Wakefield has the best view to watch a game of any team in Super League. Withstanding the conditions is a different matter bu I don't know another ground where I have been as close to the action as Belle Vue regardless of how aged the infrastructure is.
This has to be a pee take.
For an away fan, it is the worst in Super League. It’s the only ground where the pitch is higher than the stand with a crap atmosphere.
JESUS WEPT HOW MANY TIMES????? £20 a ticket and £15 on beer and merchandise.....so an away fan is worth £35. At best, 1,000 is the average away support split across 11 rounds and I am being really generous here, so Toronto, replacing say Wakefield will cost a SL club £35,000. The minimum turnover of a SL club is £4,000,000 so Toronto instead of Widnes is worth less than 1% of a SL clubs turnover.
There are many valid reasons for and against expansion into America, but "AWAY FANS" isn't one of them.
Rugby Union are able to do this due to the international game been so strong.
GansonTheClown wrote:
IMO this works for RU as they played the match in one of the biggest, richest cities in the world, and one where RU is well supported (especially by corporate types).
Hmmm......22 years ago Harlequins were lucky to attract 3,000 to a game, Leicester led the charge with 6,000...22 Years ago the 5 Nations was still a mammoth in terms of viewers and attendances regularly filling the stadiums to capacity......so the question has to be asked, what is it that these clubs, who are all losing money in barrel loads, do NOW to attract these sorts of crowds? Leeds v Castleford attracted 18,000 last year at Headingley......23,250 this year at Elland Road. Now, I am aware that Headingley is being refurbished, but surely there's a case to build on this fixture next year and try to fill Elland Road....or if Leeds believe there's more profit in selling out Headingley, why don't Castleford take their home game there? 11,500 at the Jungle or try to get 30k at Elland Road?
EVENT games do work......The Warriors double header at Mt Smart saw the place rammed over the weekend....twice our 2017 average attendance rocked up. It takes planning and a fair amount of hard work but the long term benefits are HUGE....Saracens, Harlequins and Now Bath take games to bigger stadiums and as a result, end up with larger season averages than their home stadiums.....perception is everything and if it looks like it's hard to get a ticket, then it looks popular and people want to attend.......
bramleyrhino wrote:
It's almost as if having our sport played regularly in affluent cities with big corporate markets is a good idea....
But oh yeah, something about away fans.....
...in a nutshell THIS ^
Ken Davy is pumping MILLIONS into Huddersfield yet the good folk of that town can't be bothered, so why not take some games on the Road? Colomiers is being touted as the home ground for Toulouse should they go up.....why not play Huddersfield v Catalans there and guarantee an 11k full house? Salford is patently not working at the new stadium, so by all means take games to NYC.......it's not like the Americans are going to know or understand the difference between Salford v Catalans as opposed to Wiga v St Helens.....
.....but it's not easy and it might annoy some season Ticket holders, so let's not bother?
.....but it's not easy and it might annoy some season Ticket holders, so let's not bother?
Can't you and the other marketing geniuses on here get jobs with the RFL/SL Clubs and actually do it then so we don't have to repeatedly read it on here.
Last edited by PrinterThe on Sun Apr 08, 2018 10:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
JESUS WEPT HOW MANY TIMES????? £20 a ticket and £15 on beer and merchandise.....so an away fan is worth £35. At best, 1,000 is the average away support split across 11 rounds and I am being really generous here, so Toronto, replacing say Wakefield will cost a SL club £35,000. The minimum turnover of a SL club is £4,000,000 so Toronto instead of Widnes is worth less than 1% of a SL clubs turnover.
There are many valid reasons for and against expansion into America, but "AWAY FANS" isn't one of them.
Can't you and the other marketing geniuses on here get jobs with the RFL/SL Clubs and actually do it then so we don't have to repeatedly read it on here.
