My My JEAN, You're not well son, go and have a good sit down.

We've been here before.
The 2nd ten will just be the Championship by another name.

Of course you could spread the Sky monies among the 20 clubs but that wont actually help, unless there is a whole lot more cash in the first place.
It's all about the money, something that there just isn't enough of.

Maybe we should accept our place as a small time "M62" sport and work with what we can get.
In terms of revenue, we are already a distant 3rd between The NRL and Union so, it almost doesn't matter what we do.

Although the 2 x 10 looks great on paper, it's a non runner.
Having said that, IF (and it a huge IF) Toronto, New York etc take off, you may get your wish but unless you are Wigan, Leeds, Hull , Warrington or Saints, you wont be playing in the "top flight".

An attitude all too common in a lot of RL fans with little or no ambition, money doesn't come to you - you go and find it. We are grossly undervalued in comparison to other sports, if the French and N American teams can secure deals we would be better off than NRL or RU

Bingo! Wrencat's attitude is endemic in our game.

What's stopping SL owners and boards going out and brining in outside investment? - what on earth do people think Perez has managed to in Toronto? He's somehow managed to convince a load of people who've never watched a game of RL in their lives, to throw money behind a club that have never played before and will join a 3rd tier comp in England! He's built a consortium that has enough money to grow the club, but also has built a team with the right commercial acumen & gone out and set up great deals with sponsors and broadcasters. He's got off his and done what he said he would, and here in England we have the flat-cappers lamenting this ambition and attitude, even fearing it. Pathetic.

Eh ?

Which part of my post infers any kind of negative "attitude"
It's just plain fact, go check out the deals that the 3 sports (RL, RU and NRL currently have)
Of course we should be ambitious but, you are utterly delusional to think that anyone will throw significant money at SL 2, when we get feck all for SL.
There is massive potential if RL can "make it" in the states/ N. America but, right now, Toronto etc are after "stealing" a slice of the Sky monies, which necessarily takes money away from the game in this country.
I actually agree that RL is undervalued and we're in a catch 22 position.
If we dont expand, our appeal is too small to attract "major" sponsorship and yet, if we do try and expand into N.America, we could jeopardise the whole lot.
Also, what kind of TV deal do the French have and what do you honestly expect that Toronto could glean, by way of a TV deal.

You question my attitude and yet you appear to be living in cuckoo land.

I should give it up wrencat.
Either blindy support expansion in all forms on here or get ridiculed and abused.

Im actually in favour of expanding the game and nothing would make me happier than to follow a sport that was as popular as Association Football.
I also believe that Perez has more vision and drive than anything we have seen in the UK for a very long time, if ever.
However, if something is clearly flawed and I believe the 2 x 10 (SL 1 & 2) is definitely flawed, then it's only right to "call it our".
There is nothing wrong with having dreams but, in any business model, there has to be a little more pragmatism.

Also, and more importantly, there needs to be proper thought put in as to how we "marry up" RL in the UK (and France) with a few wanabe clubs in N. America and exactly how we achieve the best outcome for the sport.

Back to SL 1 & 2, NOBODY will give a toss about the 2nd tier of the sport, other than passing though to any club vying for promotion.
It's just dreamland stuff to expect the same investment and desire to watch the 2nd tier of our sport.
Hell, we cant even sell the top flight well enough, never mind the next rung down on the ladder.

so if its going to 14 clubs in 2014

will anybody be relegated come the end of 2018 season?!?! million pound game loser may get a nice surprise...

Potentially yes but probably not.The simplest way of doing it is top 5 in the qualifiers go to the superleague and have a 6th and 7th playoff.
You'd think the 4 superleague clubs would finish in the top 5.

The successful clubs are going out and finding investments. That's what they employ commercial teams to do. The issue is that whilst there is money within certain clubs, there isn't in the game as a whole because we struggle for central funding - namely TV and commercial sponsorships.

You can't (and shouldn't, IMO) insist that the revenue that Leeds or Wigan generate from their sponsors and commercial agreements is shared with the other ten teams in the league, but the hard part is making the "package" of the league as a whole appeal to broadcasters and sponsors to generate central funding that can and should be shared. This is the crux of the expansion / anti-expansion argument - what is the best "package" that we can sell to broacasters (be that Sky, BT, Premier, ITV) and sponsors (whether that is Barclays, Land Rover, Ladbrokes or Uncle Joe's Mint Balls)?

