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The weather forecast is for 21-29 degrees and a shower or two, likely in the morning.
Precisely!
You will have a better idea than me about the reasons for the lack of Aussies attending games, speaking from a UK perspective I think It's unfair to compare the numbers of RL fans who travel from England with RU followers of the Lions. The working class game point and affordability is not the main issue, it's the lack of numbers that follow RL in general. Football in the UK is predominantly working class, people with similar economic means as RL followers, but you will see tens of thousands of England fans making the trips to major tournaments all over the world, likewise Ireland, Scotland etc. Had the latter two qualified for Russia there would have been 20k from both, easy. RU being a private school game will have wealthier fans yes (generally speaking), but they also have a much bigger fan base to call upon. The Lions have hoards of English, Irish, Scots and Welsh fans who travel, whereas England RL is predominantly fans from Yorkshire and Lancashire. On the BBC radio podcast this week Dave Woods was interviewing groups of English fans in Australia and there was a Yorkshire vs Lancashire banter among them. The major cities in these two counties are not RL areas either, bar Leeds and Hull. Most of the Super League clubs are based in towns.
can't solve it with empty seats either, what do you reckon people at the ground and watching on tv think of a "major sporting event" with thousands of empty seats? They think it's not a major sporting event! The market dictates the value of something, calling it a major sporting event doesn't mean anything if people don't care enough to pay what you're asking. The pricing model is absolutely wrong if there are still thousands of tickets unsold come Saturday night, major sporting event or not.
The market will tell you if its right. Id suggest that if it was emphatically this final would have been sold out on Monday! But its not! So will international embarassment on the game's biggest stage suffice instead? Great outcome for a sport not even recognised as a sport by international sporting bodies!? Just dig the hole deeper fellas. It's not hurting you but its hurting rugby league.
2008 sold out, 2017 likely wont, therefore pricing is wrong. Even if you accept the game doesn't hold the same interest as it did in 2008, the pricing should reflect that. Either it's too expensive for what people expect to pay and tickets should therefore be cheaper, or people don't really care about the game and tickets should therefore be cheaper.
