you just being stupid or is this normal? leigh and kr fall under the SL deal with sky

Stupid no not at all. Clearly you miss the point and glad you’ve pointed out the only structure that will exist in 2019 is whatever tv ask for, and not sure a local northern team provide the national image needed. But then again I’m just another person on the curve towards the exit door.

Normally we get left out of everything so its so nice of you to think of us twice

Posters on the TRL would say that is sooo royston vasey

Actually it's 0.0022222222%.....but regardless of it it was a whole 2% or not, the point is a valid one. The income from away fans is minimal and should not be relied upon by any club.....
as for a 10k gate, 10k x 11 home games then 3 more in the 8's is just over 2 million quid at 15 quid a pop....ad that to SKY cash and you're at 4 million......add shirts, merch and booze to that and there you have your 4.5 mill........10k gates are the minimum needed to break even

When Hudgell said clubs needed 10k gate to survive, the tv contract was for 90 million,im not sure 10k would be the case now,Wakefield spring to mind.

Ok, I'll do this slowly. Start off with £4.5m, and £450k is a 10th of that, or 10%. Take a 10th of that again, and you get to £45k, which is then 1% of £4.5m. £10k is around a 5th of £45k, which is then around 0.2% or so of the original £4.5m.

What you've done now is compare the income from home spectators at 14 games with the income from away spectators at a single game. The fact is that income from away fans still has significance when taken across the board. It's not a major income stream, but it's certainly not "minimal". It's around £140k a season taking the £10k figure for each game.

How non-patronising of you, especially as you are clinging to a minimal amount of money in terms of running the club.

Let us say that 3,000



away fans pay 15 quid each...that is 45k...or 1% of the overall running costs of the home club....sky on the other hand deliver 1.8 million and change or 40% of the clubs running costs.....the question here is not whether I pressed the correct button on my calculator, but rather if SKY would prefer for the competition to have a a wider reach and therefore become more attractive to advertisers who in turn might be expected to pay a little more to SY for access to that audience, do we say no, based on a paltry 1% (and you and I know it is far less than that) and risk the 40% being further reduced?
BT, for all the bluster of "could have bid" have little interest in RL and are firmly in bed with soccer and Union and our ratings have now been overtaken by Darts, so SKY, who have already shown their disdain for us by both insisting on Thursday nights (decimating your away fans theory) and getting the rights to the championship to keep them locked away, would appear to be the only player prepared to pay us the 20 mill a year that currently props up the sport across the UK as a pro entity.....but you'd have us reject Toulouse, Toronto, London or anyone else because your club might be a few bob worse off


Successful clubs treat away fans as an added bonus.....Wigan, Leeds, Hull FC, Wire and Saints can all comfortably survive on their Season Ticket holders, Castleford (2017 version) and Catalans are close but HKR, Leigh, Huddersfield, Widnes, Salford and Wakefield are all running on the smell of an oily rag or at the benevolence of a sugar daddy....pull sky from them and see if they give a flying one about 1,000 travelling fans.

Halifax, Featherstone, London, Toulouse, Leigh and Toronto will fight it out in 2018 and if we are correct that we are heading for 14 the following year, I'd take the French and the Canadians now, because 2 more pit villages playing what the country perceive to be a localised version of the bigger code isn't headline news and won't have a better class of sponsor or a larger TV deal banging at our doors.....and Halifax fans can travel to Post office Road and you can lament that the 4k fans there would have been 14k if only you were in SL.......

This isn't specifically about my my team. Fax aren't set up for SL at the moment, and maybe never will be, but imo there should always be a path to elevate a team if and when they're ready (on and off the field) regardless of where they are

Btw, you've done it again, and compare the proceeds from away supporters at one game with a full season's sky money. Let's just reverse that for a moment. Taking your new figure of £45k, that's £630k income from away fans across 14 games, whereas Sky "only" contribute £129k per game. Comparing like for like, it's £45k versus £129k, which rather makes your original 0.00000022% claim somewhat bizarre.

Oh, and I'm not "rejecting" Toulouse, Toronto and London, as you put it, just saying that they should gain their place in SL on the field of play, probably with accompanying off-field criteria, so long as the same rules apply to everyone without any favouritism.

Patronising maybe I was, but please make sure you're comparing apples with apples.

All of which is difficult to argue with.

What has been popular with our paymaster, these past three seasons is the added ingredient of jeopardy, brought about by the 'Middle 8' concept, at the end of the season. Previously, I can't believe SKY, or the viewers have been too excited at the number of 'non-games', televised at the latter end of a season, featuring teams who have long since 'given up' on achieving anything. (Huddersfield were a prime example of such a team, prior to the Middle 8's) One or two of the pit villages have given our paymasters something of value for their support, in that competition.