I know that there are some that simply think that we need to demand more from a Sky deal that they argue undervalues the sport. I personally don't think it's that simple as that and that collectively, the sport needs to really look at what more it can offer broadcasters. Sky knows how much RL is worth to the business, it knows how much advertising slots in and around RL content are worth and Sky probably has a good idea of how much the loss of RL content would cost them (or in BT's case, how much the gain of RL content would generate) in subscription revenue.

They aren't going to offer the sport and the clubs more money just because they ask for it, so it is up to the sport to be a bit creative, ask some hard questions, and come up with something that offers Sky or any other broadcaster something that is worth more than they currently pay for. Is that better players? Is that a higher standard of competition? Is that promotion and relegation? Is that big events? Is that more internationals? Is that a bigger geographic spread? Is that a different audience? These are all questions that I think many fans and clubs shy away from, because it exposes some hard realities.

I've made no secret about my views on expansion (despite the risks it presents) because I think that the "package" the sport offers both to new fans and new partners needs to change. For me it's simple, if we want to insist that the future of this sport is in towns where the local High Streets are filled with bookies, pawnbrokers and fast food outlets, we have to acknowledge that the only companies that are likely to be interested in this sport are online bookmarkers, payday lenders and tinned mushy peas.

No we must not, let them get there like every other team by winning games and earning promotion.

Will you take that feckin large Leigh chip off your shoulder, seriously.

you are one sad pathetic fake individual

This is a particularly interesting comment.
You are bang on, about Sky knowing what a sport is worth to them in terms of revenue and viewing numbers etc.
However, they are a business and they will try and negotiate the minimum figure that they can "get away" with.
The flip side of this is that The RFL should be achieving the maximum that it can achieve when negotiating their broadcasting deal.
Certainly, the last deal appeared to be done in double quick time and it looked from the outside that, for whatever reason, "we" couldn't shake their (Sky's) hand quick enough.
There can only be 2 reasons for this> Either it was believed that the offer was so good that it shouldn't be passed up or, "we" are inept at negotiating and at a time when BT were trying to hoover up just as many sports as it could, to fill it's air time, I'd go for the "inept at negotiation", rather than the first option.

How so. I've already shown that Union on BT gets similar audiences than we do on SKY and how their Internationals dwarf our audiences on FTA TV, so which other sports get more money than us that makes us undervalued? Just because you repeat the myth regularly it doesn't become fact......the latest BARB figures available are for the week JAN 1 to 7....the AVIVA got 185k, 102k and 92k and they average 13,500 a game so far this season in attendances....how are we undervalued by comparison?


"Insane" would be a polite term to use if you think that we could attract the same cash as the NRL. Their new deal is worth £200,000,000 a year......or AU$1.8 BILLION over 5 years......our entire TV deal across all competitions is 20% of that figure...in fact we get £182,200,000 over 5 years and that includes internationals and the Challenge Cup. Toronto are on Premier TV and deliver nothing to the game...they waived the £75,000 of central funding last year and will waive the £150,000 this year....thereafter if they make SL they will receive £1,825,000. SKY pick up the French Feed and get 50,000 viewers.....I'd be stunned if Premiere sports get 10% of that but you're genuinely suggesting that NYC and Toronto as well as Toulouse playing out of a 4 stadium that they can't half fill will deliver the £164,000,000 a year to make us better off than the NRL

Hasn't the RFL historically outsourced the negotiation of TV rights to IMG?

They might be a lot of things, but inept at negotiating isn't usually one of them.

And remember that the clubs vote on any proposed agreement. The RFL can't carry the blame entirely if we have undersold the contract.

Ignore IT Roy, hasn't got the b@lls to reveal who it actually supports. Used to be Chorley Borough I imagine, now IT just pretends to be french. IT will be loving all the attention on here, and I have just added to it, unfortunately.

I am sorry if you have not been able to discern which clubs I support. As most people on here know I support:
[size=120
[i=#FF0080Catalans,
=#0040FFToulouse,
Toronto,
=#804000London, [/i[/size

Expansion for its own sake is pointless. The US/Canada has potential that dwarfs any other options SL has. However, you've got to be really careful how you manage any growth there, as any potential new money can disappear as fast as it appears. I know its a huge 'if', but IF SL can tap into the US sports market in a sustainable way the money there is potentially far greater than anything likely to be generated in the UK alone.

