Every round
That would grow the sport
You’ve had lots of games on Thursday night esp the French derby of Catalans v toulose
That’s what grew rugby league audiences on tv in Australia
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Every round
So RL, so short term lol.
Any positives in English rugby league are from the clubs doing stuff themselves to grow
WB to refresh your money whey IMG is critical to SL
Sky has now reduced the fee it pays for Super League’s domestic TV rights in two consecutive deals, taking the league’s earnings from £40m per season in 2021 to £21.5m in 2024. In short, Super League has entered a recession.
Matt Dwyer, vice-president of sports management at IMG, was heavily involved in brokering Super League’s latest deal. He says that Sky’s concerns about Super League’s lack of growth were reflected in the latest result, which saw the league’s income reduced by a further 10 per cent until the end of 2026.
“Sky said to us: ‘Look, you’ve been very steady for a long period of time and you need to be growing the fanbase.’ We need that critical mass to start moving the needle, and that takes time. That’s why this is a 12-year deal.”
Super League and IMG’s first major task is to build that critical mass beyond the faithful tens of thousands that attend matches every week.
It will be done in all the ways you might expect: social media account revamps; content creation plans and pushing its star players across timelines and feeds as much as possible.
“Our priority is growing audience, attendance, but a growing number of young people are following players as opposed to clubs,” Jones explains. “We need to know what is going to entice that seven-year-old to take an interest in rugby league. Is it Wigan Warriors, or is it going to be [Wigan Warriors star] Bevan French?”
Jones and Dwyer firmly believe it will be the latter. Super League has initially focused this strategy on a small group of players and coaches, bringing their stars to other Sky- and IMG-backed properties, such as the UFC, the DP World Tour and Wimbledon, for content creation purposes.
This content is being pushed out across central and club social media accounts, which Dwyer says have seen strong aggregate increases across follower count and engagements in 2024 compared to last year.
“The challenge for us is commercialising that,” Jones says. “Ultimately, it’s great having an engaged digital audience but we need to commercialise it. There has been a focus this year with those 12 Super League clubs, with grading in mind, to go through the same [social media development] process that we went through 18 months ago.”
Commercialising Super League is a different challenge for IMG, which must treat the property in a very different way to some of its other rights-holder partners.
The average fan of Wimbledon and The Open – IMG’s longest-standing rights-holder partnerships – tends to have far more disposable income than the average Super League fan. Rugby league is a predominantly working-class sport in England, with top teams based in some of the country’s poorest communities.
This is not lost on Dwyer or Jones, who know that Super League’s place in a family’s weekly budget is not to be taken for granted.
“We have an incredibly passionate fanbase and I think that as long as we give them the best possible product and the best sporting experience they can possibly have, they will prioritise rugby league as part of their weekly spend,” Dwyer says. “That was one of the ideas behind the concept of grading: ensuring that every club is offering fans a top-level experience that represents value for money on their hard-earned pounds and pence.”
Making the grade: Super League’s fight to win hearts and minds
Super League will enter a new era in 2025, with a ‘grading’ system replacing promotion and relegation. The change won’t be a panacea, but RL Commercial and IMG hope it will spark life into a…www.sportbusiness.com
If hull kr have a bad year and the owner does walk away he will be doing a massive u turn and saying more should be done
haha yeh that one clashing game is making the world of difference!
Ive been hearing about the death of RL since 1980 lol. Yet here it still is. In fact in 1896 the southern media were probably predicting the demise of the Northern Union!
Boards now made up of millionaires with grand plans. Club is rakign in the revnue from sell out crowds and huge merch sales. Stadium is making the club extra money from concerts like Cold Play! Thankfully our reliance on one owner is no longer what it was.
Also you got a 20,000 plus for the Wigan Leigh derby coming up and some impressive crowds for the smaller clubs 5,369 for York v KR, good crowds in West Cumbria with 3,033 for Workington and 3,980 for Whitehaven.
Get Eddie Hearn and the NRL involved.
From Nov after Cook was in Sydney. Seems the most legit report so far:
That funding would be worth $350 million to $500 million and would include a proposal to increase Perth’s rectangular HBF Stadium from a 22,500-seat venue to a 27,000-seat venue and upgrade the stadium’s facilities to ensure the new team could earn up to 70 per cent of its game-day revenue from corporate partnerships.
The cost of opening HBF stadium is estimated to be $150,000 each game, but the government has offered a period of rent-free use for the NRL.
Another significant development is the in-principle agreement to match, dollar-for-dollar, any funding from NRL Western Australia.
Other channels of funding from the government would include an injection of $25 million (joint funded by the City of Fremantle and the state government) into a temporary high-performance facility at Ken Allen Field in Fremantle while a long-term centre of excellence, which will double as a community asset, is built in Malaga.
The WA government has also pledged to introduce rugby league into the curriculum of up to 24 high schools in the Perth metropolitan area and says it will fund community development officers to ensure that the elite program is linked to the community grassroots programs.
The WA premier and $500m came to Sydney. The Perth Bears dream is alive and well
NRL boss Peter V’landys secures funding guarantees for 18th NRL team in Western Australia.www.smh.com.au
yeh realised I posted in wrong thread and changed lol You're on the ball today!
