I'm all for expansion of rugby league, but I think it is a myth that it is needed to progress the sport.

If you plot a route around the Super league Clubs on Google Maps, going from Widnes to Hull, we cover quite a big area of the country. Add to that two satellite areas of London and Catalan.
Rugby Union has exactly the same map at the bottom end of the country. They have two satellite areas in Exeter and Sale, and the rest are across an area very similar to M62. The difference is they cover areas where there is a lot of money.

No one ever complains that London Welsh, London Irish and Harlequins are within 5 and 7 miles of each other.
They have similar attendances to Super league clubs. As an example London Welsh get 12k when Harlequins come and 3k when Exeter come (and of course they had to take games on the road too sometimes....just like we do.

The thing that makes the difference to us is that when you compare Wakefield and Castleford to London Welsh and London Irish, the London teams have an implied better area to draw crowds from, but only if they actually get out there and drag them in (marketing wise).
Would we need expansion if 10,000 people turned up to every Super League game?

I guess the expansionist argument is that we need to move to new areas to get that 10k number. Leeds and Bradford have big cities to draw from so could achieve that, but Wigan prove that with the right marketing, history and on field success it can be achieved in a small town just the same.
The supposed small M62 corridor is actually a massive area, with a lot of big business and money there. We just have to get them involved in Rugby League.

Rather than hope for a Super League with all the new conference expansion clubs in it, I would work on building all the teams, including the new ones, to a point where people want to come and watch, and media want to report.
If Swansea Rugby League Club got an average crowd of 10k (or even 5k) they'd be happily welcomed in. As would Gloucester or Northampton. Putting them straight in to Super League won't help that in the long run, we need to create a rivalry and a history and an entertaining spectacle.

So in my view, expansion as a fast track to a bigger map on Google is a poor model that will ultimately fail and lose money.
If expansion is a long term plan to bring the game to a wider area, with targeted city/towns that could be a focal point for an area and build slowly. Great. Bring it on.

Yep expansion in SL has been a roaring success!
Gateshead
Paris
Sheffield
Crusaders
London

Hmmmm

This may seem a negative viewpoint but it comes from knowing the history of RL and its heartland clubs as well as outpost expansion clubs. The current expansion of the championship leagues will have worked only if in 10, 20 or 30 years time the clubs in Hemel Hempstead, Cheltenham, Oxford (and Coventry who should step up next year) still exist as semi-pro or pro clubs at whatever level of the game they can sustain. It will have worked in the places that still have viable clubs in those future years.

Talk of them being in SL at any arbitrary point in the future is erroneous. Immediately wanting to put every team that ever comes along into the top level and aiming for that alone is what has helped so many clubs fail. There are many expansion clubs that have been set up and disappeared within a few years when either money ran out or someone got bored and walked away because their new club wasn't sitting at the top of the tree as they had hoped. Over the course of its history RL has lost a plethora of clubs in what is called the heartlands as well. Most of us could reel off a long list of former clubs, many from the last thirty years. Clubs die in all sports but new ones popping up and then vanishing has been an all too common feature of our sport.

If a club wherever in the country it plays is able in time to rise to the top and challenge for the major honours and be considered to be one of the big guns then great. However not every club can be a Leeds or a Wigan or a St Helens somebody has to be the Dewsbury, Batley or Leigh somewhere in the middle of the heirarchy and somebody has to be the Gateshead or London Skolars scrapping it out at the bottom of the pile. It doesn't matter so much where in the pecking order a club is, if it can keep going at the level it inhabits then it (and thus expansion) has succeeded.

There is a slight difference between "within 5-7 miles of each other" when we are talking about Europe's largest city and when we are talking about Wakefield district.

And it's not true either "London Welsh" play in Oxford. Oxford is not within a few miles of Twickhenham. "London Irish" play in Reading.

Very many people have thought of it before but nobody has the cash.

