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Thread: Eddie hearn. DAZN. Rugby League

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    Default Eddie hearn. DAZN. Rugby League

    I feel so strongly that rugby league needs a radical change. And id even embrace the end of local clubs as we know them for the good of the sport..

    Eddie Hearn and DAZN is the only move I can think of and I know ive banged the drum about. But where is rugby league going.??
    I see no obvious direction of it growing.
    At best it will carry on as it is or slowly decline..

    I know these are common threads. But does anyone else feel something like DAZN could br a good move??
    Maybe DAZN and BBC

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    In The North Stand With All The Old Folk Belgian Saint's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CGSaint View Post
    I feel so strongly that rugby league needs a radical change. And id even embrace the end of local clubs as we know them for the good of the sport..

    Eddie Hearn and DAZN is the only move I can think of and I know ive banged the drum about. But where is rugby league going.??
    I see no obvious direction of it growing.
    At best it will carry on as it is or slowly decline..

    I know these are common threads. But does anyone else feel something like DAZN could br a good move??
    Maybe DAZN and BBC
    Maybe light at the end of the tunnel?? https://www.skysports.com/rugby-leag...h-rugby-league

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    Quote Originally Posted by CGSaint View Post
    I feel so strongly that rugby league needs a radical change. And id even embrace the end of local clubs as we know them for the good of the sport..

    Eddie Hearn and DAZN is the only move I can think of and I know ive banged the drum about. But where is rugby league going.??
    I see no obvious direction of it growing.
    At best it will carry on as it is or slowly decline..

    I know these are common threads. But does anyone else feel something like DAZN could br a good move??
    Maybe DAZN and BBC
    Without getting sucked into a debate about how the game is run as it’s been talked to death on here already I think the best way forwards is to try and get BT interested in the rugby league rights. There’s a lot of union fans I know who gave up sky sports when they lost all the club and European rugby union who would watch a fair bit of rugby league and having another major broadcaster bidding for the rights is the only way to stop Sky dictating terms to us. Streaming platforms like DAZN might be the way forwards but there’s no value in them bidding for sports like RL at the moment because they just wouldn’t make the money back. £25m a year TV rights even if they charged £20 per month subscription they’d need over 100,000 subscribers to break even. I know there’d be advertising revenue to offset costs but I just don’t see it being worth it, yet, in 5-10 years who knows where we’ll be. BBC I don’t think will ever bid enough for main broadcast rights but absolutely we should be looking to partner with them to get as many free to air games on BBC 1/2 as possible.
    Forwards win games. The backs decide by how much.

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    I am not sure what Hearn can add to the sport. We have gone through our loud music, cheerleaders, give everyone a nickname phase. To me that is all he brings, as well as another invoice for his services.

    The issue over the last few years has been the West Yorkshire Mafia. Hethrington gives Nigel Wood a job, Wood gives Rimmer a job, Rimmer gives Hetherington a job. They only seem to exist to keep each other in power. Marwin Koucash call them out on this a few years back when he tried to buy Bradford that he was being excluded so others could keep the influence amongst themselves.

    The idea of an independent board would be a good idea if you didn't know it would have the same set of cronies running the game.

    We need the game run by the RFL with competent leadership with the focus on Superleague. If Superleague is strong the game is strong.

    We need to stop pandering small clubs that contribute very little but noise. Expand and strengthen the sport nationwide with a clear strategy and business plan.
    I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CGSaint View Post
    I feel so strongly that rugby league needs a radical change. And id even embrace the end of local clubs as we know them for the good of the sport..

    Eddie Hearn and DAZN is the only move I can think of and I know ive banged the drum about. But where is rugby league going.??
    I see no obvious direction of it growing.
    At best it will carry on as it is or slowly decline..

    I know these are common threads. But does anyone else feel something like DAZN could br a good move??
    Maybe DAZN and BBC

    As Hearn said, he would only be interested if he had absolute control over everything. That isn't just the TV presentation.

    Your second sentence is worrisome. To me, the clubs ARE rugby league. I genuinely doubt I'd ever watch another game if St Helens weren't involved (and what about the stadium?).

    Will never happen, though - the clubs would need to agree to handing ownership and control of UK RL to Hearn. And they wouldn't.


    We can get bogged down in the minutiae of all the different way the entire RL package needs to be improved, but I think there are two fundamentals that are at the heart of our problems:

    1) The RL authorities (and that includes clubs) have lost total sight of the principle that we are in the entertainment industry. Rule tinkerings and changes, plus instructions to referees on 'rule interpretations' have turned the game into a boring spectacle where defences have total dominance, with creativity and flair snuffed out. It's like they have concluded that close games are the ideal, and amended the rules to make that a stronger possibility, but sacrificed open, flowing rugby in the process. The result is bored crowds, and armchair/casual fans turning off.

