Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 8:34 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Gutterfax is hacked off - he said the RLWC would be a disaster and no one would attend the games!! The fact the opposite happened gave him egg on his face and he is trying some diversionary tactics to cover his lack of understanding

I was wrong about attendances at RLWC and was the first to admit it. No egg. As for lack of understanding, NOBODY, not 1 poster here predicted the attendances achieved....or anything like them. When I said about 350,000 about 12 months out, nobody disagreed...their silence was only broken after it became obvious that I was wrong in my prediction......which was based on previous efforts to promote the game here. The only thing I didn't "understand" was how good Sally Bolton was.

As for a 10 team comp including London.......that is now an impossible pipe dream until there is a total change at the top in the RFL and an acceptance that "london" will need a lot more funding.....regardless of how many pit-village clubs whine like bitches about how unfair it is.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 8:48 am  

loiner81 wrote:

You can say it as many times as you like, stamp your feet if you like, but they weren't.
Feel free to provide evidence if you're so sure.

They were...and tenner tickets for double header semi-finals too......check out the profit made from the comp for further proof.

loiner81 wrote:

tried, they failed. But at least they tried. Do you think the crowd would've been higher if tickets were £15+ ?

Dublin isn't Limerick.........you said Dublin. Buy an Atlas.

loiner81 wrote:

So now it's 24 teams and not just SL

No....I said 24 teams a few pages back.....

loiner81 wrote:

I'm too tired to look but didn't you claim earlier that overall crowds would be down, now you're saying they'll be up?

....nope, I'm saying they might be up, but I believe they wont be up. I do believe that average attendances will be up in SL next year........and that was the conversation I was involved in before you started your waffle.

loiner81 wrote:

It's always been a northern sport. A couple of thousand fans in London didn't make it a national sport

If it's always been an Northern sport, how come RL fans in general demand national press coverage like other codes? Why the moaning about the BBC's lack of coverage?

loiner81 wrote:

2nd rate Aussies have been a feature of RL since before SL so why even bring that up?

Because we were told that getting rid of the reliance on these imports was VITAL to the game by Nigel and the lads......a few years licencing and we've started to export players in significant numbers, so what do they do? Drag us back to the boom or bust mentality.....

loiner81 wrote:

As for sponsorship drying up, haven't we just signed a record TV deal with SKY or did I imagine that?

You imagined it. What happened was Sky painted Nigel into a corner and he bit their hand off........they have secured their summer filler sport for 2/10th of SFA and have managed to get a Thursday night game into the mix too.....check out the attendances for those games.....attendances BTW are one of the gripes that chairmen have we are often told.
TV isn't sponsorship by the way.........have you switched energy suppliers yet? If not, better get a move on because it's the only way the "sponsor" has to pay any money for the naming rights.

loiner81 wrote:

You're completely off your nut.

Maybe.....but I am more often than not right......a point proven by the number of times my error regarding the RLWC attendances is raised on here.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:02 am  

gutterfax wrote:

........As for a 10 team comp including London.......that is now an impossible pipe dream until there is a total change at the top in the RFL and an acceptance that "london" will need a lot more funding.....regardless of how many pit-village clubs whine like bitches about how unfair it is.

A SL club in London is the pipe dream. No matter how much money was thrown at them you cannot escape the fact that there aren't enough punters interested to go and watch them and they would continue to be a huge drain on the limited RFL resources forever and a day. It wouldn't appear that they are vital, or even semi-important, to the Sky contract either now would it?

Even in the 'pit village' heartlands (including where the so called big names play) there isn't enough interest to have more than 3 or 4 clubs who aren't running at a hand to mouth or lower existance. That won't change whilst soccer is around and is what needs to be accepted before the game can grow and expand in this country.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:25 am  

Mr Dog wrote:

No matter how much money was thrown at them you cannot escape the fact that there aren't enough punters interested to go and watch them and they would continue to be a huge drain on the limited RFL resources forever and a day.

