No. Because a 10 team league either has not enough fixtures or too many against the same opposition. And if we're struggling to support 14 full time teams I don't see how we can suddenly support 20?

Developing strong links to the local community is a good thing in its own right. Nobody would argue with that. But you suggest we then market that to investors and sponsors. Its not a harmful thing to be able to mention, but don't be under the illusion that said sponsor gives much of a flying anything about your community links. All they care about is brand exposure, and unless by 'sponsor' you mean a local skip-hire firm, then they're far more interested in how much exposure you'll get because you signed some newsworthy players than how good your community links are.

As I say, community links are a great thing, to be encouraged and applauded, but virtually meaningless to the decisions of big sponsors. Its the kind of stuff they'll mention in a nice press release AFTER the deal, but when they're sat in a boardroom making the hard financial decision, its practically irrelevant.

I cant tell if this is serious or sarcastic.

You don’t think that sponsors care about a clubs links to a community? When they sponsor a club, who do you think they are trying to reach? Who do you think they are looking to be exposed to?

It depends why the sponsorship is given.

Sometimes at local level, it is because the Company in question has funds available and wants the Club to prosper.
However, on other occasions, the sponsorship is used to raise the profile of the Company that is giving the cash.

When Embassy sponsored major sporting events in the past, they certainly didn't "care" about the average punter.
All they were interested in was, raising their own profile and trying to increase their sales of tobacco products.

They fixed it by going professional and making sure that union players at the top had no need to look elsewhere.

Nobody denies Embassy or any other brand will sponsor something for exposure. But the question was who were they being exposed to. Alcohol and gaming companies, and formally tobacco companies sponsored sport because a big part part of the sporting community are young men, young men are a huge market for Alcohol, gaming and tobacco companies. Mars and Coca-cola sponsor a lot of sport in the community, because young people and kids play sport, and that is their market. Sainsburys spend millions sponsoring schools, whether it be for computers or sporting equtioment, quite simply because mums care about their kids and mums do the shopping.

Sponsoring a sport is about getting positive exposure to a community(some big, some small), what could possibly be more positive exposure than having your brand align with the local sports club and do some work in the local community?

Every bloody time!!

Why do we get caught up in every game has to be super competitive and intense and no one turns up otherwise??!!

Name me THREE leagues in ANY sport that isn't dominated by a few top clubs & the rest simply fight for survival.

The Premier League & La Liga are the top leagues in the World yet they only have a handful of meaningful games and the rest are just filler games like Wigan vs Everton, infact the league has been won for sometime now and the only exciting thing about it is who will be the worst 3 teams in the league and in La Liga it's the same top teams finish 20 points ahead of the pack year on year.

SL has more competitive league than most, we have probably 5-6 teams this year that could arguably get to the GF

Take your pick. If it's Honest John's Topless Skip Hire they're probably looking to be 'exposed' ( did you see what I did there? ) to the local community. If it's Gillette, then they're probably not hugely focused on the additional sales of shaving foam in Wakefield.

The context for this point, as least as far I understand it given what started the thread, was essentially the 'big stuff' that's going to get the game back on track. Forgive me for thinking the priority (on that point) should be major sponsors, not skip hire firms.

Before you even start...in no way whatsoever do I seek to downplay the virtue and importance of links to a local community. All good, go for it. I am simply stating that it isn't (particularly) relevant to major sponsors. If you're talking about small local sponsors - obviously very important to smaller clubs of course, fine, no argument there.

Not sure about La Liga, but your Premier League analogy doesn't stand up at all:

Until a long way into the season, pretty much very close to the end, almost all clubs have something important to play for. At the top end you've got various forms of European competition - which is genuinely important - clubs want the money, players want the exposure. This is way different to scaping 8th spot in our playoffs which is likely to get you another game or two at best.

At the other end, lots of clubs have the relegation issue to deal with. Your Wigan vs Everton so called 'filler' is a great example - both clubs, for different reasons, have a massive stake in the result.

Both those points have relevance to our game. At the top, it would be excellent to have a genuine international club competition that required a high position to qualify. Sounds like people are trying to make this happen. Excellent. The bottom end is more difficult, because we know the financial challenges of a P&R system. I'm not sure what I think about P&R.

Whatever you think of all these ideas like SL1, SL2, etc. I'm glad people are thinking about it, because we're suffering from a worst-of-both-worlds problem. For whatever reason ( another 50 threads worth of argument ) franchising in Europe at least is not producing the 'anyone can win the league' scenario under which a league with neither P&R nor a big incentive to finish very high in the table works well.

Let's say you're right and 5 or 6 teams could make the GF (I'd argue 4, but let's not split hairs). What about the rest? That's the problem - and its in the stadia of 'the rest' that we see huge banks of empty seats. In the premier league, there's plenty of *meaningful* sub-goals for everyone, and most clubs can pick any two adjacent ones as 'essential' and 'stretch' targets at the start of each season:

1. The Title
2. Champions League
3. Europa League
4. Staying up

Exactly. That's a radical overhaul in my book.

There is just so much wrong here.