Also, how excited would SKY/their subscribers feel, about games with little or no atmosphere, where the visiting supporters are counted in their teens? The 1,000 visiting fans, whilst not contributing hugely to the finances of the home club, do contribute to the atmosphere of the occasion, for both the 'live' audience and the one on TV. Boost that to the 3,000 that Leigh(for example) took to Wigan, or the similar number Saints brought to Leigh, and that contributes enormously to the excitement of the occasion and therefore, to the subscriber..

During my many years of watching our great sport, I have seen many attempts at expansion fail. That's not to say, with the support of wealthy backers in North America, it will fail this time. But if/when it succeeds over there, are the North American backers/clubs going to want to continue with fixtures against our 'big boys' such as Leeds, Wigan, Saints, and Hull - all of whom are 'small fry' in comparison the the huge North American cities - or are they going to break free and form their own 'parochial' North American League/Conference?

Nice massaging of statistics......Put really simply....because you like being condescending...13 away trips for 1,000 fans of club A delivers 195,000 in ticket revenue to the entire league system of 14 sides.
14 Clubs running at an operating cost of a combined 63 million pounds shouldn't really be worried about replacing club A with a club delivering nothing in ticket revenue.
Sky pay 19 million a change a year for the rights.....

Which is the bigger number?
Is it 63 MILLION.......19 MILLION or 195k?

Your maths is really shocking. 6000 away fans per week in a 12 team SL at £20 = £1.8 at the gate against let's say £20m from sky, so if £60m is the cost of 12 clubs then away fans equate to 3% of income assuming none buy a beer etc
Ask any fan of most competitive sports and the buzz around a big away following makes the event far more enjoyable.
We need at least 3 French clubs plus Toronto in an expanded 2 Division FT super league structure with p&r

CMG maths is also ever changing Mozza in a desperate attempt to validate his hypothesis which is 'WRONG ...
VERY WRONG !

I really can't take a person whose username suggests they are an egomaniac seriously at all.

Sorry Steve but the sport needs to expand and a cashed up newish club needs to be in SL, in front of a 100 year old one with no fans and no money

1. The maths are right...because you don't agree doesn't make them any less right! 1,000 fans at £15 a ticket delivers a club £15,000 all year.......remove that club and its 1,000 fans and replace with a club with no fans and the cost to your club is £15,000.

2. The name is ironic.....I'm no megalomaniac and I would say that actually know far less about RL than most posters on here, but I do know sports marketing. The game needs to decide what it wants to be.....a small localised sport with 10 or a dozen sides attracting a 10k average gate and getting £20,000,000 a year from the TV company.....or a National/International heavy hitter attracting top name sponsorship and TV companies fighting for rights. If it's the first, then jettison Catalans and Toronto, retreat to the heartlands and grow the game there. If its the second, the some very tough decisions will need to be made and some peoples clubs will be culled.....what is becoming more evident is that trying to be both at the same time just isn't working.


My maths is fine and was based around the average ticket being 15 notes and the number of fans 1,000. Those 1,000 fans contribute 13 attendances in a 14 team league (see thread title) ergo, £15,000 (revenue) x 13 (games) = £195,000. If this team is say, Widnes and we replace them with say, Toronto, then the cost in lost revenue to each club is £15,000 or a collective £195,000....nobody is saying replace 4 sides with 4 unsupported sides, but even if they were, it would cost a collective £790k a year and possibly open up a US TV deal worth far more.....NYC v Toronto is of interest to ESPN, Disney, Warner or any other major TV players.

The competition has 2 main draw cards who were involved in the top 10 attended games last year.....Wigan and Leeds. Hull FC v HKR may well break into that statistic this year.....but Castleford v Wakefield averaged 8,500 for their 2 "derby" games in the regular season last year.......and Castleford v Wakefield isn't of interest to ESPN, Disney, Warner or any other major TV players......Widnes v St Helens the week after Easter in 2017 attracted 6,171 fans.....the clubs are less than 9 miles apart FFS.......and as for Wigan v Leigh...the 2 clubs combined average in 2017 was 20,500, yet 4,500 couldn't be bothered travelling the 9 miles last year for the game at the DW..........the "buzz" of away fans doesn't pay the bills!


....and who will pay for it? Toulouse play in front of 2,000 fans in a 4k capacity barn and are the second best RL supported team after Catalans who get 9k....where is this imaginary third side and who will watch/back them?
If your dream of 2 divisions of 10 with [uP&R[/u and the 20 sides being [uFT[/u is to ever happen, then either one of the two Items I have highlighted has to go.....because be assured that Toronto's backer will not fathom the idea of being relegated once he's invested heavily and neither will the Gym teacher from Huddersfield with his £36 million over 3 years in NYC.....

