League loyalties

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One of the great schisms in the history of sport took place at a Huddersfield hotel in 1895, when the leading rugby clubs from Yorkshire and Lancashire decided to split from the Rugby Football Union in a dispute over payments to players and governance issues. This rift led to the evolution of two rugby codes and, eventually, triggered the formation of the Rugby Football League (RFL) to administer the 13-a-side version of the game.

Today in the UK, the game’s heartland remains the north of England, and a rich heritage bound up with a strong regional identity is, without question, a compelling aspect of its appeal. At the same time, this is a modern and global sport that’s powering forward on a mission to attract even greater support.

The Rugby League World Cup will take place in England during October and November 2021 – and, for the first time, the men’s, women’s and wheelchair competitions will form part of the same huge event, with matches staged at 14 stadia.

Clearly, an event of this scale and prestige offers enormous opportunities for the RFL to meet its objectives of attracting more players, spectators and viewers. Harnessing insight will be key to success in this regard – yet, despite being professional for more than a century, the sport is only a comparatively recent convert to the wholehearted embrace of insight.

When director of customer and insight Alison O’Brien joined the RFL in 2015, after a career in FMCG and retail with Morrisons, Arla Foods, Princes Foods and Reebok, there was no insight function in place. The national governing body (NGB) didn’t have a clue how many people were interested in the game, played it or attended matches.

Over coffee in a meeting room adorned with retro rugby posters, at the RFL’s Grade II-listed headquarters in one of the leafier parts of Leeds, O’Brien explains that her four-strong team – herself, two data analysts and a market research executive – report to the chief commercial officer, rather than being integrated into a marketing department, as has been the case at some of her previous employers.

She’s happy to be “where the servicing functions sit within the organisation – that central, neutral place”, defining her role as giving a service for the good of the sport as a whole, rather than solely helping the RFL to meet its commercial aims.

The truth of this is undeniable given that the RFL serves a broad array of stakeholders. On taking up her role four years ago, however, O’Brien’s priority was to launch a segmentation study to understand the RFL’s audience better (see box p55 ) and create a single customer view linked to a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

“A lot of other NGBs still don’t have the type of function we’ve put in place,” says O’Brien. “And sport, generally, has not really embraced the data and insight world in the way other sectors have. Probably for the past five years, a lot of NGBs have known they need to have it – ‘data’ and ‘customer’ are common buzzwords – but have not quite known what they need.

“That was the appeal for me of coming here: the fact that there was nothing – a blank canvas – but also seeing the untapped potential of a really rich data asset that the NGB is sitting on.”

O’Brien has a seat on the executive board and makes the point that senior buy-in is critical. Data, insight and the customer voice are paramount in informing strategic decision-making that will affect the sport, she argues.

The diverse stakeholder base extends from kids aged six and upwards playing in community clubs, through schools’ rugby to Championship and League One teams and organising the illustrious Challenge Cup competition. While the Super League – the equivalent of football’s Premier League – the England Performance Unit to help develop more world-class England players, and the Rugby League World Cup are ostensibly separate organisations, they all benefit from access to RFL insight.

As it happens, the World Cup team is currently based at the RFL’s second office at Media City in Manchester, although the plan is for it to relocate once it scales up.

As an NGB, RFL is funded by Sport England to some extent and is obliged to report back on a monthly basis with participation figures. This reporting must include insights into the types of people involving themselves in rugby league and why they are important to the overall social outcomes that Sport England is trying to achieve.

To advance further evidence of the significant contribution professional and grassroots rugby league delivers to the community, O’Brien’s team is working with Manchester Metropolitan University on a project called the Rugby League Dividend. The intention is that the findings, due later this year, will highlight the positive difference the sport makes to individuals, especially those in deprived communities where other opportunities are in short supply.

“When it comes to funding, it’s not just about how many people you can get playing, but what type of people you can encourage, and how you might help and support them,” says O’Brien. “This project is also looking at what, if anything, there is to support them if rugby league didn’t exist for those people in those communities. The reality is probably not a lot.

“That makes participation in rugby league really important and valuable. That economic and social piece is a really good use of research time, to help the sport in terms of securing future funding, but also to really understand your audience, what you can deliver for them, and how you can help them.”

Another major ongoing project is defining a pricing strategy for World Cup tickets, which RFL insight is working on with sports data and marketing specialist Two Circles. Clearly, filling stadia will be a key benchmark for judging the success of the tournament.

