Rugby Raider wrote:I do agree. The perception of RL is very poor, with it primarily being a minority sport played along the M62.

Obviously our game doesn’t help itself, with self interest trying to leave a door open for villages/towns of Featherstone and Batley to get into SL, as opposed to targeting new regions and cities and supporting their development within SL. (e.g. London).

We can’t deny other sports just market themselves better. Twickenham looks a picture with 80,000 packed in it to watch England compared with our recent international at Wigan and Leeds when less than 20k turned up.



Still don’t think we have the joined up thinking to transform te sport, however I do think the introduction of IMG has made clubs focus on improving things off the field. The game needs a major sponsor though and increased revenue to allow salary cap increases to attract better players to SL.

Rugby Raider wrote:I do agree. The perception of RL is very poor, with it primarily being a minority sport played along the M62.

Obviously our game doesn’t help itself, with self interest trying to leave a door open for villages/towns of Featherstone and Batley to get into SL, as opposed to targeting new regions and cities and supporting their development within SL. (e.g. London).

We can’t deny other sports just market themselves better. Twickenham looks a picture with 80,000 packed in it to watch England compared with our recent international at Wigan and Leeds when less than 20k turned up.

Our product is far better, yet Rah Rah fans will happily pay more and turn out in huge numbers to watch it take several minutes for a scrum to be reformed multiple times, before celebrating like there’s no tomorrow because their team has won a penalty for a technical infringement on something that no one understands.

Still don’t think we have the joined up thinking to transform te sport, however I do think the introduction of IMG has made clubs focus on improving things off the field. The game needs a major sponsor though and increased revenue to allow salary cap increases to attract better players to SL.

bonaire wrote:They only turn out in huge numbers for International games thats one reason why several RU clubs are in financial difficulty.
The other reason is big company name sponsorship for the stadium and the International game..The International game also takes out of the sports funding four times the money than the club game.Thats a huge diifference.
The RU international games at Twickenham are more to do with tradition than quality entertainment.
The game now is a better product but even in the past years when the game was drab and boring the fans would still pack out Twickenham
Rugby League on the other hand not only suffers from a lack of big company sponsors but an inept Governing body who have no idea how to market the sport.
£500,000 spent with the speadsheet Charlies IMG for little meaningful enhancement for the game would have been far better allocated to a Marketing budget given to a young hungry marketing company

Sebasteeno wrote:Salford are a club seriously living beyond their means and have been doing for years. Will they ever work as a top super league club, I doubt it. Granted they're playing above their finances but that will only last for so long. If I was a super league chairman I'd reject their request for emergency funding as they are not sustainable. With such a massive amount needed now they're only gonna end up in shits creek in a few months time which will have repercussions in super league down the line. Makes a mockery of img too.

Chris71 wrote:Sadly I have to agree and giving in to Salford’s request based on what’s come out so far would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Whilst I appreciate cash flow issues can have a real impact the figure of half a million is one hell of a lot to be struggling for. The concern I’d have is whether they are actually sustainable with an emergency injection of 500K further down the line. If there is to be any agreement by the other clubs to agree to bailing Salford out then you’d expect there’d have to be some form of sanctions/penalties imposed on them.

It’s not a good look for a sport already struggling to change the perception of people from outside the sport.