Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
It's not just Londoners, the Wembley NFL matches sell out because they are pushed as a major event, they attract the latent American football support from all over the country. You're forgetting that England is a very small place and it's pretty easy for anyone in the country to get to London within a few hours. To be honest I'd say that American football probably has a bigger fanbase in the UK than RL does, because the general public actually know what American football is and because it's portrayed as important. RL is not portrayed as important, it's portrayed to most of the country as a weird little sport that nobody really cares about and is only played in miserable little Northern towns. Nobody gets the chance to see how good the product actually is, and a lot of people are automatically biased against it and don't expect it to be any good because of the way it is portrayed. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be a fan or even know anything about the sport if I wasn't already a fan, and it's only because I know how good the product is that I am a fan today. On the other hand I do know about the NFL, I've heard of the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos, I've heard of Tom Brady, I've heard of quarterbacks and touchdowns, I know about the Superbowl and the halftime show etc. It's infinitely more accessible than RL is to the vast majority of the country.
It hasn't deteriorated so much as it hasn't grown with the world. Half the problem is that most of the places RL is popular have been pretty miserable and deprived towns, especially in the 1970s and 80s which is when other sports really started to expand and left RL behind. I don't know what our administrators were doing at that time, I wasn't around then, but they f**king failed whatever it was. As for people outside the heartlands not knowing about the sport, they have never known about it because it just doesn't register with them, because there is pretty much a media blackout of RL. It doesn't even register in the public psyche. If you don't know it exists then you won't find out about it unless you stumble across it by accident. That's just the way it is.
The RFL did everything they could short of literally stepping in and running the club. They bent the rules for them and bailed them out time and time again, after a while there's nothing more they could do. You shouldn't judge anything based on London Broncos, they were just an absolute f**king basket case.
Again, you just don't get it. It's not a case of either/or, playing mid-season internationals doesn't mean you can't play them at the end of the season, it doesn't affect that at all. I would've expected all of the Pacific nations to be playing tests at the end of every year regardless of the rep round existing or not, cancelling it so that they can do something they should've been doing all along is just stupid and regressive. As I said earlier, European soccer leagues have 3 or 4 coordinated international breaks during their season.
AFL is a sport with an established presence in a major city and population center. Soccer is a global powerhouse with trillions of dollars behind it. RL in England is a sport that recently scrapped its London development officers because they couldn't afford to pay them any more. The only RL body in the world with any type of money or power is the NRL, and they have shown time and time again that they aren't going to invest in the international game outside of their own ventures which are solely designed to boost the NRL (which is understandable BTW).
There are plenty of RL matches in London. The Challenge Cup final is there every year, test matches are there every time there is a series in the UK, England played NZ in London last year in front of 44,000. Wigan played a Super League match against Catalans there last year and drew about 8,000. There are currently two other professional RL teams in London as well as London Broncos who are now in the Championship. But London is an insanely big place and it's very difficult to get any sort of penetration at all, in fact most of the big RU teams have had to move out of the city, London Irish now play in Reading, Wasps relocated to Coventry, Saracens played at Watford for a while and I think they are back in London now at a temporary home. It's just an extremely difficult market to crack. And that really is nothing to do with the RFL, they can't just make teams up out of nowhere even though a lot of Australians seem to think that's what happens in other countries.
I'm not saying they do nothing, it's just that they could be doing so much more and more importantly there seems to be a terrible attitude in general towards international RL, not just from the NRL but from the Australian establishment and media as well. For example not televising last year's England vs NZ series even though they had the rights, or reports today that the budget for the 2017 RLWC has been slashed. At this stage I doubt too many people in Australia even know that that competition is taking place to be honest.
The RFL's revenues are a lot better than they were about 15 years ago, when the sport was pretty much insolvent. The RFL was actually a really well run organization in the 2000s and grew quite a lot, but it was starting from such a low base. The growth has mostly slowed down since then due to a number of factors, partly due to the global recession. It's not in dire straits but it's definitely not like the NRL where they have a billion dollar TV deal and huge cash surpluses.
There is room, but it's nothing to do with the RFL. The RFL don't make the clubs or run the clubs. London Broncos can't manage themselves and there isn't anyone else who wants to own a club in London. I think everyone would love there to be a strong Super League club in London but unless someone comes along with millions of pounds to invest and a realistic business plan then it isn't going to happen.
The ARLC getting the Kangaroos to play anyone would be a good start.
