that. The goal should be to outcompete our rivals on the strength of our core product and make our pizzas the best quality and most varied and interesting on the market.

Another director says, I agree the pizza quality is not acceptable and must improve. But I want to focus on getting the best eat-in experience in our stores. And I want an edgy social media strategy that gets us more interactions on Twitter by doing wind ups of other pizza chains. I don't just want us to be the best pizza chain, I want us to be one of the biggest commercial brands in the world.

Which approach do you prefer.

For at least a couple of season ago, It wasn't difficult to envisage the Sky deal being a massive issue. Why? because of two things, the game has become a very boring 80 minutes worth of 17 players trying to run over the other sides 17 players. There's no skill, excitement or character left in it, coupled with the demise of the individual standard skill set of players, has left us with an inferior product.

Unfortunately there are no other broadcasters who could come close to the £20m on offer from Sky.

its been that way in the most for about 10 years, add in the loop fixtures and over exposure of playing the same teams.

Which is replicated on here, go back about 15 years ago before franchising and promotion and relegation (new teams) were removed for a while and on here was a warzone in the week leading up to saints wigan or widnes games, the boards were unreadable due to trolling and arguing and back and forth, bans handed out left right and centre,

Most clubs have been asleep at the wheel since they were gifted a stack of money back in 2015/16 when the last tv deal was almost forced upon the league, in a lot of cases, just existing with dwindling current supporters, almost in a similar position to where they were at the inception of SL

maybe he was, maybe he wasn't but the point at the time was he was trying to be proactive in terms of promotion and trying to encourage 11 other SL clubs to get their finger out collectively and realise they can't just coast, because it was going to bite the compeition in the .

You'll have the likes of wakey KR and cas who are dependent on SL funding, what have they done for the league.we had wigan begrudgingly joining in, saints sort of letting us do some stuff and cas and Leeds outright saying they dont want to be involved.

Granted SLE should be taking the lead on this from the top.

What I think you are saying is that more play makers are needed?

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive but if you are going to wind up the opposition in any market you'd ideally make sure that your product was top notch otherwise you'll look foolish.

I'm sorry for the derailed thread but taking your pizza analogy further, I'd suggest that our board does generally give the chef the most expensive ingredients. If the customers are still dissatisfied, the question is have we got the right chef or has the board been buying him too much pineapple when he's been asking for peperoni

Yeh off thread again but PINEAPPLE on a pizza is wrong on any level.

Questions would have to be asked about the buying team. Are they using the right suppliers? Are they driving a good deal or getting taken advantage of by suppliers?

Agreed.

So Sky have used RL to promote their politics and now bent them over a barrel, that’s gratitude.
Sky can swivel and please don’t sign the private equity deal whatever happens.

It might be a big gamble but I think the RFL should try and agree a short term TV deal.
Apart from crowds being allowed back in the stadium the best thing that could happen for RL in this country would be that England win the RL World Cup.
I know it is a big if but we were an ankle tap away 3 years ago and even though the aussies have some great players I am not sure that they have the same attitude as the Smith, Slater, Thurston etc etc era.
If England can pull off a win in the world cup then the value of the TV deal would increase dramatically
It would just be the luck of Northern Hemisphere RL that they agree a bargain basement TV deal and we win the world cup but in the same year the England Football team go and win the European Championship and we go and grab a bucket load of Olympic medals so get no exposure at all and have already signed up to a TV.

Just imagine though if France made it through to world cup Semi final and England won it whilst the football team get dumped out of the Euros at the group stage and the Olympics were not our finest hour. I don't think it would on the scale as the interest in RU after Wilkinson stuck over that drop goal in 2003 but in terms of a shot in the arm it would be massive. We might be able to move on from Batchelors mushy peas to Fray Bentos pies sponsoring the SL or maybe even Bisto gravy.

It's amazing really how ,back in the 60s ,BBC 2 used RL as a shot in the arm to get it underway & sky did the same but now sky barely pay the game lip service in their promotional advertising.
Perhaps a major problem money wise is that sky funds are needed elsewhere to compete with other networks to provide coverage of what have been marketed as & turned into international sports with global appeal ....football ,motor racing ,cricket ,the other ruggah, golf & more recently the women's versions of all those sports. Sports that attract worldwide spectators & worldwide betting opportunities & 24 hours viewers somewhere in the world.

