Far from unexpected, but 1/3 cut from current TV income is going to make things tough. We'll not be the only sport with similar funding issues.
go back 18 -24 months, fitzpatrick and the club saw this happening, and tried to implement a plan of A getting more arses on seats, B, more social media and wider media attention, and ergo, better viewing figures.
Trying to make SL a much more cooler and important product. in advance of the negotiations Sadly none of the other clubs followed suit, a lot fans have used it as a stick to beat him/us/the club with,and now here we are.
Sometimes its worth looking at the bigger picture.
I don't think anybody on here would object to the idea of promoting the club better and making the product more attractive to get fans in. The scepticism was that KF was going about it the right way.
Lets say you're running a pizza chain and the punters say your pizzas are not what they used to be a few years ago and are boring and predictable now.
At a board meeting, one of your directors says, OK lets focus on getting our core product right, focus on the pizzas. Lets change our head chef and switch up our menus. We need to review why our recruitment of staff has not been as good as our competitors, so lets get a new HR director in. We need to look at why our apprenticeship programme doesn't seem to deliver enough chefs coming through, get someone on that. The goal should be to outcompete our rivals on the strength of our core product and make our pizzas the best quality and most varied and interesting on the market.
Another director says, I agree the pizza quality is not acceptable and must improve. But I want to focus on getting the best eat-in experience in our stores. And I want an edgy social media strategy that gets us more interactions on Twitter by doing wind ups of other pizza chains. I don't just want us to be the best pizza chain, I want us to be one of the biggest commercial brands in the world.
go back 18 -24 months, fitzpatrick and the club saw this happening, and tried to implement a plan of A getting more arses on seats, B, more social media and wider media attention, and ergo, better viewing figures.
Trying to make SL a much more cooler and important product. in advance of the negotiations Sadly none of the other clubs followed suit, a lot fans have used it as a stick to beat him/us/the club with,and now here we are.
Sometimes its worth looking at the bigger picture.
For at least a couple of season ago, It wasn't difficult to envisage the Sky deal being a massive issue. Why? because of two things, the game has become a very boring 80 minutes worth of 17 players trying to run over the other sides 17 players. There's no skill, excitement or character left in it, coupled with the demise of the individual standard skill set of players, has left us with an inferior product.
We really need to be selling to another broadcaster IMO. This is awful of sky and they've messed us around in recent times with Thursday matches etc,they had loads of games last season out of rugby league as well. I honestly think that sky believe that superleague/ the rfl don't have the backbone to consider changing broadcasters so they are taking the pee a bit with their offer. I dont think we can afford to see a drop like this in the cap without seeing a mass dilution of the rl talent in the UK to the NRL and Union. A huge backward step.
Unfortunately there are no other broadcasters who could come close to the £20m on offer from Sky.
For at least a couple of season ago, It wasn't difficult to envisage the Sky deal being a massive issue. Why? because of two things, the game has become a very boring 80 minutes worth of 17 players trying to run over the other sides 17 players. There's no skill, excitement or character left in it, coupled with the demise of the individual standard skill set of players, has left us with an inferior product.
its been that way in the most for about 10 years, add in the loop fixtures and over exposure of playing the same teams.
Which is replicated on here, go back about 15 years ago before franchising and promotion and relegation (new teams) were removed for a while and on here was a warzone in the week leading up to saints wigan or widnes games, the boards were unreadable due to trolling and arguing and back and forth, bans handed out left right and centre,
Most clubs have been asleep at the wheel since they were gifted a stack of money back in 2015/16 when the last tv deal was almost forced upon the league, in a lot of cases, just existing with dwindling current supporters, almost in a similar position to where they were at the inception of SL
I don't think anybody on here would object to the idea of promoting the club better and making the product more attractive to get fans in. The scepticism was that KF was going about it the right way. .
maybe he was, maybe he wasn't but the point at the time was he was trying to be proactive in terms of promotion and trying to encourage 11 other SL clubs to get their finger out collectively and realise they can't just coast, because it was going to bite the compeition in the booty.
You'll have the likes of wakey KR and cas who are dependent on SL funding, what have they done for the league.we had wigan begrudgingly joining in, saints sort of letting us do some stuff and cas and Leeds outright saying they dont want to be involved.
Granted SLE should be taking the lead on this from the top.
For at least a couple of season ago, It wasn't difficult to envisage the Sky deal being a massive issue. Why? because of two things, the game has become a very boring 80 minutes worth of 17 players trying to run over the other sides 17 players. There's no skill, excitement or character left in it, coupled with the demise of the individual standard skill set of players, has left us with an inferior product.
What I think you are saying is that more play makers are needed?
I don't think anybody on here would object to the idea of promoting the club better and making the product more attractive to get fans in. The scepticism was that KF was going about it the right way.
Lets say you're running a pizza chain and the punters say your pizzas are not what they used to be a few years ago and are boring and predictable now.
At a board meeting, one of your directors says, OK lets focus on getting our core product right, focus on the pizzas. Lets change our head chef and switch up our menus. We need to review why our recruitment of staff has not been as good as our competitors, so lets get a new HR director in. We need to look at why our apprenticeship programme doesn't seem to deliver enough chefs coming through, get someone on that. The goal should be to outcompete our rivals on the strength of our core product and make our pizzas the best quality and most varied and interesting on the market.
Another director says, I agree the pizza quality is not acceptable and must improve. But I want to focus on getting the best eat-in experience in our stores. And I want an edgy social media strategy that gets us more interactions on Twitter by doing wind ups of other pizza chains. I don't just want us to be the best pizza chain, I want us to be one of the biggest commercial brands in the world.
Which approach do you prefer.
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive but if you are going to wind up the opposition in any market you'd ideally make sure that your product was top notch otherwise you'll look foolish.
I'm sorry for the derailed thread but taking your pizza analogy further, I'd suggest that our board does generally give the chef the most expensive ingredients. If the customers are still dissatisfied, the question is have we got the right chef or has the board been buying him too much pineapple when he's been asking for peperoni
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive but if you are going to wind up the opposition in any market you'd ideally make sure that your product was top notch otherwise you'll look foolish.
I'm sorry for the derailed thread but taking your pizza analogy further, I'd suggest that our board does generally give the chef the most expensive ingredients. If the customers are still dissatisfied, the question is have we got the right chef or has the board been buying him too much pineapple when he's been asking for peperoni
Yeh off thread again but PINEAPPLE on a pizza is wrong on any level.