Magic Weekend still magic?

Magic Weekend, where all the teams in rugby league's Super League play a full round of fixtures in the same stadium, took place at Elland Road football ground in Leeds over the last two days, and recorded one of the lowest total attendances for the event since it began in 2007.

I went to the three Magic Weekends played at the City of Manchester Stadium between 2012 and 2014 and enjoyed them all, but questions are understandably still being asked about what the event is actually for (the outside agency IMG, which conducted a review of the sport's structure and promotion, had been widely expected to tell the Rugby Football League to axe it, but in the end advised that it should continue in some form, no doubt because of the revenues it still brings in for clubs and the governing body).

The two stated aims of Magic Weekend are for existing rugby league fans to spend a weekend away in a city outside the M62 corridor, which constitutes the game's heartlands, and to attract new fans there to the sport. The problems with the first part include the cost of travel and hotels for what is still an overwhelming working class fan base and the unsuitability of some of the venues chosen in terms of seating and sightlines inside the ground and things to do between and after matches near it (Newcastle, which has hosted the event numerous times, was highly rated by fans for both, but Liverpool, which staged it just once, attracted criticism on each count), and unless there's a local club for new fans to support, or for youngsters potentially play for in the future, the second part falls down too, attracting casual spectators rather than long term supporters (Leeds was a particularly strange choice this year, being a city away fans are already familiar with and with a well supported and successful home side playing at Headingley). 

Future venues being mooted for the event - Cardiff, Dublin, Nottingham - suggest that the RFL is happy to keep cashing an increasingly modest cheque each summer rather than thinking seriously about where it and the sport should be going.