    2) The Sky offering has become p*ss-poor. Camerawork continues to be great, but the presenting rabble are woeful. Eddie and Stevo used to annoy me at times, and in the later years they'd very much run their course, but Eddie at least was a top quality RL commentator for much of the SL era. Now it's part amateur-hour, part northerner parody, part inane memory dredging. It's stark when a properly clued-up guy like Briers/Maguire/Long are guests and give great insight into the plays and subtle workings of the game.

    These are the two areas that those with control over RL need to address.

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    I've said it before and I'll say it again, Hearn makes his clients a lot of money, but he doesn't make them household names.

    Darts is now apparently massive, but it gets about 20% of the audience it got back in the BDO days. It has attracted a new audience no doubt, but that audience mainly consists of people who use a night at the darts as an organised •••• up. Where 5 million used to tune in for a Final back in the day, you'd be doing well if 1 million watch the Final on Sky now.

    And boxing. Joshua and co. have wealth the likes of Eubank, Benn, Watson, McGuigan etc could only dream of, but those fighters were actually all stars, watched by 10 million on ITV when boxing was huge. Nowadays, only a fraction of that amount watch it, if they want to fork out for PPV.

    So, if you're a sportsman or woman and want to to make loads of money, go with Hearns. If you want to be a big deal and be watched by as many people as possible, run in the opposite direction because that isn't what he cares about.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray77 View Post
    I've said it before and I'll say it again, Hearn makes his clients a lot of money, but he doesn't make them household names.

    Darts is now apparently massive, but it gets about 20% of the audience it got back in the BDO days. It has attracted a new audience no doubt, but that audience mainly consists of people who use a night at the darts as an organised •••• up. Where 5 million used to tune in for a Final back in the day, you'd be doing well if 1 million watch the Final on Sky now.

    And boxing. Joshua and co. have wealth the likes of Eubank, Benn, Watson, McGuigan etc could only dream of, but those fighters were actually all stars, watched by 10 million on ITV when boxing was huge. Nowadays, only a fraction of that amount watch it, if they want to fork out for PPV.

    So, if you're a sportsman or woman and want to to make loads of money, go with Hearns. If you want to be a big deal and be watched by as many people as possible, run in the opposite direction because that isn't what he cares about.
    I always wonder about these darts events and if they have any crowd trouble. If people are drinking all day and getting smashed then temperatures must start to rise when shouting for your favourite darts player. I don’t see the point in going to a event were you have to watch the screen too see what is happening, you may as well stay at home and watch it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by pramtown View Post
    I always wonder about these darts events and if they have any crowd trouble. If people are drinking all day and getting smashed then temperatures must start to rise when shouting for your favourite darts player. I don’t see the point in going to a event were you have to watch the screen too see what is happening, you may as well stay at home and watch it.
    I'll give him credit, it's marketing at its best to convince 2,000 lads to pay money to sit in a cramped space supping overpriced beer with a game of darts going on 500 yards away. How he pulled it off I've no idea, but he did it, and darts is now known as the sport which has rowdy and packed houses. On the face of it you would say the sport is booming, the darts players themselves earn far more than the likes of Bristow, Anderson, Wilson, Lowe and co. made, but hardly anyone knows who they are (with the exception of Phil Taylor who made his name before the switch to Sky), and the majority of the people in the arena watching it couldn't care less who wins either.

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    Perception is a big thing, really. The perception of Rugby League is a small, insular sport, shrouded in negativity, who change their structure and their rules at the drop of a hat while being wary and uneasy of anything or anyone different from what or who they’ve known for the past hundred plus years. Compare that to one of Hearn’s sports, Darts, and it’s the polar opposite where people want to attend and be a part of an atmosphere and more than just the sport on offer. Even within darts, people don’t want to go to the BDO Darts but offer a ticket for the PDC World Championship’s and you’ll have people snapping your hand off. There is a perception amongst some that Darts players are top athletes. They might not be aesthetically but the training and work that goes into their craft is comparable to other sports, that’s a hell of a change from blokes swaying through being half cut and having a fag on while at the oche.