Very Droll......The RFL appointed a marketing GURU a few years back who claimed he'd made Manchester City a big name......lol.......I take it he didn't do to well because he makes no mention of his appointment on his linked in Profile...... https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-lowery-4749a221/
The RFL and most SL clubs are terrified of marketing......rabbits in the headlights......and a fair amount of that fear is because they'd rather spend the money staying up....so unfortunately, Marketing Professionals like myself will post on forums, because the RFL and SL clubs either can't afford us or simply don't care so long as they protect their £1,800,000 a year.......
PrinterThe wrote:
Can't you and the other marketing geniuses on here get jobs with the RFL/SL Clubs and actually do it then so we don't have to repeatedly read it on here.
Very Droll......The RFL appointed a marketing GURU a few years back who claimed he'd made Manchester City a big name......lol.......I take it he didn't do to well because he makes no mention of his appointment on his linked in Profile...... https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-lowery-4749a221/
The RFL and most SL clubs are terrified of marketing......rabbits in the headlights......and a fair amount of that fear is because they'd rather spend the money staying up....so unfortunately, Marketing Professionals like myself will post on forums, because the RFL and SL clubs either can't afford us or simply don't care so long as they protect their £1,800,000 a year.......
One thing that Rugby Union has worked out is that its important to focus less on the quantity of games and more on the quality of the events.
One of the reasons why we still have these convoluted league structures is because we have clubs insisting that they need to flog out talent as much as possible and have a minimum number of games to survive. The notion that they should do more with less - in other words, generate more revenue from fewer games by selling more tickets, commercial packages, sponsorships, merchandise, digital, reaching new audiences, making the game more attractive to media partners, etc - is alien to them.
The game at Elland Road the other week was an example of what we need to be looking at more of. It was a game played by two good teams, in front of a big crowd, and had a sense of occasion. There was nothing more than 2 points at stake - no trophies to be won or the "jepoardy" that so many people on here argue is 'essential' to bring in the crowds, and yet it felt like a big event - a final or semi final, and it looked fantastic for the neutral.
Leeds didn't do anything particularly innovative, spectacular or indeed expensive for that game. They simply put on an event and they (and to their credit, Castleford) hyped it up and told people about it. Something that every marketing manager at every club should be able to do. It doesn't need an Eddie Hearn or a Peter Deakin - it just needs the marketing people who are on the pay-rolls of each and every club to do their jobs.
Rugby Union gets this. Leicester and Bath can take a game to Twickenham knowing full well that their fans won't start kicking off with the usual moans like "what about season tickets?" and "will there be free travel?" that littered the Wigan board when it was announced they were going to Millwall. Saracens can take games to Wembley or Olympic Park knowing that if they set their sales and marketing team a target, they'll hit it - rather than moaning about away fans or the weather. And London Irish can take a game to New York because they see that the potential of a new audience outweights the cost of the flight, whilst our fans moan about Magic Weekend because they don't want to pay for the train ticket.
Rugby Union clubs in this country still play a lot of games, but they focus their energy on hyping up the ones that really matter. The domestic cup competition is pretty much now just a reserve-grade competition, they release their players for internationals before hyping up the European games the following week. They prioritise their key products.
As a sport, we need fewer games and more hype. We need to find more ways to get our current audiences excited, and to find new audiences to excite. We need some creative thinking, some investment in effective marketing, and clubs to see success as more than simply keeping the administrators at bay for another year.
But we as a sport won't do that, because it sounds too much like hard work and it's just much easier to say "we can't afford it", blame the RL and wait for a boxing promoter to save us from ourselves.
Agree with every word. Sadly with Sl clubs looking like getting more power, and an SL1 & SL2 with ten teams each seemingly gathering momentum, looks like the sport will carry on making the same mistakes. SL chairman would rather have 3 games against the same team with crowds of 4k each, rather than having one game, with an attendance of 10k and bringing money in other ways. Attendances are falling because the sport isn't great at the moment, and sadly some think the answer is to have more games against the same teams
Last edited by Bull Mania on Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.