Have you not heard or got it yet Gutters. GB is finished for home games. GB May come back for overseas tours, so lucky old you can go. The Aussies may come for a Three Test Series against England with maybe a one off game with the French. But again, this proposal is not just about internationals. It is about raising awareness, through something novel and unique, and you as a marketer should see that. I think it will have a very big impact if correctly executed and both the NRL AND RFL would benefit.



The me chap in charge of the NRL Commission seems to have a vision over and above the clubs old guard. The NRL clubs want to expand their brand, the SOO at Wembley gives them that chance to showcase their players. To secure sponsorship $ as a game we need to target the money men of London and their contacts.



Sometime I cannot way you up, and I mean that with a lot of respect for your years of passion on this site.

I'd love SoO at Wembley.....I just can't "logistically" see it happening without some serious arm bending by the ARL Commission of the NRL clubs.



Whilst there is a lot of "good will" and "good feeling" as a result of the RLWC, the NRL is still a competition that is heavily reliant on TV cash and Mr Smith and the rest of the commission have 4 years left to make more than the current 2 clubs self sufficient before they take the SoO circus to Wembley.

Much as I would love to see this happen this is Australia's big TV event and part of a deal worth a billion dollars. So either the TV companies over there are going to say "Sure, we'll just put it on at midnight and take the hit on the advertising revenue. No problem." or it's going to be a fourth game bolted on at the end, if not postponed to post season. Which is still fine by me but you sell this on how much it means as much as the quality of the spectacle and it diminishes the marketing effort somewhat.

As I have already pointed out, playing the SoO in late May at noon London time will ensure 9pm Sydney-Brisbane kickoff. That would be an hour later than now occurs on Wednesday night, but would be more acceptable because it is Saturday night (and thus the kids can stay up late to watch it). Playing it at 12.30 pm London kickoff would possibly be OK in Australia because the pre-match coverage would start at 9pm, kickoff at 9.30 pm, and the game would finish at 11.15 pm. Maybe Channel 9 would agree.

Unfortunately i agree, only last week, after all the success and positive news and feel good feeling of the WC, Craig Bellamy moaned that it was too long and it should just be competed between the teams that can actually win it (I.E NZ/OZ/England)

My apologies, I neglected to hang on your every word.



The problem with this is it limits the ticket buying public to people already in London and those prepared to book a hotel for the night before.

Reading some of these responses you'd think a sports competition having self-interest was the world's greatest sin.



State of Origin would be massive. It's the one rugby league event that people in the UK who don't even like or know much about rugby league will watch, despite some of the drivel posted in this thread suggesting otherwise. I'd go as far as saying that outside of world cups it probably draws more interest from casual sports fans than some international games do.



If international rugby league is truly the way forward and there is a market for it then where is the conflict here? From the sounds of some of you, Dunbar for example, you talk up internationals but sound petrified that origin would take attention away from them. If the UK care about international games and not origin then what are you worried about? If it's a failure then it's a failure for the NRL. So what. Stop whinging.

On a Wednesday morning. Put the SL grand final or rugby league world cup final on Sky on a wednesday morning and lets see how much better it rates.



You think Aus - NZ would have rated much better at 11am middle of the week when most the country are at work?

i would schedule the second game of the series in london - there will be something riding on it (and to be fair even after a 2 - 0 series lead the 3rd game would stilll mean something), but the chance for one of the teams to pull level or go and take the series would set it up nicely. also there may be some juicy hype arising out of game 1 that could be used to market it - even though i think it would be close to a sell out anyway.



SOO is always a bit imbalanced by having 2 games in either queensland or nsw - a game on neutral soil would balance it up

Most people I talk to that don't have much knowledge or interest in rugby league don't have a clue about State of Origin. They have no idea what it is.

They don't need to know anything about rugby league to back England against Australia or New Zealand.

Mine was a valid point.....the SL GF only drew 260k this year......you'll get maybe double that on SKY or possibly 1 million on BBC......SoO is a big thing to RL fans....it really is an irrelevance outside of that in regards of UK sports consciousness outside of RL fans.......



btw.......SoO is a Wednesday event........it's part of a 1 billion dollar TV deal in which the TV companies dictate KO times and dates........SoO rates better than either NRL or AFL grand finals because it is on a Wednesday........do you think Channel 9 are going to drop close to 1 million viewers to accommodate an experiment? Do you think NRL coaches will welcome the 2 weeks their stars will be missing for the sake of 1 game?

I don’t think anyone thinks SoO wouldn’t sell well but it isn’t our competition and doesn’t benefit our competition. It wont attract new fans, it wont attract lapsed fans to our competition, it wont make us any money. It doesn’t benefit our game over here in any way.



It simply takes attention away from our game and cements our position as number 2.

I can see the point of origin being used to spread the game, but South Africa would be the obvious place to try that, not the games heartland.