The aim of this ‘MaxDiff work’ is to get to grips with the trade-offs fans are prepared to make when paying for different categories of seats, to see certain kinds of team and so on. O’Brien describes it as “quite a big quantitative piece of work” that takes in some historic studies, as well as workshops and hypotheses designed to help build the questionnaire.

Rugby league’s strong association with the north presents opportunities, as well as potential limitations. In 2017, for example, the RFL seized the chance to strike a deal to become the official sport of the Northern Powerhouse and, in the process, unlocked some World Cup bid funding.

In return, at least 80% of World Cup matches will be played in the north. This will not only generate revenue for the host cities, but should also benefit the region with a positive post-tournament legacy.

But what of the drawbacks that might arise from the link with the north? Are non-northern brands reluctant to get involved?

“People based in the north probably know the sport better, and can see the opportunities,” concedes O’Brien. “But the fact is – if you look at some of the major partners that we have, such as Coral and Betfred – sponsorship opportunities come from the demonstration of insight; that we know our customer and can show that our customer fits your customer.”

The growing geographical spread of the game – with successful teams in London and Toronto, for example – helps the case, as does national TV coverage on the BBC and Sky. The deal with Sky comes to an end in 2021, and O’Brien and her team will be heavily involved in making the commercial case for the sport as the RFL strives to secure a favourable new agreement.

“Broadcast is key,” she says. “Clearly, from a research and insight point of view, there is a lot of work to do to get ready for those rights negotiations.”

Although the insight budget is growing, resources are more limited than the ones O’Brien had at her disposal when working in retail and consumer products. Spending is prioritised based on strategic objectives and the team runs a lot of research in-house, managing around 20 quantitative surveys and 20-30 focus groups a year.

There are annual fan and player surveys and ‘listening groups’, which entail visits to community clubs to talk to people who play the game at grassroots level. The RFL also tracks changes to its audience segments through a syndicated Nielsen Sports survey.

As a governing body, the RFL has access to a large amount of customer data, spanning membership (which is free), participation, and ticketing sales for central events such as the Challenge Cup. Together with sports-fan engagement specialist InCrowd, which manages the data centrally, the insight team has developed a database with a strong focus on the single, identified customer and linked it to a CRM system, to allow targeted and engaging customer communications. Alongside the segmentation study, it is O’Brien’s proudest achievement since arriving at the RFL.

Information gleaned from the database underpins another important project: the RFL’s ambition to get 21,000 women and girls playing rugby league by 2021 – a target figure symbolically tied into the 2021 World Cup. Physical and learning disability rugby league participation is also high on the agenda. “Accessibility for everyone, and flexibility of playing offers – a lot of research goes into understanding how we can open up the sport to everybody,” says O’Brien.

Although she grew up in the north, O’Brien was not a rugby league fan when she joined the RFL. That has changed, helped by some amazing experiences, such as attending the 2017 World Cup in Australia and walking the “presentation party” for the Four Nations international tournament down the Anfield tunnel and onto the pitch. In the parlance of the game, O’Brien has picked up the ball and is running with it.

Understanding the audience

RFL asked Nielsen Sports to deliver a segmentation study based on qualitative and quantitative work. Focus groups were conducted to gain in-depth understanding of the rugby league ‘consumer’, together with a 20-minute online survey with 2,000 respondents who expressed some interest in rugby league – from slightly to very interested.

Key findings:

• 14.4m people in the UK are interested in rugby league
• The sport has a nationwide fan base
• Not all rugby league customers (fans) are the same
• Six customer segments – different levels of interest, engagement, behaviours, attitudes and demographics (see infographic below)
• Insight into lifetime value of customers.

“We got an almost too-perfect six-segment segmentation,” says O’Brien. “I say ‘too perfect’ because that’s the ideal number. We had to go back and check it a few times.”

Having satisfied herself the segmentation was reliable, O’Brien has used it to: prioritise target customer segments; ensure the customer is at the heart of decision-making; generate targeted marketing communications; and frame and influence strategic decision-making/planning.

One noteworthy segment predominantly comprises women who have come to the sport through a partner or their children, and who are involved “because it’s a way of spending time with their family”. These women are the household decision-makers and, therefore, highly valued by sponsors.