Rugby League is a Northern sport, there is very little interest for the game in the south,of England, Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, but some of the bosses have big idea's and think RL will be the next big thing, they are so focused on expansion that they have forgotten about the heart of the game, they have got it in there heads that we have to have clubs in the big City's to survive, so they keep on and on about we need a club hear, and a club there, and all the time forgetting about the Northern clubs, we nearly loose Waky then the Bulls, but they still do not see what his happening, Most of the clubs are up to there neck in debt, or directors loan's but all that dose not mater we have expansion, the only problem is if the people in football, and RU, areas don't want RL, why try to force it on them, we have to get the heart sorted before we end up with just a hand full of clubs, or is that the agenda

Pretty much where I stand as well, good post mate.

Is the '"full stop" button on your PC missing



Other clubs debts has little if anything to do with the inclusion of a London SL team. What happened at Bradford and Wakey was bad business management.....the RFL didn't make those companies go to the wall, their owners did.

The only bad thing about the expansion of the game is that the RFL/SKY didn't grab the bull by the horns 17 years ago and buy the London club, a la The Melbourne Storm. If they had, Londons SL team would be one of the best supported in the country......instead, we have had a number of misguided owners all of whom, with maybe the exception of Ian Lenegan, didn't have a clue how to market or promote the game.

BTW.....you opened your post with RL is a northern sport......hadn't you better pop over to the NRL boards and let them know

When London Broncos go to the wall....and believe me, with the current management and owner, that could be sooner rather than later, then that will be the end of quick fix expansionism.......unless of course the RFL replace them with toulouse

Sky do not care enough about RL to buy any teams. The RFL do not have the money to do so (and they are supposed to be neutral).

The thing is, where do the supporters want SL to be in say 10 years time.
Most of us are more concerned with our own team (s) and we're ok with most things as long as our team is not adversely affected.
Surely the starting point is how many teams should form the top flight and if there is to be either expansion and/or promotion/ relegation,
how will this be implemented.
Add to this the financial viability of the clubs involved and any limits that may be required as regards player wages, followed by grassroots investment and sponsorship of the lower divisions and we could then think about taking the game forward.
And for the cynics amongst us, a mechanism for dealing with the RLF's "favourites" and "untouchables" would be helpfull.

Fair enough, but if that's the case, then why do we regularly hear murmerings of 'SKY want a "London Team"?

As it is, an average of 10,000 over 13 home games a year would make the Broncos break even......if SKY (or anyone with half a brain) bought the club, they could achieve that in 5 years with ease......well, ease and a bit of clever marketing......something that the current owners and management avoid like small pox.




The RFL have pretty much cut London adrift anyway...they offer very little in the way of support to a club that has pretty much blazed a trail in the south east and raised the participation rates......when London fold or drop down, the RFL will need to considerably up their game if all the good work done over the years isn't to be lost.

Agree with all that.
On the "cutting London adrift" point, weren't there quite a few RL development officers down in that there London until recently? I was at the launch of Leeds 3 year development plan for RL in Leeds on Thursday at Headingley, and the entire plan is based upon losing the vast majority of current Sport England funding which has been spent on development officers in the past. According to Hetherington he'd been told by the RFL that they've been warned by Sport England that funding is being significantly reduced by the government, so that may be at least part of the reason why London have been "cut adrift", as effectively regional development will be the responsibility of the clubs rather than the RFL/government.

One of many troubles with your average league fan is their natural inbred deep pessimism and pathological scepticism.

Someone mentioned the tiny point that expansion did sort of actually work once, when the seeds of TGG were planted on the other side of the planet, and have now grown into a pretty decent sized tree.

The problem those wanting to spread the RL gospel will forever face is that our stock of shrinking violet flatcappers cannot envision where the sport might be in 100 years time, or even a decade or two hence, they only care for how it is now, it's OK for them, it'll never catch on, there's no interest, why waste your time, etc etc.

