Comments on: London Irish & Saracens to take Premiership to New York

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 21:53:59 +0000

Why is it English clubs doing this. It would make more sense if an actual Irish club did this with Irish players.

The search for money always seems to trump anything fans want.
What’s next? My club Leicester Tigers plays in Bengal?

By: Alex M

Alex M — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 19:37:59 +0000

LI made it quite clear that one of the “home” games would NOT be covered by the season ticket price when we renewed our tickets.

By: Dazza

Dazza — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 16:10:59 +0000

You’re right Mac, I think it was about three or four years ago.

They made a better offer to their fans than what’s on the table here though. I think you could exchange this match ticket for an extra ticket to any other match if you couldn’t go. It did fall through, but I can’t remember why.

I think it was moved from one stadium to another and then fell through anyway.

By: Pablito

Pablito — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 16:08:41 +0000

Quite. If they were really serious about doing this to ‘expand the game’, they’d be arranging matches in Georgia or Romania

By: James W

James W — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 14:56:43 +0000

It’s not in New York though is it? It’s in New Jersey. So will they now be the Not Not Nots?

By: Ray

Ray — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 14:14:00 +0000

At the end of the day Brighty this is all about the egos of the ‘owners’. They no doubt enjoy all the publicity and their spurious claim to be expanding the game! Now no doubt LI will support Saracens when they want to play in Cape Town.

By: stroudos

stroudos — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 13:49:47 +0000

I bet they get a full house. All those sillyarses over there who reckon they’re Irish when most of them are about as Irish as my arse.

Agree with Brighty and Ray on the contempt for the fans point – if you’re a LI season ticket holder, the game against Saracens is probably one of the highlights of your season, so to have that snatched away with a minuscule ticket price discount takes the piss.

By: Mac

Mac — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 13:25:35 +0000

If memory serves me right Brighty Sarries have tried this before. I seem to remember they were trying to get one of their Heineken Cup games to be played in Cape Town, but for whatever reason it fell through.

By: brighty

brighty — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:59:50 +0000

Also, isn’t this a case of running before you can walk? They’re trying to ape the US model but without getting the fundamentals right. It’s widely believed that the NFL is at saturation point in the US. Something like 9/10 of the US’s biggest TV audiences last year were for NFL games. So they’re moving some games abroad to increase growth.

London Irish probably has people on it’s own front doorstep who don’t even know it exists, let alone it being anywhere near saturating the local market. It just seems like insane economics to chase an audience 6000 miles away when you haven’t even managed to maximise your potential within a 100 yards of your pitch yet.

Odd that Saracens didn’t push for it to be played at their home i.e. South Africa…..

That’s without mentioning the total brainfart of treating this like american sport – a system where locals support their colleges/Uni’s and the brand clubs are just passed around the country depending on where the backer wants to place them this year.

By: Ray

Ray — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:11:52 +0000

clever marketing or not this shows contempt for Irish’s loyal supporters. They have offered a miserley 10% discount to their season ticket holders, will they also contribute to airfares and accommodation costs? I thought not, they are just short changing their supporters in pursuit of some probably illusory commercial benefit for their foreign (irish) owners. Perhaps we should point out that London has a large population of irish ancestry and Dublin is within easy travel distance if they really must take the game overseas..

I would l;ike to think that the RFU or PRL would step in to clip the wings of two clubs with foreign links which do not apparently have the interests of English Rugby at heart but I’m not holding my breath.

By: Dazza

Dazza — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:04:47 +0000

I suspect LI will get a bigger crowd over there than they do here. Must be getting paid a fair whack to take the game over there. Especially as they will probably get hammered ;-) (tongue firmly in cheek!!)

By: Brighty

Brighty — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 11:58:35 +0000

I’m just too old to understand this. I support my local team, Cardiff. I would be beyond annoyed if they moved a home fixture to another country. The Prem seem to want to head to the franchise model or something?