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Before a ball was kicked, the Super League heralded the 2012 season in controversial circumstances. The competition will be known as the Stobart Super League in a three-year deal.
The Stobart brand sees the FTSE 250 logistics company in a marketing-led approach to sponsor English rugby league’s flagship competition, which will not include cash.
This is seen as either a failure for the Rugby Football League to secure decent monetary sponsorship or an innovative marketing coup that will see the Super League brand on the side of 100 odd trucks (an addition of 100 more trucks each year of sponsorship) across the length and breath of the UK and Europe with clubs choosing their preferred trucking routes.
Independent marketing analysts have stated the value of such exposure ranges from £2.5 to £5 million pounds.
The sponsorship has already seen international brand Heinz come on board as associate Super League sponsors and a number of current sponsors re-signing. According to Marketing Week UK, Stobart Group will take over from Engage Mutual Assurance, who decided not to renew its deal after eight years – which was thought to be worth £1.2m a year – last April because the sport no longer fit with its strategy to target the over 50s market.
This is a great indication of the youthful audience that now watches Super League rugby league in the UK, as does in Australia.
Added, the RFL has informed media Super League is the second most watched domestic league outside of football in England. It estimates that 24 million people watch live coverage and highlights across Sky and the BBC each season.
Further, the number of registered rugby league players in England has broken the 100,000 mark according to the latest official RFL statistics. Open age higher education and further education participation runs at over 70 universities and 130 colleges with strong bases in the Midlands, which has 20 percent of higher education participation – in fact, students account for 3000 of the players.
There are also 23,000 students who compete in the Carnegie Champion Schools competition from southern England, Wales to Scotland. The Armed Forces currently has in excess of 40 teams which accounts for nearly 1000 players. There are just on 30,000 people aged over 16 who have played touch, tag, masters and wheelchair rugby league in 2011.
On the field, St Helens RLFC christened their £30 million stadium, Langtree Park, before 16,000 loyal fans. The stadium is fully owned by the club – debt free.
Salford City Reds also moved into their new stadium in a region crucial for Super League growth, greater Manchester. Additionally, Super League 2012 welcomed back Widnes Vikings, who have become the first professional sports club in the UK to install a state-of-the-art 4g pitch, the most technologically advanced playing surface in the world.
Catalan Dragons entered a revamped Gilbert Brutus Stadium with a new corporate-laden 2500 seater stand and a huge media backer in Al-Jazeera Sport, televising all home games.
The London Broncos reclaimed their old name in a welcome move from staunch supporters who had drifted away from the club. Results on the field will now determine if the Broncos become a success.
The Broncos were competitive in their first match of the season against St Helens, losing 34-24 at London Harlequins rugby union’s Twickenham Stoop before 6000 spectators.
Next Friday in the World Club Challenge, Leeds faces Manly Sea Eagles at Headingley before a sold-out 22,000 crowd and an expected large live TV audience for Sky Sports and highlights on BBC.
The first round of Super League was affected by shockingly cold weather but crowds averaged 10,000 plus and Sky Sport’s TV audience for the Widnes versus Wakefield kick-off was 75 percent higher than the corresponding kick-off in 2010, and second only to grand final audience figures at Old Trafford.
Such numbers indicate good times ahead for rugby league in the UK, or as Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney tweeted on the weekend, “Rugby league is far better than super bowl”, with some of the English Premier League’s big name players gracing rugby league stadiums as fans.
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