I have taken this from the TotalRL forums - but thought people would want to read it

Popped up on Twitter that the IMG President Adam Kelly was being interviewed on a sports business podcast. Main takeaways:

* Speaking of other sports doing behind the scenes series (speaking of drive to survive and the new Arsenal documentary rather than in an RL context) he likes them and thinks they have a role to play but they're not a magic bullet. Mentions that he feels the strength in those shows is that they focus on a sport or athlete who is well recognised and gives a view behind the curtain and it might not be suitable for a sport where the athletes are not well known (mentions triathlon as an example and says other things for them are higher priority).

* Feels the partnership with RL is part of the new era of IMG, part of repositioning the company with a view to longer term projects using a broader set of capabilities (i.e. all key services a sport needs for growth)

* Focus with RL is maximising long term growth which involves, building better/deeper relationships with fans, attracting new audiences

* Ground up approach involving re-structuring competitions

* Re-imagining how content is produced

* Mentions a "light-bulb" moment for IMG recently when looking at how sports outsource content production (i.e. live matches) and give that broadcaster responsibility which can lead to misaligned objectives and incentives (for me this hints at in-house production or at least having greater say in what Sky & C4 produce)

* Mentions digital transformation projects & audience data

* Maximise streaming and data driven content development

* Seems RL is the test base for a new IMG strategy that offers this holistic package where they can use their business units (such as 7League/160over90/Endeavour streaming who they've acquired) to do everything and not have to outsource anything to anyone else (although RFL are not necessarily tied into using these he thinks they make a compelling case as a package)

* Builds on the same approach with was used with Euro league Basketball & Table Tennis

* The only investment is in use of IMG's resources, feels RL was right to turn down private equity as cash wouldn't solve the sports issues (mentions expertise, network support & guidance as what was needed). Doesn't seem a fan of private equity

* Mentions sports trying to do too much in house and not being able to attract the required expertise to make it work. That's where IMG step in

* Had received a brief on the morning of the podcast recording and says he feels their team have put together plans that will fire improvement in the sport

* Not specifically RL related, but was asked about RU and mentioned that he'd met with the Six Nations leaders and found that they individually believed their competition was another Union or another part of Rugby rather than a broader battle for attention versus Netflix/video games/live entertainment etc.

* Points to Boxing and misalignment and disagreement over competition within a historically massive sport and how that contrasts with UFC which has seen huge recent growth

* Feels RL has a passionate following that has been underserved and underutilised

* Mentioned a couple of times getting fundamentals correct and "introducing a framework that will allow investment at the team level" . Seems to be about giving owners confidence that if they invest in their clubs they can build the clubs as capital assets rather than a black hole for cash

* Dodged a question over the geography of the sport, the presenter asked him whether he himself was a target audience as someone in the south of England who only knew RL from Grandstand, swerved that one

* Not planning on a slow start, they're committing to a lot of up front resource and want to set the foundations for growth now to unfold over 12 years

* Mentions they doubled the revenues of Euro League basketball in 18 months by doing the "right things simultaneously"

I hope for the games sake, the clubs are collectively only allowed one vote on their proposals, otherwise this is all for nothing as the same narrow minded clubs will vote them down and we'll continue with the steady decline of the sport

Better content for streaming is surely an easy thing to fix, needs more cameras at all games (which also could mean Video Ref at all games) in the 00s RL seemed to do well with Youtube clips of 'big hits' but never built on that, stuck with 2 non-HD cameras for non-TV games and that wont wash with todays youth. The clubs could also use better quality footage for their marketing.

The big thing though is find a league structure fast and stick to it. Nobody likes loop games as one big example of where things are going wrong.

A second game against a "big" club attracts a higher crowd than a first game against a "little club.

Just because the second "big" game may attract less fans than the first, doesn't mean nobody likes them

Hull had to play Toulouse twice at home, first time we did cheap kids tickets, 2nd it was passholders only in the ground and a lot of them didn't turn up, fail to see the point apart from rinsing another few quid out of loyal passholders.

Playing the worst team twice is bad you say, lets kick them out and you can play 2 other teams you played against again...

The second time round being paasholders only was due to the standard of rugby being served up in games prior to that, and it was the second game in 3 days?

You've missed my point, I'd rather see my team play different opposition, different players, different shirts, different fans. If i wanted to watch a repeat I'd stick UK Gold on.

I think, or at least hope, that the IMG announcement will be the most interesting thing to happen this year (in RL).

The sport definitely needs a proper reset, imo, not the constant tinkering we’ve had over the last 10 or 15 years. The current model is… I was going to say broken, but I think ‘exhausted’ is more appropriate. I wouldn’t say SL, as we know it, has been a failure but it has run its course.

It's the same reason the Challenge Cup was a bit flat this year, no interesting ties with lower league opposition because the Super League teams entered too late.