Clearwing wrote:
So, as a marketing man, what should the sport do? The problems are obvious, the solutions less so. The sponsorship situation seems to mirror the TV one: too few potential suitors.
Ultimately the sport really needs to start appealing to new audiences - the sort of audiences that sponsors, advertisers and broadcasters want to reach.
For me, it starts with the clubs, as they are the primary point of consumption for the sport. The clubs need to identify where those audiences are and they need to make sure that they delivering what those audiences expect. Simply handing out cheap tickets with relatively little thought process isn't "marketing" by any stretch of the imagination - it's quite the opposite.
For example, we have affulent parts of the world on our doorstep (parts of North Yorkshire and parts of Cheshire for example) but how hard are the clubs really working to engage those audiences? Thousands of people commute from Harrogate to Leeds every morning, literally passing under the Western Terrace every day, but how much promotional activity do you see from the Rhinos in that part of Yorkshire? Even closer to home, in the more affluent parts of West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, we really need to ask whether we're actively engaging those audiences enough. Leeds are currently doing a lot of marketing alongside Leeds United in an attempt to tap into their audience - an audience that is used to paying £500 for a season ticket and £32 for a match ticket, rather than the typical RL audience that baulks at £220 and £22. Clubs need to start looking beyond their postcode.
Part of that means challenging perceptions, and challenging what people outside the RL bubble think of when they think of RL. We've got some prominent supporters who do cut-through with the sort of audiences I'm talking about (the Brownlees for example, even though I don't think the creative behind the campaign involving them is particularly strong).
And we also need to make sure that we're delivering what those audiences want. We recognised this some years ago with a big push to upgrade and rennovate stadia, but as a whole we didn't go far enough, and we seem (with a couple of exceptions) to have stopped progressing since then. RL prided itself on being a 'family sport', but in the 21st century a family day our doesn't involve sitting on a wooden seat with an obstructed view, buying a boiled burger from the back of a van and pissing against a drain in an out-house. What the 21st century family day out involves is an experience, a comfortable seat in a modern cantelever stand with plenty to keep the audience occupied and entertained pre, during and post-match. If we're not offering that, one of the many other leisure activities that a family can can enjoy at the weekend will offer that.
And then it comes down to the product on the field. Say what you want about rugby union, but the Aviva Premiership does two things very well. Firstly, it keeps its talent in the league (because it can pay the players, and because the lure of playing for England is such a draw) but perhaps more importantly, it has suspense. The average winning margin in the Aviva Premiership is lower than the Super League, and the proportion of games won by one score or less is higher. That keeps fans hooked.
And at a wider level there needs to be more dialogue with broadcasters to see what more we can offer them, but also what more we can get from those rights agreements (for example, how can we get more digital content out there more quickly). I would personally reduce the number of fixtures and instead focus more on creating big events and, (and admittedly this is the tricky bit given that it requires the cooperation from the NRL), I'd try and carve out clear points mid-season for international competition.
Is any of this easy? No. It's not supposed to be easy. And nor is it going to be either cheap or quick, but the longer we leave it, the harder it gets. Marketing is a skill but there is no excuse for anyone who is responsible for it not knowing how to use the tools available to them. We should not be in a position where clubs don't know how to effectively use tools like eCRM, or don't know how social media algorithms and audience targeting work, but that's the situation we're in. We have new data protection laws coming into force in May, and I guarantee that there are clubs that haven't planned for how this will impact their marketing plans.
This is ultimately why I'm a supporter of expansion, because I don't see that enough clubs in the heartland areas are capable of delivering that. If we can't find new audiences in the M62 corridor, we have little to lose looking for them in Toronto, Boston or New York and if we want to keep insisting that the future of this sport is in places where the local High Streets are filled with bookmakers, fast food outlets and pawnbrokers, we've no right to complain when the only sponsors we attract are online bookies, payday lenders and canned mushy peas.
