The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 5:36 pm  

Quarter empty stadium for the grand final

mickey easy saints win, that I’ve predicted for what seems like a billion years because the competition is so predictable.

Of course saints will be happy, but clearly people are tuning out. Look at the empty seats.

SL has never been so bad.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 6:00 pm  

Less empty seats than the last 2 years...

Quality of Super League is on a downward trend no doubt, but so is the amount of money in the pockets of our core fanbase.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 6:47 pm  

Lowest crowd since 2001 if you exclude the last 2 years as anomalies.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 7:15 pm  

Hopefully IMG can help run a competent promotional campaign for next year's finals.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 7:46 pm  

Need different finalists and crucially a new winner....a Cinderella win akin to Leicester winning the premier League.
Neutrals arent going to folk out money to watch the same sides.
Any hope of parity on the field was washed away by the ridiculous appeal(s) by Saints off it midweek.
As a Cas fan I should be delighted with Leeds dropping short...but I don't feel anything.
Fan of 40 years and I feel ....meh.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:29 pm  

duke street 10 wrote:

Need different finalists and crucially a new winner....a Cinderella win akin to Leicester winning the premier League.
Neutrals arent going to folk out money to watch the same sides.
Any hope of parity on the field was washed away by the ridiculous appeal(s) by Saints off it midweek.
As a Cas fan I should be delighted with Leeds dropping short...but I don't feel anything.
Fan of 40 years and I feel ....meh.

Saints set the high standard 4 years ago and play tough, with intensity like an NRL side.

Its up to the rest of the league to up their game to get to that standard, Catalan and Wigan had a brief period but couldn't keep it going all season. I thought Leeds put in a great effort and had a few players missing that might have gave them more scoring points. At the start of the season I tipped them to get into the play offs, Rohan Smith has set a good base line and I think will feature more strongly next season.

As for other teams, they need to get their finger out, we probably have around 8 teams who are playing way below standard on and off the pitch.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:59 pm  

CM Punk wrote:

Hopefully IMG can help run a competent promotional campaign for next year's finals.

Shouldn't they already be all over the RLWC? Tickets sales to date suggest that it's a WC that's having money flushed down it!

Have they spoken with our state funded broadcaster yet? There's quite an important match being played next weekend (not to mention two tomorrow) but:

BBC wrote:

So that brings the curtain down on another Super League season - with St Helens winning their fourth successive title and ninth overall in the summer era.

However, there's lots more rugby league coming very soon.

In three weeks' time the World Cup will be getting under way when England face Samoa at St James' Park, Newcastle.

We'll have full coverage of the three competitions - men's, women's and wheelchair - across the BBC on TV, radio and online.

Until then, goodbye.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 9:04 pm  

There is a big problem with neutral support not bothering with our finals anymore. Saints-Leeds is one of our better combinations in terms of fanbases but still Old Trafford far from full. Know money is tight right now but it wasnt as tight a year ago when tickets first went on sale, the Marketing just isn't good enough.

[Mild Rover]

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sat Sep 24, 2022 10:35 pm  

It’s not an easy sell though… which isn’t an excuse not to try to do better on that front, just an acknowledgement of where we’re at. We don’t have many highly competitive well balanced contests with great uncertainty of outcome or many stories to weave a compelling narrative around. It’s like we’ve combined the worst parts of the WWE and CFL.

While, I’d love to see a wider variety of clubs in the GF and a different winner, even that could be a tough sell I reckon. Perceptions of clubs are so entrenched that I suspect that a surprise Hudds-Salford GF, for example, would be perceived/framed as mostly a failure of Leeds-Wigan-Saints.

Re: The Nadir of super league : Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:02 am  

UllFC wrote:

There is a big problem with neutral support not bothering with our finals anymore. Saints-Leeds is one of our better combinations in terms of fanbases but still Old Trafford far from full. Know money is tight right now but it wasnt as tight a year ago when tickets first went on sale, the Marketing just isn't good enough.

It's an often used term on here, but what do you actually mean by marketing, who is the targeted recipient and by what means do you propose that will get a return on the investment? How are you going to incentivise neutral fans to pay out if they simply aren't interested in the teams or product on show?

In its heyday the CC Final was the singular RL showcase event for the RL community - but now with SL GF, Magic Weekend, Big Bash, Playoff Finals etc you can only tap the market so many times.