    The same for Twenty20 cricket, too. People at my work go annually and everyone wants to go, if you offered up day two of four of a county championship game, you’d have no one interested. They don’t want to be sat around a couple of hundred pensioners in an empty stadium all day but with the T20, it’s a full crowd and there’s a lot more going on than the actual cricket and the action itself is fast paced and exciting. That’s possibly where Rugby League is going “wrong”. I respect what Woolf does for us and I can’t say I’ve seen us defend as good as we do currently but it’s certainly come at the expense of expansive play and our games are largely the same each week and not exciting though that’s not exclusive to us, it’s a problem across the Super League.

    That’s the big thing, though you can’t change a perception overnight. Stuff like teams cancelling games, teams not having academies, blokes having to work as a parcel courier because he’s been placed on furlough and can’t pay the bills, elite games being held in stadia that would look out of place in the sixth tier of English Football, sponsors being mushy peas and the like are all things that need changing but they’re not easy changes and it requires some real leadership and an actual plan, though I’ve never known the game to have that in my lifetime.
    St Helens Rugby League Football Club

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    I think the comparison with twenty 20 Cricket is fairer than darts, darts can be sold as a one off, so it moves around, people go to darts once a year or once every few years, it's much easier to see 10 events a year than six matches a week.

    20 overs cricket is a fairer comparison, however they don't pack out every game as previously stated, I usually go once or twice a year and other than the roses match, there's around 8000-10000 at Old Trafford who attend, and it's dirt cheap, I paid £10 for my ticket, kids are often a pound, but a fiver at most. Finals day at Edgbaston is another 'event' that sells out year on year, but that's not too dissimilar to our Grand Final, it's also worth noting Edgbaston holds 25,000 not 75,000. Cricket has invented a new game (the hundred) which is complete razamataz, however the majority of cricket fans are hugely against it's inception. Is it a coincidence that a wholesome family day at Wembley struggles to sell out, whereas a day on the ale at Old Trafford is an easier sell (I'm generalising clearly)

    The only other game I've seen sell out is the week after the World Cup win, Old Trafford was sold out because of the interest from the win, I've often said that we should take a six week break for the world cup, imagine a first time viewer watching Rugby League for the first time during the world cup (whenever that is - but that's another discussion) and fancies watching a bit, only to find there's no matches for three months.

    I think there's a lot of chicken and egg problems with Rugby League, and it's appearance, however there are some crucial things that need sorting and everything else will fall into place

    1) Get something meaningful back on the BBC - the world cup would have been perfect

    2) Get the entertainment back in the game - I believe it may be going down the route of bonus points for tries scored. I honestly feel it's come to that.

    3) Get a meaningful international series, even if it's just playing GB/England, NZ and Australia

    Everything else to me are smaller issues

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    I've been banging the drum on Twitter about this recently, but 'fixing' Rugby League isn't that difficult. The main problem with Rugby League is the self interest of those in power. The RFL is incompetent and overly cautious, it's about maintaining the cushy number they've got for themselves. The big decisions in Super League are dependent on the clubs and it's just ridiculous that club owners get a say in decisions about the sport. Eammon McManus mentioned this when the Toronto decision was being taken, but the existing clubs should really have no say in the overall strategic direction and decision making of the competition or the sport.

    The sport needs intervention desperately. It needs a strong and cohesive governing body that oversees the entire sport from schools, to grassroots to the professional game. It's decisions need to be consistent with a proper strategy for sustainable growth for the sport. It needs to have control over Super League and it's structure and be able to change it to bring the best competition possible for TV AND streaming. My own suggestion would be a two tier Super League, one with the elite clubs and big city franchises that are exempt from relegation and given chance to develop naturally. Then you have a Super League 2 with the traditional clubs and those looking to progress through the ranks. Have rolling 5 year franchises to move clubs up or down as fit, so that there isn't a permanent ceiling preventing any club from accessing a higher level.

    In reality the only way this is possible is if Super League is bought out in it's entirety and the RFL is either restructed and aligned or shut down. It would need an Eddie Hearn or a major investment from an equity partner or NRL led consortium of both to do it. It's possible, but it's also very doubtful it will happen. Rugby League in this country won't match football, or even Union. It doesn't have to. What it could be if everything was well run is an elite professional sport with crowds at the elite level around the 20,000 average mark for the top competition. Big teams, big city teams and good links and cross continental competition with the NRL. The potential is there, a bi-yearly champions league with the NRL for example, in UK one year, then Aus with the top 4 teams playing over a month with a big final etc planned around the international calendar. Huge potential but at the moment no vision, no competent management and no money. A sport strangled by the likes of Leigh, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Hull KR, Salford and Castleford having a deciding vote.

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