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In an age of instant access to information, with millions of people at our finger tips via social media, and well paid marketing managers, the NRL has again showed that it can find a way to stuff up the most promotable opportunities the game has to offer.
A mere 200 people turned up to congratulate the State of Origin series winning New South Wales Blues at the Opera House at 1:30pm on Thursday.
Just 200 people. After nine years and Paul Gallen’s speech of the series triumph being for the “five million people in New South Wales”, a meagre 200 people were on hand to witness history.
It’s not because New South Welshman don’t possess passion, or partied too hard after the series clinching second match, it’s because no one knew this was even occurring.
At what point did the NRL ever indicate that Blues players would be celebrating the series win throughout the week leading up to Origin or directly following the match?
At 9:53am on Thursday morning a Facebook post and accompanying tweet was created stating the players would be at the location from 1:30 to 2:30pm.
If the NRL seriously thinks that league fans will believe that this was the earliest time they could relay the message then they are joking. People from within the NSW camp would have organised the celebration the night before at the latest.
Why? Because there would need to be a huge amount of organisation to transport more than 20 players and an equivalent amount of staff back to Sydney and then ensure the entire group would be at the Opera House at the correct time.
Why did the NRL not contact media outlets, organise press releases for radio and television and take to social media the night before?
Sheer incompetence from the marketing and promotions sector is the reason. The problem is this is not an isolated issue. The amount of people who thought the Knights were in fact the Wests Tigers in Round 13 due to the Knights wearing a bright orange jersey was staggering.
No one was informed beforehand, there was no press release from the NRL and there was definitely nothing indicating what the significance of the jersey (to support NSW Miners) was until the actual broadcast of the game.
In Round 16 the Raiders wore special gold socks to support the Men of League Foundation. Given that the NRL is closely involved with the Men of League Foundation and that it is a charitable cause, you would imagine that the promotion of this event would be prevalent across multimedia.
Instead pundits were again left confused as to why the Raiders were wearing these socks and relied on broadcast explanations. While these aren’t huge issues it underlines the lack of clear communication and promotion.
The selection of Justice Crew as the State of Origin 2 entertainment was beyond daft. Here is the game’s prize piece, the biggest Origin match in a decade, and the marketing guru’s place a soft pop dance crew, who are notably understood to be incapable of singing without auto tune, on centre stage.
The NRL has been notoriously poor in this aspect of their administration, however it is excellent to see this weekend’s special Rise for Alex Round being heavily promoted, wrist bands and gate takings included.
But above all television advertisements and press releases passed onto radio and newspapers have been exceptional. However, it should not take the tragic derailment of a young man’s life to force the NRL to act as a professional standard, particularly given the financial backing they now possess for promotion since the broadcast deal.
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