Just reading this and its pretty grim reading for Union? Even with the bigger sponsorship deals and TV deals compared to SuperLeague the English Premiership Clubs are not sustainable. Without the central money from the RFU clubs would be going bust. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... oin-forces Quote Leading rugby clubs in England say they need to act together to reduce wage inflation and control costs as the Guardian today reveals the most recent recorded losses of Premiership clubs total a combined £28.5m. The Guardian analysis, backed up with interviews from the majority of the Premiership’s chief executives, shows clubs are still struggling to become sustainable 21 years after the league came into existence. With insiders predicting the total losses will be about 20% worse in the next set of accounts, the data shows: • Exeter was the only Premiership club to clearly turn a profit in 2016-17. • Worcester, at £8m, showed the most significant losses and spent more on wages than their turnover. • Overall turnover for Premiership clubs went up £11.93m with wages increasing by £10.42m. “Clubs are no better off than when the Premiership started 20 years ago and that is a real shame,” said Leicester’s chief executive, Simon Cohen. “The percentage of extra revenue over the years that has gone to players has put clubs in a position where it has been difficult to invest in other areas of the game. You want to spend more on infrastructure and the matchday experience for fans but you are less able to do it because of the amount going on wages.” Another club chief executive said the Premiership’s losses would show an increase when all the 2017-18 accounts were published – “the clubs are losing just under £35m cumulatively” – and blamed a rise in the wage cap and a reduction in TV revenue. The Premiership was also without a sponsor in 2017-18 after Aviva pulled out, although Gallagher has stepped in for this season that starts on Friday. The salary cap for clubs is set at £7m, plus two marquee players and allowances, for the next three seasons. Premiership Rugby receives £28m a year, distributed between the clubs, with small variations according to success and number of internationals, from the Rugby Football Union. '" Now obviously wage inflation is much higher and if anyone deserves the money it is players I am just surprised so many clubs on the darkside are not profitable and doesnt seem too different to clubs in Rugby League.

Just reading this and its pretty grim reading for Union? Even with the bigger sponsorship deals and TV deals compared to SuperLeague the English Premiership Clubs are not sustainable. Without the central money from the RFU clubs would be going bust. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... oin-forces Quote Leading rugby clubs in England say they need to act together to reduce wage inflation and control costs as the Guardian today reveals the most recent recorded losses of Premiership clubs total a combined £28.5m. The Guardian analysis, backed up with interviews from the majority of the Premiership’s chief executives, shows clubs are still struggling to become sustainable 21 years after the league came into existence. With insiders predicting the total losses will be about 20% worse in the next set of accounts, the data shows: • Exeter was the only Premiership club to clearly turn a profit in 2016-17. • Worcester, at £8m, showed the most significant losses and spent more on wages than their turnover. • Overall turnover for Premiership clubs went up £11.93m with wages increasing by £10.42m. “Clubs are no better off than when the Premiership started 20 years ago and that is a real shame,” said Leicester’s chief executive, Simon Cohen. “The percentage of extra revenue over the years that has gone to players has put clubs in a position where it has been difficult to invest in other areas of the game. You want to spend more on infrastructure and the matchday experience for fans but you are less able to do it because of the amount going on wages.” Another club chief executive said the Premiership’s losses would show an increase when all the 2017-18 accounts were published – “the clubs are losing just under £35m cumulatively” – and blamed a rise in the wage cap and a reduction in TV revenue. The Premiership was also without a sponsor in 2017-18 after Aviva pulled out, although Gallagher has stepped in for this season that starts on Friday. The salary cap for clubs is set at £7m, plus two marquee players and allowances, for the next three seasons. Premiership Rugby receives £28m a year, distributed between the clubs, with small variations according to success and number of internationals, from the Rugby Football Union. '" Now obviously wage inflation is much higher and if anyone deserves the money it is players I am just surprised so many clubs on the darkside are not profitable and doesnt seem too different to clubs in Rugby League.

They have rich owners who are willing to cover their losses so it’s kind of irrelevant.

What we should be asking is how has the Rugby Union Premiership managed this?

2002-2003 average attendance 8518
2016-2017 average attendance 15065

Useless statistic using two seasons more then years apart

One thing Premiership rugby does have is a minimum standard of stadium required to be promoted to the Premiership. London Welsh were denied promotion because their stadium wasn’t up to the criteria.

A £7 milllion salary cap + 2 marquee players who do not count on the cap is huge compared to our £1.8 million cap.

No it isn’t, figures have steadily risen between those two years, neither year was an outlier.

How is it useless?

It shows growth within the sport regardless of the timescale?

RL will respond by rewarding mediocrity as usual....

Both sports seem to rely on the largesse of club owners. In other news Pope confirms Catholic status.

This is not a new story. Premiership teams have always struggled to balance the books. However it does help when, like Harlequins, you have dozens of multimillionaires sat in the stands who can lend a hand. Having said that, how much of the debt is going to service loans for stadium improvements or Wasps paying for a football stadium in Birmingham? When Leicester opened a 10 000 seater stand it must have cost a pretty penny but it always seems to be pretty full. It is a good job that we are all happy with the facilities in Super League.

