I'm only 15mins in and the social media aspect of this interview is pretty interesting.
I was talking to someone who is heavily involved in the marketing of rugby here but has come from an NRL background and from his perspective, RA is so much harder to work with to get the game marketed well particularly on the social media front.
Any insight into this? Is it because we don't have prominent players for marketing? Or are RA not wanting to spend money on it?
The unique thing about the NRL is the most popular players are pretty much all State of Origin players, so they are able to market across the entire fanbase (well majority of the fanbase support either NSW or QLD) and there will always be some players in form who they can rely on to give a good push.
Within rugby, the Wallabies have been crap for a long time. I am sure rugby australia are concious that trying to build a marketing campaign around a bunch of players who have been mediore for quite a while isn't exactly a receipe for success. Then of course you have guys like Nela who got some decent airtime, then got injured, lost interest and now is only one fast food bender away from losing his Wallabies spot.