It is precisely the kind of thinking which has led hundreds of working mens' clubs to extinction, as in all walks of life, you cannot stand still, you have to either keep moving forward or wither and die.

Blimey


[urlhttp://www.therfl.co.uk/contact_us/development_contacts/london_and_south[/url

Because some keyboard warriors believe it to be true. You don't hear anyone in the RFL or Sky saying that.

We were equally told that "Crusaders add value to the Sky contract". They pull out and two weeks' later, Sky come back with an improved offer for SL!



Sky could achieve but nobody else could. But like I said, they've had SL coverage for 17 years and never shown an iota of interest in owing one of the clubs.

Give me 50% of the 1.5 million they currently away on average journeymen and I'd give them 10k averages within 65 home games......or I'd die trying. Surely better than the 7.5 million DH has wasted already.....

Spend 750k a year over 5 years and there's 3.75 mill of investment.

Let's say to get to 10k you need to add 27% year on year, from a starting point of 3k.......let's call it a tenner a ticket to keep it simple, with another tenner per fan on residuals per game....

Year 1 average 3,810 x 13 x twenty notes = 990,000 in revenue from that source
Year 2 4,840 x 13 x 20 = 1,260,000
Year 3 6,146 x 13 x 20 1.6 mil
Year 4 7,800 x 13 x 20 = 2,030,000
Year 5 9,900 x 13 x 20 = 2.6 million


8.5 million in revenue over 5 years......costing 3.75 million in promotion, marketing and no small amount of blood, sweat, tears and f()cking hard work....

No offence but if the job of SL coach was that easy then we'd all do it. You assume that the players that you would buy would have any interest in joining Broncos.

Secondly you assume that onfield success would lead to dramatically improved attendances. With a club as low profile as Broncos in their home market, it is highly unlikely that many people would ever hear of the club's improvement.

Only the media can rescue Broncos because the club needs a huge amount of publicity which it cannot afford to pay for. Sky could do this easily but they aren't interested.

And the kind of money you are talking about investing wouldn't make any difference. It is a drop in the ocean. What do you think that would buy in London? Not to mention there is no explanation of where it would come from.

1. the standard of players currently at the club is an pointer to the waste of money I am referring to....
2. Never mentioned on field success.....i said I would get them through the gates.
3. 57,700 per gameor 750k a year would buy you a decent wedge of media in SW London......and that's where you need tomarket, not 45 miles away in Gillingham or an hours drive away in Leytonstone
4. DH pumps 1.5 mill into the club every year.....as I said, give me half of it.

The RFL and IL didn't think I was mad in 2007......only the ever failing London SL franchise did.....since then they've DROPPED 20% attendance wise ...............or in my warped maths, about 200k a year.

I don't have a magic wand, but I do have the idea, passion and belief in the game that is lacking in London....ask any of the die hard 800 or so ST holders if they think I am right....

If you were given half of it then what would the club run on? Maybe the reason why Broncos don't spend much on advertising is that they need every penny they can get to stay afloat.

Secondly the gates don't really depend much on the quality of players because the target market have neither heard of or care about the players that you might attract.

1.3 mill from SKY, gate receipts and whatever residuals they could muster currently about 1 million and the other half of DH's money....once you grow the crowds, the sponsors become interested and you sell corporate boxes..the revenue increases. By year 3, DH wouldn't neet to ever put in cash again......and sponsors/co-owners would be beating a path to him.


The Landlords did this from 2005 onwards...they invested heavily in marketing and retaining customers.....they engaged their audience and they made it work......they invested wisely. 3k gates to 14k gates.....they did that in 5 years.

It takes balls and hard work......neither are in evidence at the club presently

how many years as there been RL in London,there support tells you how keen the London people are, some years ago we took 100 buses of support to the club, when the attendance was announced, it was less than the number of fans we took

If that actually happened, then logic (not your strong point) would suggest that the crowd was massively underestimated by the ground talliers.

Pot calling kettle if ever I heard it.