I thought the discussion was away support income v total income? Not the impact of one clubs away support being replaced by one with no away support on the total income of the comp

Wigan v Leigh, provided Wigans second best league crowd after Saints, on an appalling night weather wise - Higher than Wire or Leeds

What did UTC draw prior to Catalans being formed, doubt it was 2k. SL in Toulouse wouldn't be played in the current stadium, they have a few other options.

Avignon have drawn far 14k plus for intl RL in recent years and would be a regionally formed club on the lines of the Dragons

1. No. Away support as in terms of Toronto replacing say Wakefield was the discussion. Nobody is suggesting replacing 4 sides with 4 unsupported sides, but even if Toronto, Toulouse, NYC and London replaced Wakey, Widnes, Salford and HKR, the fiscal impact would only be 60k to the remaining clubs...as in the loss of 4,000 away fans for those games.....as it is, SL attedances should rise this year as HKR are a better supported club than Leigh, but the reality is the impact on travelling fan income will be minimal.
2. So what? Old Trafford is pretty much rammed all winter and often with 10k travelling support.....Leigh and Wigan are less than 9 miles apart and the DW is hardly a shabby stadium!
3. Catalan have not once hit the 10k average attendance target in a dozen seasons and are still overly reliant on imported talent. They have done little if anything for the French game and yet you think adding 2 more sides is a magic bullet?
4. London hosted an ANZAC test in 2009 and filled the Stoop with a then capacity gate of 12,500 and have seen gates of 40k+....but London saw their last ever SL game attended by 1,402 people....putting a team somewhere that gets decent international attendances doesn't work.

Out of interest where do you get the £15 ticket from for a traveling fan in SL? Don't think I've bought one for less than £20 in a fair bit.

A few years back, Iam Lenegan stated that a £14 ticket netted the club (QRL) £9......I am just working on the inflation over the last decade and that some clubs won't be forking out rent....it's just a guesstimate.
If we do say that an away ticket is £20 then the 1,000 away fans represent £20,000.....which is still a fraction of a percentage against overall turnover. [size=50(something like 0.44%...but I am loathe to get that wrong as it detracts from the overall debate)[/size

That £20 ticket is subject to 20% VAT, so the benefit to the club (before any additional expenses) is £18. And by the time you factor in concessionary tickets, the average ticket value is probably less than £15.

You expansionist boys really do struggle with your maths don't you (which does cast doubt on everything else, given the primary reason for expansion seems to be to bring more money into the game). If a ticket is £20 including 20% VAT, then the ex-VAT price would be £16.67.

Negotiating TV deals from other nations/continents maybe looks good in theory, but there's still no sign of a real plan? The proof of the pudding would be when we see increased payments from the RFL to the clubs.

As has already been said, the main source of income for clubs is from Sky and (in some cases) company directors. Other sources of income (match tickets, dining, merchandise, refreshments, etc.) are still an important part of the overall income of a club though. To folk who enjoy attending the games in person (rather than watching on TV), a healthy number of away fans (assuming they're well behaved, but that's another subject) adds to the experience with the banter and atmosphere that it creates.

To repeat myself, my preference is for a "traditional" British system where on-field success is rewarded, but I'm not against expansion per se - I do find it strange to have apparently random clubs popping up across the Atlantic though. What seems to be missing, is what the "final solution" might look like. I don't mean what folk on these forums are saying, but something from the RFL to say just what they're trying to achieve and what the ultimate league structure could look like. It all seems very piecemeal, with each initiative seemingly driven independently.

We're in 2018 now, and the fact that we're talking about SL moving to a 14-team league next year sums it up. I believe that there's a SL meeting to discuss it this month, but club preparations for this season will be largely complete now, and which means that any changes that are agreed are a tad late. We should be talking about changes of this nature to introduce in 2020 or later now, not ones for next year.

Hi Sparky. Looking forward to playing you guys again this season.

My concern is that that the 'final solution', if the North American venture is successful, will see their big city clubs ditch the UK clubs in favour of a North American league/conference. Then, even the quoted so-called big UK clubs, such as Wigan, Leeds, Saints and Hull, would be forced back amongst the rest of us in a parochial UK set-up. Whilst that may prove great, in terms of an international set up, it would do more harm than good to the UK game.

Your maths teacher would be disappointing

Meh.... it's why I have an accountant

Best keep an eye on him/her.
If they know how "well" you do your calculations, you might end up paying for "ghost" staff and holiday homes