What do we think the minimum standard of stadium should be. Minimum 10000 capacity with 2500 seats for a start.

What are the current requirements?

12,000 with 5000 seats IMO

This old chestnut keeps popping up on here, has no one realised that in Europe soccer is king it soaks up most of the cash from tv yet a lot of clubs outside the top four or five can’t compete with the best & a lot are sailing close to the wind with finances. We have to except that our game did alright when the vast majority of players were semi professional as union did when they were supposedly amateurs. There is just not enough revenue from advertising to justify better tv contracts. Yes we can all dream of the day when our clubs could pay million pound wages to our stars but it will take a massive shift in sporting culture in Europe for that to happen. What will make our sport strong is a larger player base spread over a lot larger geographical area. The aim should be to get evenly matched contests at every level of participation with leagues who’s winners are not predictable. To that end we may well end up with a semi pro set up again? The down side is that union & the NRLl would take all our top players & it would kill off the international game.

We should all follow the Giants model with 25,000 seats and 5000 fans, all with cheap season tickets, those empty grounds will propel the sport forward so fast it will be unbelievable.
There are 5 clubs averaging over 10,000 and 2 more quite close to 10,000. Of course the other sides need to do more and should be trying to attain the 10k average but the reality is that due to prolonged lack of success, they are a little way behind the others.
However, with the possible exception of Bradford, who have the POTENTIAL to be a bigger club at some point in the future, there is no other club outside SL that will hit the 10k mark.
We could always go with a 7 club top flight, it would be great, NOT.

How about minimum standards like: decent toilet facilities (including running water), HD CCTV (capture mugshots/incidents of unruly fans) etc before demanding minimum capacity. Not all clubs can even achieve the basics atm.

Indeed. Are these published anywhere?

Do they still apply?

I would guess not since plenty of SL clubs have grounds that seem rather below par.

Rugby Union has gone from 8518 average to 15065 average in 15 years. They only have one league winner each year same as Rugby League.

The clubs outside Super League that could average 10000 are Toronto and Toulouse.

Before SL you would have been hard pushed to find anyone that would say Bradford could've got an average of well over 10k but they did it. I reckon plenty of clubs could do it if they had the marketing expertise and a budget to throw at it.

Compared with football the cost of sponsoring Super League is minimal. Yes football takes up a lot of sponsorship but that may not be the case forever as platforms diversify in the internet age. At present most Premier League teams make so much money from TV deals that they could give tickets away and still make a profit. It reminds me of the South Sea Bubble or the Tulip craze and is being driven by development in previously poorer parts of the world. The suggestion that we should roll over and die must be refuted. Returning to semi-pro status would be the end of the game. Other sports earn more in sponsorship than we do largely because our public profile stinks. Hopefully expansion clubs like Toronto might help to change that. Accepting the status quo is as bad as giving up. I do not watch St Pats often and if that is what we can offer as the pinnacle of our sport we may as well give up. As for the equalizing everyone down argument it is a non starter. We need to even everyone up to the level of the best practice teams otherwise we really will be competing for participants with the RNLI.

exactly. The idea that Rugby League cannot get more in sponsorship due to Football is absurd.

RL won't generate more sponsorship because the advertising industry has changed to make it incredibly cheap to reach the audience that we have to offer. One of the reasons why we are so attractive to bookmakers is because they are largely prevented from accessing those cheap forms of digital advertising.

For many football clubs it's the same story. Huddersfield Town and Burnley are appealing to Asian bookmakers because advertising gambling is banned in large parts of Asia, and they can't advertise on many digital platforms in the UK because they don't have UK Gambling licences. These companies aren't paying huge amounts of money to circumvent those restrictions (I believe OPE pay about £1.5m to Huddersfield Town).

Missed my point all together! I am not talking about equalising down. just making the point that our sport as most sports that are not of interest to the vast majority of the worlds population or the mass market in the USA or Asia can not get the type of TV revenue we need to pay full time players or make the profits that will bring in investment. We are a small niche market who on the whole are watched by people who are not in the highest income groups that the advertisers are courting. The only thing in my opinion that will make our sport entertaining is for equally matched matches with tight results at whatever level you choose to watch. Wether that will help to spread the sport is anyone’s guess, but getting the game spread wider & more people playing the better. If people don’t like watching games that are not played in super stadiums by highly paid players then we are sunk anyway.

RL is fe-ked because of its fans jealousy and lack of vision. We attract a wealthy benefactor then spend the remaining years of his/her tenure slagging them off, despite the millions they have put in - that really encourages the next guy.
Image is critical and an ageing fan base, decrepit half empty stadia and giving tickets away/on the cheap places our product in the bargain basement for income - unless we can get a huge tv increase we will not change this perception, Hearns or not.

5k minimum capacity.

2k seats for Super League clubs.

[url=http://www.rugby-league.com/operational-rules-2018/#p=425Operational Orders Page 425[/url

Isn't the whole point the game needs t attract and retain new supporters. Has research ever been conducted as to why it fails to do this? New people go to games but often don't return - why? Are they bored or is it for other reasons?