Coca-cola, Mars, McDonalds and Sainsburys, and BskyB 5 of the biggest companies that operate in this country, 3 of them amongst the biggest in the entire world run local community based sporting initiatives.

I don’t know what more proof you want that big companies like to project a local image by supporting local initiatives than examples of them doing so. We are just getting in to the territory of your refusing to believe that big companies don’t have public SMART objectives again.

Its really more of an all-round thing isn’t it. Im sure some of it is just being nice, people who run big business generally aren’t actually monsters whatever criticism can legitimately be levelled at them. But a large part of it is to improve the image of the company in the eyes of the public, especially companies like Sainsburys or Tesco who can sometimes be viewed as these voracious goliaths just destroying everything in their path. Getting involved in peoples lives at a local levels humanises them somewhat.

I think to start with we would be as well trying to get some big companies involved in the community aspect of our game rather than the more commercial aspect and build from there.

I remember 20+ years ago coca-cola sponsoring portable goals and nets for youth football, that builds in to being an official partner then sponsor then sponsoring the lower leagues.

Given a stick has only 2 ends, its amazing how you always manage to find the wrong one.

Nice swerve. I don’t think anyone noticed.

So when clubs engage more with the local community (which they SHOULD do, that goes without saying) major sponsors will flood money into those clubs, transforming the profile of our sport. Good luck with your plan, hope Nigel gave you another sticker.

Your obsession with Nigel Wood gets creepier by the day. Maybe a look at the list of sponsors here leedsrugbyfoundation.org/home.php will help you learn. Big companies like the Co-operative, like Leeds building society, like BDO, Like ASDA-Walmart, like Arla foods (cravendale) are all involved in the Leeds Rugby Foundation, and in news which im sure will shock you, they all also sponsor the Rhinos as well.

Your obsession with Nigel Wood gets creepier by the day. Maybe a look at the list of sponsors here leedsrugbyfoundation.org/home.php will help you learn. Big companies like the Co-operative, like Leeds building society, like BDO, Like ASDA-Walmart, like Arla foods (cravendale) are all involved in the Leeds Rugby Foundation, and in news which im sure will shock you, they all also sponsor the Rhinos as well.

Exactly. The game has to live with the finances it actually has, not what it wishes it had. Wishing and hoping, planning and dreaming won't bring us 20 fully pro sides - it needs 20 clubs with the money to do it and the reality is we're struggling to keep 14.

Someone needs to go and knock down the door at the SKY office. Whilst their agreement with our sport is fixed for a term and price, the fact that the players are contracted independantly means a rival broadcaster/product is undermining them reducing the quality of one of their popular shows. If they're allowed to stick their heads in the sand, they're going to lose a good number of veiwers, impacting not only their subsribers, but the price they can realistically demand for advertising around it.

This cuts both ways.

The flip side of the argument is that Sky may want to reduce their sponsorship next time around as they may be paying for "an inferior product".
It really isn't the responsibility of a sports broadcaster to improve the sport although, in truth, most major sports would be stuffed without Sky and their peers.

The way things are going we may end up with 2 leagues of 10, with only the top flight being of decent quality and if people like Peacock keep banging on about lack of intensity and a gulf within SL etc, perhaps SKY would be right to offer less money next time.

If what I believe to be correct is true, that the Sky contract stipulates a [iminimum[/i 12 clubs in SL then the idea of 20 even in two divisions is a non-starter. Why would Sky fund a div 2 which, as a part time time league, would be the equivalent of what we have now.

Its not, but they will want the best products to sell to the public and if they're cheap about things, they're going to lose one. TV money in sport, SKY in particular in our case, is so intertwined in our existance, that we shouldn't/can't shy away from the fact that we'll practically live and die by it. It will serve them no purpose to lose superleague as a viable draw for the public. What we need won't be a king's ransom to sky and if we paired that with a better approach to sponsorship, we may find ourselves in a less perilous situation.

I'd also like donations from wealthy backers for star players to count outside the cap, meaning it continues to protect financially challenged clubs from over reaching and bankrupting themselves, but at the same time allows Star players (both english and antipodean) to work in the SL thanks to the likes of Dr Koukash, who'll be more likely attracted by the chance to buy success, rather than fund a team to be another also ran.

That is exactly the point, maybe they wont fund two leagues of ten clubs, which could lead to the axe falling on 2 or more SL clubs in 2015.
It's strange that only a few years ago the league was expanded form 12 to 14 clubs and now, certain parties want it cut back to 10 clubs, it's no wonder some of the clubs are struggling to promote themselves effectively.

Seems a bit like there are lots of folk all jockeying for their little pet scheme to be accepted as the 'way forward' for SL. All it's really doing is creating lots of rumours with the attendant uncertainty, all of which helps no-one, to be honest.

Much as we all want the the RFL to run the league it seems that any changes to SL, or to be precise - major changes, are going to have to be run past our 'broadcast partner' for approval anyway. I think we need to wait until more concrete proposals are set out - from people higher up the chain, if they ever are.

I don't see how cutting two teams, with the reduction of the leagues fan base and smaller opportunities for young players to make it into the league that will go with it, can be a good thing.