Has anyone else signed up for Voono, which launches in a few days?

It is like Fifa Ultimate Team by the look of it. I quite like the idea, it is engaging, modern and attractive to a younger market. Be interesting to see what it is like once launched

Its just another stupid IMG idea
How does that market the real game?

This is the way in this day and age that fans, kids, "customers" engage with sports. It's a forward thinking, modern take on getting people involved in following the sport and taking an interest.

James Clark was on Talksport today talking about the naming of the radiator mascot, as its gone viral. 500k social media impressions, new eyes seeing the club/sport, and Talksport got listeners to suggest names and someone from down south came up with Paul Heat-on, and Clarky is giving him 2 tickets to the Derby. This is how sports and clubs get new eyes now

To people like you, it doesn’t.

But they’re trying to reach other demographics.

Apologies if I’ve misjudged you, and you’re of an age and disposition to actually judge if this attractive to younger audiences. In fairness, I’ve not a clue either.

How would you market the game?

Paul Heat-on made me smile.

That is very good

bearing in mind the RFL have recently paid the first invoice of IMG circa £500,000 puts paid to your idea that they are working for nothing and payment is based on an increase crowd revenue.
We can all see that the sport is not marketed in any meaningful or professional way and since IMG have been involved this has not changed,therefore in my opinion if the RFL have this sort of money to spend it should have been more focused like employing a young hungry marketing company.
TV advertising and promotion should have been high on the list and we all know how people relate to sports stars so they should have looked at well known sports/football stars who regularly watch R/L who could share their love of the game on TV adverts,internet,and newspapers
Fantasy R/L will in my opinion do jack s-it to bring any young kids into the sport because it has no superstars for them to follow unlike football were there are hundreds world wide who are household names.
IMG in the USA have an International player platform programme for the NFL.They could introduce an economy version of this in the UK for Rugby League sponsored by all the S/L clubs and paid for by the RFL and S/L clubs.
Potential players could be signed by any club
It would also be news worthy which again is marketing the game

We're 1 year into a 12 year agreement with IMG.

Massive change wasn't going to happen overnight, hence the long agreement with them.

We're starting to see small steps with the new SL logos and colour schemes for the mens, womens and wheelchair games.

They've also implemented a grading system alongside the clubs, which has in turn has focussed several clubs to making changes.

All of the games are available to watch either on SKY or SL+, which IMG were behind.

NRL supercoach is massive in aus too not to mention the EPL fantasy league over here. It's a market to tap into

Ahh, yes. Television and newspapers - I remember them.

To be honest, I’d have liked to see more from IMG. However, I’m still at the ‘early days’ stage. I suspect the £500k will be cross-selling… which isn’t necessarily bad, but it’d be reassuring to know what it was for. Well, I hope it would!

I like your talent development proposal in principle. Just because IMG aren’t focusing on that area, it doesn’t mean the RFL couldn’t look at better options for talent development.

I think the IMG effect is beginning to show, super leagues branding, marketing and build up seems a lot more effective and slicker than recent years. We've got every game on TV and a streaming service for the first time ever. Clubs are making upgrades to their grounds that they wouldn't have done otherwise, small things like LED advertisement boards -it's even got cas to submit yet another planning application. Small steps but I definitely think it's heading in the right direction.