It is in the entertainment business. The problem is the quality of the entertainment is lower than what you can get elsewhere. Football, Rugby, Cricket, Darts, F1, it's a heavily saturated market and the sport here cannot compete financially. We have had a third of the competition's Head Coaches fined in the past week because of comments on referees, the game's aren't particularly entertaining and many of the clubs themselves are living in the past, aren't keeping up with modern technology, are averse to change, don't know how to create an entertainment venue or event and don't have the capabilities to monetise themselves or their players, who aren't just gladiatorial, they have stories, they have pasts, they have quirks and unique things about them.
The idea shouldn't simply be lets throw out loads of really poor entertainment (on and off the pitch) and just hope that people like it and turn up again and again. If Rugby League in the UK wanted to something, it should have done something different, not something we've already done, attempted to dress up as something new and exciting only to then change our minds again 24 months down the line, which a return to 14 teams is. It wasn't popular before, games were meaningless, crowds dropped off when games were dead from halfway onwards, we had teams in the bottom half of the table able to win the Grand Final and we had real poor players competing in the league (and team after team going to the wall). If we wanted to try and attract a new audience or to re-engage with an audience, I'd rather the administrators here do something different, something we haven't tried.
Nobody has made an argument that you're pushing there about the NRL. If we are brutally honest, which I don't think we are and I think people genuinely think we can beat Australia in the Ashes, we are lightyears behind them on and off the pitch and I don't think we need to be worrying about them or trying to get close(r) to them. Lets concentrate on our controllables. Let's get 12 clubs up to a standard - they have multiple sides across all formats of the sport, let's get them having pathways and community arms of their clubs, lets get clubs using social media properly, let's get clubs growing their crowds and their revenue streams. Lets not just go "lets just get rid of loop fixtures, all our problems will be solved" because they won't be.