Point of order.......in the 13 years I have followed the team, the owners......regardless of who they were never marketed the team. We are told that 50% of theq sky audience are in London. ....before we say theres no interest, maybe we should market the games. Hughes has , spent less than 1 million of the 15 hes wasted on marketing.......and hes surprised nobody came to games

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:33 am  

gutterfax wrote:

Point of order.......in the 13 years I have followed the team, the owners......regardless of who they were never marketed the team. We are told that 50% of theq sky audience are in London. ....before we say theres no interest, maybe we should market the games. Hughes has , spent less than 1 million of the 15 hes wasted on marketing.......and hes surprised nobody came to games

I agree with this and it was actually a point I made to some London fans a couple of years back. Me and some friends went down to see the Leeds game at the Stoop, and over the course of the weekend didn't see a single poster, advert or anything for the game. At the time, we held the World Club Challenge. Even with my limited marketing knowledge (nil), it didn't seem like it would be too difficult to harness some extra interest from a "Broncos vs the World champs blockbuster" type campaign. But, no, there was nothing. On game day we even chatted to some Twickenham locals in one of the pubs, and they had no idea there was even a game on

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:34 am  

gutterfax wrote:

They were...and tenner tickets for double header semi-finals too......check out the profit made from the comp for further proof.

Yep, keep stamping your feet. The only person you're convincing is yourself and i'm not even sure that you actually believe it.

gutterfax wrote:

Dublin isn't Limerick.........you said Dublin. Buy an Atlas.

Oh. So if tickets had been £15 in Limerick would the crowd have been higher? You forgot to answer...

gutterfax wrote:

No....I said 24 teams a few pages back.....

Oh. So it's a few pages back and not since the new system was announced? Took you a while to come up with that one.
You'll still be wrong.

gutterfax wrote:

....nope, I'm saying they might be up, but I believe they wont be up. I do believe that average attendances will be up in SL next year........and that was the conversation I was involved in before you started your waffle.

Make your mind up then.

gutterfax wrote:

If it's always been an Northern sport, how come RL fans in general demand national press coverage like other codes? Why the moaning about the BBC's lack of coverage?

A few people on a forum doesn't equate to most RL fans. The BBC do OK.

gutterfax wrote:

Because we were told that getting rid of the reliance on these imports was VITAL to the game by Nigel and the lads......a few years licencing and we've started to export players in significant numbers, so what do they do? Drag us back to the boom or bust mentality.....

See, now you're just making stuff up. Players being deemed good enough for the NRL is a good thing and proof we're doing the right things but it's hardly significant numbers going over.
There's more youth coming through than we've ever seen and that's due to many reasons including the salary cap.
Has the salary cap been scrapped or something? If it hasn't then with the TV sponsorship money in place then no one is going bust.

gutterfax wrote:

You imagined it. What happened was Sky painted Nigel into a corner and he bit their hand off........they have secured their summer filler sport for 2/10th of SFA and have managed to get a Thursday night game into the mix too.....check out the attendances for those games.....attendances BTW are one of the gripes that chairmen have we are often told.
TV isn't sponsorship by the way.........have you switched energy suppliers yet? If not, better get a move on because it's the only way the "sponsor" has to pay any money for the naming rights.

Keep grasping at those straws but please stop making stuff up.

gutterfax wrote:

Maybe.....but I am more often than not right......a point proven by the number of times my error regarding the RLWC attendances is raised on here.

Thread bookmarked then.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:41 am  

gutterfax wrote:

When I said about 350,000 about 12 months out, nobody disagreed...their silence was only broken after it became obvious that I was wrong in my prediction......which was based on previous efforts to promote the game here. The only thing I didn't "understand" was how good Sally Bolton was.

Stop making stuff up.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 11:44 am  

The RFL can't magic up a viable London club without about 20 million quid to throw at it. Why have them in SL just because they're in London? The club doesn't have it's own stadium, and still doesn't even have a long term stadium deal.

What can the RFL do about that?

If anyone's serious about RL succeeding at the top level in London then we need to buy into the New River Stadium and turn it into a top class facility for Skolars and Broncos to play at LONG TERM.

Until then there's no value in having a London presence in SL as it will continue to be a financial disaster.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Thu Aug 21, 2014 12:05 pm  

Tbh SL does not need London, can't afford the massive marketing and stadium hire a team in London needs and would be much better off investing that money in clubs in nth and sth Wales were the game has far more potential at grass roots and a professional level. Amateur, schools and semi pro local clubs around the London boroughs are the best that part of England can hope for.

Re: Opening weekend sees attendances soaring by 12.70% : Fri Aug 22, 2014 9:14 pm  

If you keep responding to Gutters then he will respond right back. If you don't want to give him air time, stop addressing him directly or simply put him on ignore.

As for the averages we'll when it was a 12 team comp previously, their averages where higher. But those who run an agenda at the time would not have pointed this out when the competition expanded to 14 teams.

I've no problem with Williams figures. It's a shame the numbers are down. But that's the way it is. Hopefully clubs are taking notice as this mantra of it does not matter until the playoffs will hurt them more in the long run. It does matter and it needs to matter to get people to turn up and pay for these players.