We all saw the announcements about the new title sponsor of Super League. Eddie Stobart haulage branded up 100 wagons with Super League related imagery for no exchange of money. It's a bold move and I come not to crticise. With belt-tightening ongoing and the UK economy only not in recession by dint of semantics, it's an interesting, innovative solution.
Times RL journalist Chris Irvine asked on his
Twitter today whether anyone had seen one of the branded trucks yet on the back of him having done a fair few miles up and down the RL Motorway (formerly the M62) and not having done so. Out came a calculator and a web browser with some pertinent Google searches...
Stobart have a fleet of - at last approximation - 838. It sounds reasonable, so let's go with that. 100 of these, as mentioned, have been painted up in Super League livery. Stobart's big marketing claim is that you'll see one of their trucks every four and a half minutes spent on Britain's major roads. Based on that, you will encounter 320 Stobart trucks for every 24 hours spent on major roads or 38% of the fleet (I'm discounting repeat sightings of the same truck, just because it's unquantifiable and therefore difficult).
100 of the 838 represents 11% of the fleet and 11% of the 38% gives us 3.5 sightings of SL branded trucks for every 24 hours. In turn, that tells us that for every sighting of a Super League branded Stobart wagon, you can expect to be on the road for 6.85 hours, or 6 hours and 51 minutes.
I have no idea what this tells us. I have no idea how that translates to the estimate that the sponsorship being worth £2.5m per year. I draw no conclusions as to whether this means the sponsorship is good or bad. It was just a fun* exercise which diverted me for a few moments.
* - fun for me, not necessarily for you
EDIT: It was brought to my attention in the comments below that the Stobart fleet is 2250, not 838. Which means that you can expect to be driving for 18 hours and 22 minutes for each sighting of a Super League branded truck.
