Re: Lenighan blames West Yorkshire mafia
Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 6:04 pm
Jamie101 wrote:
For me (coming from the north east originally and then living in Leeds 12 years) the issue is the size of the towns / clubs. I now live in Ponte and it isn't a huge town, yet has one SL team 2 miles from it one side, and one Championship team 2 miles from it on the other. Consequently a small town of 31,000 is split between two teams in the top two divisions. Cas has about 40,000 people and Fev has 15,000. Wakefield is 8 miles from my door. Wakefield is a town of 100k. So that is 3 clubs in the top 2 leagues within 10 miles of one another, with only 185k residents.
This would be fine if the next nearest SL / Champ clubs were 30,40,50 miles away, increasing your catchment area. But they aren't. Within about 20 miles there is Leeds (2.6m) , Batley (38k), Dewsbury (63k), Halifax (88k). That is about 3m people, across 7 clubs across 25 miles. Taking Leeds out - 6 clubs with 400k people between them. And because they are all so close, it goes more inward so people in Shettleston support Wakey, people in Fev will only support Fev, people on the Cas side of Ponte support Cas but wouldn't support Fev. Now presume 1 in 10 people in those towns actually regularly attend rugby league games (ie are your target audience) - you then have 6 teams (discounting Leeds) in competition for about 40k rugby fans to support and attend their team's games.
In contrast, I was raised in Durham (an in-between town for Newcastle and Sunderland - a la Ponte for Cas / Fev but on a bigger scale. Football wise, Durham is / was split between both those clubs largely. The thing was though, there are like 750k people in Newcastle, 175k in Sunderland and 50k in Durham so 1m people to split between 2 teams. If 10% of those people were to attend games, NUFC and SAFC would still be sharing 100k fans between the two of them.
It's saturation with RL. They should focus on bigger towns - either start new teams there or get near-ish teams play games there. Put Shef games on free after Shef Wed / Utd games when you have 25K people already there - put Salford games on after a Man Yoo FA Cup games when you have 70k there - put Sts on in Liverpool after a LC game when you have 50k there.
It's just saturation and everyone is making everyone else thirsty as there are too many trying to grow to close to each other.
Simi
This would be fine if the next nearest SL / Champ clubs were 30,40,50 miles away, increasing your catchment area. But they aren't. Within about 20 miles there is Leeds (2.6m) , Batley (38k), Dewsbury (63k), Halifax (88k). That is about 3m people, across 7 clubs across 25 miles. Taking Leeds out - 6 clubs with 400k people between them. And because they are all so close, it goes more inward so people in Shettleston support Wakey, people in Fev will only support Fev, people on the Cas side of Ponte support Cas but wouldn't support Fev. Now presume 1 in 10 people in those towns actually regularly attend rugby league games (ie are your target audience) - you then have 6 teams (discounting Leeds) in competition for about 40k rugby fans to support and attend their team's games.
In contrast, I was raised in Durham (an in-between town for Newcastle and Sunderland - a la Ponte for Cas / Fev but on a bigger scale. Football wise, Durham is / was split between both those clubs largely. The thing was though, there are like 750k people in Newcastle, 175k in Sunderland and 50k in Durham so 1m people to split between 2 teams. If 10% of those people were to attend games, NUFC and SAFC would still be sharing 100k fans between the two of them.
It's saturation with RL. They should focus on bigger towns - either start new teams there or get near-ish teams play games there. Put Shef games on free after Shef Wed / Utd games when you have 25K people already there - put Salford games on after a Man Yoo FA Cup games when you have 70k there - put Sts on in Liverpool after a LC game when you have 50k there.
It's just saturation and everyone is making everyone else thirsty as there are too many trying to grow to close to each other.
Simi
A very articulate post Jamie and I think you've pretty much nailed it in one