The Virtual Terrace • Can professional RL sustain so many clubs?
My personal view is that the sport needs to return to some model of licencing. I agree with Him when he says further up the thread that the steps between not just the divisions, but often clubs in the same division, are just too great. The sport just isn't in a position where it can afford to keep neglecting the fact that in commercial terms, we have fallen so far behind other sports that it's frightening.
I know people point to the previous model of franchising and it's failures as proof that it doesn't work, but that isn't the only model available. The old model measured the wrong things and encouraged the wrong behaviours - the mass discounting of tickets in order to meet average attendance criteria being a prime example.
At the moment we have clubs making big losses and owners throwing money at just keeping the lights on, not realising that half of the bulbs have already blown. They'll happily throw £100k at a fringe player in the Bartercard Cup and at the same time, scoff at a £20k investment to improve the matchday experience that might attract new audiences to the game.
There will always be people who resist expansion and that is their right to. However, I firmly believe that in resisting expansion, we consign the sport to progressing no further than where it currently is.
There was this piece in the Telegraph about Toronto at the weekend where they claimed that 43% of their casual ticket buyers are 'millenials' and 40% are female. Which UK clubs are tapping into those demographics so effectively?
Even if Toronto isn't the ideal expansion model (and there are fair arguments to say that it isn't), what they are doing is showing up many UK clubs and their shortcomings. The sport isn't reaching new audiences, it isn't engaging with the supporter of the future and it is relying too heavily on enthusiastic dads and grandads dragging their kids along. That approach isn't going to work with a population that is more mobile than it has ever been in history. People don't live and die in the town they were born in any more and they don't have jobs for life in the local factory. They move around, they move away and in doing so, they move away from many of our heartlands.
The right franchising model should be designed to encourage clubs to address those issues, to find those new audiences and to broaden their horizons. Not simply to rely word of mouth and on selling more and more to the same people.
I'd also use franchsing to get the product right. We play too many games, we play the same teams too often. Twelve teams, home and away and a Magic Weekend should be the model. I'd also explore the feasibility of a Nines tournament - it has the potential to be to RL what T20 has been to cricket.
I know people point to the previous model of franchising and it's failures as proof that it doesn't work, but that isn't the only model available. The old model measured the wrong things and encouraged the wrong behaviours - the mass discounting of tickets in order to meet average attendance criteria being a prime example.
At the moment we have clubs making big losses and owners throwing money at just keeping the lights on, not realising that half of the bulbs have already blown. They'll happily throw £100k at a fringe player in the Bartercard Cup and at the same time, scoff at a £20k investment to improve the matchday experience that might attract new audiences to the game.
There will always be people who resist expansion and that is their right to. However, I firmly believe that in resisting expansion, we consign the sport to progressing no further than where it currently is.
There was this piece in the Telegraph about Toronto at the weekend where they claimed that 43% of their casual ticket buyers are 'millenials' and 40% are female. Which UK clubs are tapping into those demographics so effectively?
Even if Toronto isn't the ideal expansion model (and there are fair arguments to say that it isn't), what they are doing is showing up many UK clubs and their shortcomings. The sport isn't reaching new audiences, it isn't engaging with the supporter of the future and it is relying too heavily on enthusiastic dads and grandads dragging their kids along. That approach isn't going to work with a population that is more mobile than it has ever been in history. People don't live and die in the town they were born in any more and they don't have jobs for life in the local factory. They move around, they move away and in doing so, they move away from many of our heartlands.
The right franchising model should be designed to encourage clubs to address those issues, to find those new audiences and to broaden their horizons. Not simply to rely word of mouth and on selling more and more to the same people.
I'd also use franchsing to get the product right. We play too many games, we play the same teams too often. Twelve teams, home and away and a Magic Weekend should be the model. I'd also explore the feasibility of a Nines tournament - it has the potential to be to RL what T20 has been to cricket.
Statistics: Posted by bramleyrhino — Tue Feb 26, 2019 1:53 pm — Replies 13 — Views 894