Quote ="bramleyrhino"The question needs to be "what will the stadium do for the 359 days a year that it won't be used for"?
Modern stadiums are seven day a week operations - just look at the facilities at Warrington (NHS centre) or Leeds (University campus, 30+ room hotel and conferencing centre) and other grounds that have facilities completely or largely unconnected to the playing of sport - that's how modern stadia finance themselves.
Is there a gap in the market in the northern conferencing / banqueting / hospitality market? Is there a need for (and finance for) another NHS centre or government department? Is the live music industry poorly catered for in the north? I don't think that you can answer yes to all of those questions.
At the moment, I think people are trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. IIRC, we have a long-term deal and a good relationship with Manchester United, we have little trouble finding semi-final venues (and what trouble we do have is being rectified by new builds at Salford and St Helens) and the RFL is a stakeholder in Wembley National Stadium.
And do we really want the national side being "based" at one location (like the England football team)? Shouldn't the 'England' team be for everybody to watch, rather than a few people in one location? (IMO, England football was much better for the fans when they were 'on tour' during Wembley's closure, like many other national teams do, even if they did end up residing in Manchester towards the end).'"
I agree current setup for finals is fine they just need to play the internationals at larger venues to attract more neutrals, i think playing one game at wembley is the rfl's attempt to "test the water" on this front IF they get a 40k crowd then i feel we will see more international games there and lets face it internationals at Wembley are a bigger headline grabber than playing them at a Hull or Wigan.
