I know this topic is a bit early to bring up and talk about, but just as I am excited to see how this first year unfolds for ProRugby I am also excited for the first Off-Season and the 2nd season to Kick off. with that said as the season goes on I am sure there will be certain areas of the league we will see that needs to be fine tuned here and there as I am sure ProRugby Is watching also. so to being here is my 4 areas I would like to see address, there will be others also I will bring up as the season goes on.
1- better Media coverage: I have seen local news stations covering a few of the teams, Sacramento and San Diego have been the most active from what I have seen. I am not sure if Ohio or Denver has had anything similar as well, and the one team I am most disappointed in is San Francisco ( only because they are the team I choose to support and is my home town market and the area I am most familiar with). As far as I am aware there has been no media coverage at all. No radio interviews, there are 2 radio sports stations, no Television interview's, There are 5 news stations and 1 sports station CSN. No news paper coverage , there are Three major papers well two really but three papers along with another plethora smaller community papers and that's just the Bay Area its self from San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose that's not counting the other media outlets that's just a hour or so drive out side the "Bay Area" reach. with that said this league if they want to make money and put butts in seats needs to make sure every team is doing the most they can in reaching out to the public aside from doing local readings at schools. Not that there is anything wrong with that connecting to the youth which is always a good thing but they should be connecting with those fans who prefer contact sports (Football) and getting the word out to everyone. at the very lest at lest put up a few billboards in the area or on a few buses and trains so people can see them when they are commuting.
2- Getting the officals the best learning opportunities in the off season. I hope the league is proactive in getting the few officials they have now some good quality learning time, maybe see if another union like the RFU or someone in SANZAAR will let them train and observe those officials during matches or participate in lower division matches to gain the experience and see how other officials interpret the laws. This is not a complaint at all to the officials that PRO Rugby has now, in fact I think they have done a amazing job thus far into the early season! But one of the areas where rugby specialist over look when it comes to developing rugby in this country is not to just get players more games but there also needs to be a better training system for officials in this country so that way maybe one day USA Rugby can have possibly 2-3 officials representing this country at the Rugby World Cup or the Olympics.
3- More broadcast partners, to have the capability to stream games online and to get a TV broadcaster this first year and so quickly is an a achievement that we should applaud ProRugby for getting done, but with that said I still think the main online streamer we where all hoping for and many probably still want to see is to get games on ESPN 3. AOL has a done a fairly good job of putting things together for us fans thus far, but if we want more people to care about this league and to help get the name out there more the ESPN brand still carries plenty of weight around the sports minded people and I am sure would prefer to watch a sporting event through their platform then to go to AOL. But enough about AOL , One World Sports is a channel that I am sure till the press release not many of us had even known existed. I personally love 1WS (30 million) and have always enjoyed there broadcasts of sporting games and hope that they continue to stay on as broadcasters for the years to come and hope to see them grow as a channel also, got to make it more accessible to more providers. lets be honest PRO will not be on ESPN or ESPN 2, FS1 and NBCSN these first 2-5 years. At least not till they can pull an average of 5k a game and have some good investors and sponsors lined up which then I'm sure one of those sports channels would like to pick up a few games a year, Game of the Week type. till then why not take the 1WS approach and go after the smaller guys and build your viewership up so that way you can then take the numbers to the folks at Disney (owners of ESPN) and Fox and say hay we have something that will bring you more eyes and dollars to your channels. Probably the first step would be to get the local sports channels in each market to televise the home games at lest for each team and I am talking about your Comcast sports net (Blank) and the few Fox sports net channels that are still out there and Root sports (8.3 million). Now the problem with that is every market varies such as the SF market where the CSN channel there is already crammed with two MLB teams playing at the same time along with play-off issues when they have both the NBA and NHL teams playing at the same time. so the SF club may be bumped to tape delayed programming. The best bet and I am sure easy Major network to land would be CBS Sports ( 30 million) which currently they don't have much to broadcast at this time of the year. outside of them maybe beIN sports (16 million +) would pick up Pro Rugby games here and there, they just signed a contract with the NASL to show a game a week which helped them to finally break into the USA market and have broadcasting rights to a USA based sports league, why not help them add two to there resume, while also keeping the 1WS broadcasts you now have two TV avenues for fans to take.
4- Finally my last is player development. I may be in the 1% who would like to see this happen but I do think this could have positive ramifications after a few years down the road. Why not have a All-Star/Barbarians team represent PRO Rugby and have them play a few international and national matches? obviously there will be players who will be called up to the Eagles for a few test matches here and there , but what about the other players who weren't called up. Pro Rugby hasn't said much on what the plans are for the league and the players in ether level of the player system they have, for the off season but my suggestion is to comprise a coaching staff made up of the Coach of the year and a few others and help that person select a team of players from every club. train for a few weeks and set out for a 2-3 week tour of playing other international clubs. Give those players a chance to experience what its like to play past our boarders and to experience different styles of play, so that way when they do get a chance to be called up they already have an idea what to expect. On top of all that it'll help keep players in rugby playing condition a bit longer and help add a bit of prestige and honor to be selected to participate on a all-star/barbarians team. ( similar to the current all star teams the major leagues have now, players do take some what pride in being placed on such teams)
* don't forget to like LLRugby Facebook page
No comments:
Post a Comment