Challenge Cup final: rugby league has its annual chance to attract new fans

The Challenge Cup final on Saturday is rugby league’s annual mainstream showcase, the longest advert for the sport every year. With a whole afternoon of coverage on BBC anchored by the network’s leading sports presenter, with supplementary programming across their other formats, previews in national papers and on radio, it is a marketing dream.

A maximum permitted crowd of 45,000 will mean a half-full Wembley will actually be “sold out” for the first time in more than a decade as one of St Helens or Castleford will end their relatively long waits to lift the famous trophy. A week after the carnage of the Euro 2020 final, there should be a carnival atmosphere.

Having already benefited from vastly improved coverage in each round, the Challenge Cup on the Beeb this season has felt fresher, with rugby league being taken seriously as sporting entertainment. Last year the final – played in mid-October, remember – was watched by more than a million viewers throughout, peaking at 1.6 million. That may be just 5% of the England-Italy audience on Sunday but it was the most watched show on TV that afternoon.

In this last summer final before the event returns to May from next year, Saturday will provide the sport with over a million customers for a match between two clubs based in provincial towns that are, in these post-industrial times, best known for rugby league. Given Super League attendances and broadcast rights are similar to the EFL’s League One, with wage bills more akin to League Two, that should remind a sport which is currently indulging in Olympic-level self-flagellation, that perhaps rugby league’s profile is actually punching above its weight.

It is the task of both the sport and the broadcaster to keep those viewers for this year’s World Cup and beyond. Sports fans are waiting to be intrigued, entertained and converted. I know I was. Having grown up in the 1980s in a football town with a father immersed in that sport, rugby league meant a few minutes of Grandstand on the rare occasions when I spent a Saturday afternoon at home. It was a respectful relationship.

When work took my Dad to Pontefract in the early 1960s, he watched Featherstone and Castleford regularly. So, I spent the first two rugby league matches of my life cheering on the victorious Fev, then Cas, in their last Wembley triumphs. I know, sacrilege. Both return to Wembley on Saturday, Featherstone taking on York in the 1895 Cup final curtain-raiser. My dad may be the only chap there cheering on Fev and Cas.

Everything changed when I began working in an office and living above a pub, both of which had Sky Sports on TV all day. Super League was on all the time. I got hooked. A sideshow rapidly became an obsession.

If you don’t come from a rugby league community, TV is the sport’s gateway drug and visibility the dealer. Events like Saturday are key. Expanding the audience requires the oxygen of exposure and accessibility. How often does rugby league appear on your TV screen? Do clips invade your social media? And once drawn to this sport by pictures on a screen, how easily can you go to a game, or play, regardless of age, gender or ability? In vast swathes of the nation, the answer is “not very”.

If you don’t have Sky Sports – and most people don’t – accessing the sport is a challenge. According to the Broadcasters Audience Research Board, the number of UK households with Sky subscriptions has decreased steadily from a peak of nearly 10 million in 2013 to just above 8 million now. Some of those watch Sky via Now TV instead; many switched to BT Sport; others have cut the cord completely. That decision will surely be more widespread in the post-Covid economy.

At least the lack of competition for rugby league broadcast rights and Sky’s quarter-century exclusivity has meant armchair supporters have to pay one subscription, unlike Premier League fans who have to subscribe to Sky, BT Sport and Amazon Prime to watch all of their live games from home. Just being on Sky is not going to grow the game. When the Cricket World Cup final was shown live on Channel 4 in 2019, 44% of viewers were from homes without Sky Sports.

The BBC presence – which has expanded greatly via their various platforms – is vital. Their Super League Show has come alive since moving presentation from a dull studio to pitchside. Despite being aired at times seemingly aimed at students and milkmen, viewing figures of around 250,000 are still more than almost all Super League games on Sky.

For the next two seasons, a package of 10 Super League matches is available to be broadcast free-to-air. Super League plans for those to be every fortnight from June to October. There is no suggestion the BBC will pay for it, though. Perhaps Sky will – and put the games on YouTube in what could be seen as an historic cut-through decision. Putting Super League on a niche channel attracting only the dedicated rugby league fan would be yet another missed opportunity. The game cannot afford that.

Clubcall: Devon Sharks

When you’ve been unable to attend a live match for 18 months, I can highly recommend easing yourself back in at Rackerhayes in Kingsteignton. Newton Abbott RFC’s home ground was where it all started for Devon Sharks 15 years ago, and now they are back there for their debut season in the Southern Conference League, the highest amateur level in the south.

With a squad pulled together from many local union clubs, some Sharks players are in their first season of league, while others have spent a decade playing the code. Taking the place of Cardiff in the 14-club league, Sharks have been competitive in all three games so far. Watching their 32-24 defeat by Swindon St George last week – in which neither side led by more than six points until a last-minute conversion by the visitors – all seemed well with the world.

Foreign quota

While the highly ambitious North American Rugby League failed to launch this summer, California RL is up and running with six teams the length of the state. Former Huddersfield Giants season-ticket holder and Oxford University player Ben Calverley formed a club in his adopted home city and named it after his hometown: hence San Diego Barracudas, a nod to the bizarre days when Fartown went all Floridian.

LA Mongrel are playing out of at The Kennel – naturally – at Van Nuys High School, otherwise known as Ridgemont High, where fast times were had in the 1982 movie. Van Nuys was alma mater of future star quarterback Bob Waterfield. Readers of the book No Helmets Required will recall Waterfield turned down an invite from acquaintance Mike Dimitro to tour Australia with the American All Stars, preferring to spend the summer of 1953 with his wife Jane Russell and her co-star Marilyn Monroe, both also Van Nuys alumni, as they promoted their new movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. His loss.

Goal-line drop-out

France have made a giant stride towards becoming hosts for the 2025 World Cup. The new federation president Luc Lacoste launched their bid last week and, with new International Rugby League chair Troy Grant targeting France as a major potential growth market, they are expected to get it rubber-stamped once government backing is confirmed. France want to add a youth tournament to run alongside the men’s, women’s and wheelchair events, and to expand so that all four have 16 teams competing across five regions. All tres exciting.

Fifth and last

England’s 55-year wait for a major men’s tournament is nothing. Try Warrington’s 66-year wait for a fourth title. They have again decided that recruiting a world-class half-back will be the elixir to their multi-generational torture. The club described the signing of England half-back George Williams on a three-and-a-half-year deal as “complex”. In other words, they have had to shift bodies out to create room under a bulging salary cap.

They drew the Greg Inglis Experiment to a premature end after just three games; Rob Butler joined Leigh on loan; in-form Jake Mamo is Castleford-bound in November; and Tom Lineham is also expected to move on. To accommodate Williams, one of their other two England halves will have to leave. With the Wire insisting that won’t be Gareth Widdop, assume Blake Austin will be heading back to the NRL.

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source: theguardian.com