Quite extraordinary that David Smith has put so much importance on Memberships and crowd attendance yet both seem to have gone backwards.
Yeah well what do we expect when the Broadcasters dictate the draw, terrible scheduling and the exorbitant price of going to games!
If they wanted to start with a bang the first thing they should have done is found the most popular games for each team attendance and ratings wise, for example we should have had games like Broncos vs Cowboys in Bris, Dragons vs Raiders in Can (or Sharks vs Dragons), Manly vs Melb in Mel, Dogs v Eels, etc this weekend.
The Second thing they should have done is figured out which games historically have the highest attendance and ratings in each time slot at this time of year and used those facts and others to structure the first round, not just assumed that Rabbits v Roosters for example is the best game to kick the season off because that's tradition.
Thirdly they need to take weather conditions in to account, for example who is the genius that thinks playing games in NQ at this time of year is a good idea.
And lastly though it has been said to death, they need to make it cheaper and easier for families to go to the games, that means lowering ticket prices, finding ways to lower the price of food and parking at the games (I understand that this normally is not 100% within their control) and lobbing governments to build rectangular stadiums in areas that are easy for fans to get to and to develop better public transport options to games.
Of course some of this stuff can be expensive and wont happen over night, but it's not rocket science and some this is just amateur mistakes.
