Not if those southerners were actually northerners, Aussies and Kiwis living in the south.

What a truly pathetic attempt to make statistics favour your argument.

I suggest 40% of those tickets were purchased by those mentioned above. This leaves 20% which isn't bad.

When will people like you stop twisting reality and tell the truth - I for one would be far more sympathetic if you did.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

There is some comic genius right here!

Why do you have a problem with northerners supporting the Broncos? A significant proportion of the now nearly-deceased Broncos supporters are/were northerners. And a significant proportion of people living in the south are northerners.

I was involved in St Albans club selling over 800 tickets. I estimate an educated guess that no more than 5% of that number were ex pat or antipodean. Of course that cant be extrapolated over 67000 but not a bad start. What we need down here is a London Super League club that is competitive, stands out from the local sporting scene and something we as fans can proud of and want tp shout about from the roof tops. The current is embarrassing and has been for years. I dearly hope we make the starting line in 2014 but not as a fill in which would do more harm than good.

Bollacks

That pretty much sums the anti London brigade up really.

In front of me were some pretty posh looking union types who'd shown up out of interest. They were completely smitten.

The whole row of people behind me were Oxford students who'd come down just for the game. All of them were neophytes and the only one who knew anything about League was the New Zealander who grew up in a Union part of the country. More than one of them decided they preferred League to Union on the strength of that England v NZ game.

Based on my own limited experience I can easily believe the numbers.

Sadly, I can easily believe that the usual suspects are lining up to declare their incredulity that people other than themselves have seen the light.

Fwiw I'm not anti any team but it think any club playing super league should be there on merit not geographic location

oh dear...all the hard work

All southerners round me at Wembley.

I can easily believe the 60% figure.

Melbourne Storm is how you do expansion.......London Broncos is how you don't.

Read in league weeky it could be GoDaddy.Com. Blue chip company that some have been crying out for. Don't think they would have been involved if it wasn't for the WC.

It will be more a question of how much they are paying rather than who they are.....GoDaddy are massive with 55 million websites belonging to 12 million customers globally......but will they be paying what Engage did...a reported £1.2 million a year?
[urlhttp://www.marketingweek.co.uk/engage-ends-super-league-sponsorship/3025666.article[/url

You obviously work in a sports' media marketing division.

Probably not but lets say for arguments sake they are paying half of what engage did at 600k, that's better than £0 we're currently getting. We may have to then look at increasing the deal every renewal. The stobart deal did a lot of harm.

I did read that other sponsor offers had been rejected as they were no where near the valuation, but this one is close to acceptable.

Will be interesting to see what is paid now.......and how the re-structure influences projected increases over the next 5 years.....RLWC is back in 8 years....there's a few clubs to go under and a few more bail-outs between now and then, not to mention a TV deal to be re-negotiated.

Theory? Did you ignore the part where it has successfully worked? The Storm's jersey is one of the richest in Aus sport...

Disagree, storm has had virtually no influence on the number or quality of people playing RL in Victoria and have cost over $50million in extra funding. They rely on queen slanders, kiwis and under the counter payments to have a winning team and still look a long way from being financially sustainable.

And I'm a Storm fan! Hopefully the Pirates will be announced as the next NRL expansion club and the model of both a top down and bottom up approach will show how you should expand into a new area.

Speculation aside, the RFL is wise to highlight that 60% figure. The potential audience must be a consideration for anyone thinking of investing in a club based in the south east.

Am I right in saying that this year was the first time Storm had a first team player born in Melbourne?

The Engage deal was first agreed in 2005, in what was a different world financially to what we have got now.

the RFL undoubtedly completely messed up with the Stobart deal, but you have to consider that its a different financial world since the recession.

The big mistake with Stobart was announcing that no cash exchanged hands. If you rang Stobart and asked them how much it would cost to have your own livery on x many trucks for a year it would probably cost an awful lot more than whatever Betfair were offering to give per year. However the timing was wrong and it was a PR disaster. Worth noting though that the deal was voted for by the clubs.

Weird how Aussies see an expansion club in terms of market exposure and tv audiences and we see it in terms of live attendances and local players produced.

We're stuck in some 1950s time-warp over here.

Quote ="Sadfish"I think it will be decided upon on Tuesday, this article ties in well with Nigels interview (posted in a seperate thread). www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 5950712612 $5million profit is not a "Small amount" for rugby league Mr Capdouze.'" Interesting article. However, it looks as if the NRL see the SL clubs and governance as amateur.

Quote ="Sadfish"I think it will be decided upon on Tuesday, this article ties in well with Nigels interview (posted in a seperate thread). www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 5950712612 $5million profit is not a "Small amount" for rugby league Mr Capdouze.'" Interesting article. However, it looks as if the NRL see the SL clubs and governance as amateur.

That is actually a very good point. Despite allegedly being the biggest sport in Australia and having a huge TV deal etc etc, this year the average attendance in the NRL was 15,940. Considering the competition gets a lot more exposure and all the rest of it, we aren't all that far behind in terms of crowds.