Sadly, from what was used as a crutch to get sky up & running, over the years our game has been dictated to & marginalised to the status of shelf filler in its schedules.

You only have to look at how much money is poured into football in the UK by Sky ,BT ,& Amazon & others to get the matches to sell subscriptions to potential viewers & advertisers & not to forget the betting revenue.

I would like to think this would be the case, but I'm sceptical. I think England could win the RL World Cup without the vast majority of the public being aware. There would be a bit of coverage around the final, and I think a lot of people would have heard that we had won it. But its not like the Olympics or the football or cricket world cup, where the tournament builds momentum and England progress through stages and the excitement builds. The RLWC is about winning relatively straightforward games and then either 1 or 2 games against Aus/NZ and then its over.

If England had won the WC in 2017, I wonder what real difference we would have seen in crowds/participation.

There was talk about how the London Olympics would lead to a boom in participation sports and Andy Murray winning Wimbledon would lead to a boom in tennis and England winning the cricket world cup would lead to a boom in cricket but has it? I'm not sure, particularly on the cricket. I thought there was more of a resurgence in cricket after the Ashes win in 2005, than the World Cup win 2019.

some interesting comment and analagies in relation to the TV deal.
i have posted on the Wigan forums about this also.

with RU they now have deals with BBC, ITV, C4, C5, Sky, BT and Amazon. Why does RL not look to expand its appeal. We have just extended the BBC deal which looks promising including Ladies and disability RL within its coverage.

i get the feeling we are being held to ransom a little by SKY. They know that some clubs will sign up to anything as they do very little to promote either themselves or RL generally. with the last TV deal, that was pushed through quickly as there were certain clubs who needed the money to survive, so it went through without opposition.

too often RL works to the lowest common denominator, and everything is brought down to that level, instead of improving to that of the highest. The game has a history of successful sides, who all get brought down, instead of the rest aspiring to be better them. With the salary cap, the last TV deal covered off the players wages, but yet still sides didnt pay to that full level and some argued that it should be reduced. These sides are consistently holding the game or clubs with ambition back. Whilst this level of ambition is still in place, can you realistically see any TV company wanting to push good money to a game that wont expand beyond the M62

And they chose Leigh over Toulouse, would love to know the politics of that decision, like you say it needs to expand beyond the M62 corridor so Toulouse or London should of been the call, not Canada or America.

Does make you wonder doesn't it?

Perhaps they fell for all that Coronavirus stuff that's going around. As if that could impact on a cross-border sports competition.

I think the interesting point is that RU has multiple broadcasting partners and outlets which means that it is constantly in the public eye.

This almost over representation reinforces the perception that they own rugby and we are a marginalised version it naturally grows their game and diminishes ours which in turn affects interest and sponsorship.

I'm not blaming RU or the media its down to us to get the best deal. We should be asking Sky to cut us some slack to show games on other channels since they want to reduce our fee. I'm not sure why even they wouldn't see the benefit as the major broadcast partner of greater exposure. A viewer that watches the odd game on say C4 might sign up to watch more on Sky

The rfu should take the sky deal but on reduced terms to sky and selling to other suppliers ideally amazon and a free to air service.

The Sky deal has got to be taken as unfortunately we don't have much choice. But they need to say because of the reduced terms it cannot be an exclusive deal. They also can't hold the rights to Championship and League 1 and then not really show any.

I've taken a Prime membership while they've had football, but will probably cancel it soon. If they had more sports content, including rugby league I would obviously stay subscribed.

I can see Amazon going for more games packages when the next Premier League rights bidding comes up.

https://www.totalrl.com/super-league-cl ... -proposal/ Happy to see the private equity thing as been knocked on the head, but better news at the bottom of the piece is Sky upping their offer on the TV deal.

https://www.totalrl.com/super-league-cl ... -proposal/ Happy to see the private equity thing as been knocked on the head, but better news at the bottom of the piece is Sky upping their offer on the TV deal.

we've still got to pay 3/4's of a million pounds as a finders fee for a meeting where we said no, though.

Yeh understandable but I think it would of cost more in the long run,these equity firms are all about profit.

For sky to go back on this they must either be losing another sport they currently have or there must be another party interested in superleague. I honestly think a shared deal with amazon could work. Sky get their pick amazon can choose any of the other games that weekend or even have the rest of the matches, BBC get the highlights.

Dont go through Rothschild next time either that's a joke. Finders fee, talk about jobs for the boys, reeks of corporate corruption.