On the plus side, the sport isn't starting from a position as a flat cap, working class northerner sport as seen by the majority of the population - we'd probably have exactly the same image as RU there because most north Americans wouldn't know the difference even if you tried to explain it to them. The bigger obstacle is to move from being seen as a weird minority sport like lacrosse to one that can get and keep fans and sponsorship and TV money. I don't think having a number of teams from places such as Leeds/Wigan matters, but I suspect having a London based team would be vital to create interest and (oddly enough) credibility from a marketing perspective.

I just think that the alternative is continuation of a long, slow decline in SL heartlands as RU dominance as the second sport behind football grows over time.

Why do we have to keep bringing up union all the time we are league not union and has far has I can see we have idiots in charge of us they are the ones that need sorting out

Because, as others have rightly pointed out, over the last 22 years we have chopped and changed our system (see topic thread) and not really grown the game to any extent whilst Union have, from a pretty much standing start, eclipsed us on most of the off field demographics that lead to self sufficiency or even profitability.
There are few other sports where the comparison works or is valid.



We are a professional sport where the tail (the clubs) wags the dog (the sport). It works in other sports like football where the clubs have most power, but the pinnacle of that sport is still a FIFA World Cup, in Union it is their World Cup, but in League, it is apparently 2 teams made up of players from the east coast of Australia going at it 3 times a year.

Currently 28 sides and probably soon 30 (15 Aus/1 NZ/1 France/12 English/1 Mercenary side in Canada) spread over just 2 competitions is the total sum of our top tier globally and the interests of those clubs will always take precedent over the needs of the game........I could list the top tier clubs globally in football, but it would be pointless as the top 2 divisions in the UK already eclipse League globally, but a comparison with Union is more valid. It isn't the fault of the RFL/ARL that we find ourselves in this predicament, but the self serving owners of the top clubs who will be happy to close the door and simply use the remaining semi-pro clubs that survive as feeder clubs......ergo, see the thread about an Extraordinary GM being called by the lower tier clubs.
Proof of this is the refusal of the NRL to look at a club in Western Australia or even a second New Zealand club....and given where the growing majority of their playing rosters come from, their refusal to consider NZII or even let a Fijian/Tongan side join the 2nd tier is shocking.......the 19 lowest 2017 NRL attendances were all games hosted in greater Sydney whilst 10 of the top 15 regular season attendances were all outside NSW.....there are too many clubs in NSW but whilst the turkeys have the vote, then they won't dare to vote for Christmas!

If a team from anywhere wants to compete in sl then imo they should start in l1 and gain promotion. They also need to add something major. The fact we are looking at Canada and America is laughable. Do premier league teams have teams thousands of miles away competing? No. Do nrl? No. Do ru? No. We're looking at it all wrong. By all means help introduce an americas league with an americas all stars in a world club series. But expand the game into places like Newcastle and Sheffield.
People seem to have this idea that American TV stations are going to play insane money to broadcast nyork vs Wigan. They're not going to be interested.

Which is exactly why I believe the North American clubs would ditch our SL 'giants' very quickly, if the venture over there succeeds. And we would return to 'sqare one' over here, or what is left of it by then.

I don't know what the US TV stations play, but they will love to broadcast Toronto vs New York and New York vs Leeds, and New York vs Catalans, and New York vs Toulouse, and New York vs London. But they will have no interest in New York vs Leigh. That is why we must ensure that Leigh never sees the light of a Super League day ever again. And that is why we must promote Toulouse, Toronto, New York and London into Super League as soon as possible.

I know the current climate of trying to see your doctor is difficult, but you must insist on seeing him ,you really need urgent treatment. Or alternatively, you need to see a psychiatrist ASAP.

Like what? What constitutes "major" in your eyes? And given that probably half of the clubs in Super League (never mind most heartland clubs outside Super League) struggle to contribute anything notable, let alone major, why is the onus to do that only on expansion clubs? Shouldn't all clubs be contributing something major, or do you get a free pass if you are a club that happens to be within an arbritrary boundary?

If expansion clubs come into Super League and want to simply be a strong, competitive, sustainable club in its own right, why isn't that enough? It seems to be a standard that many of our heartland clubs haven't reached in more than 120 years of trying.


Yes they do.

This season, Manchester United have played five fixtures in the United States. Arsenal have played two games in Sydney, one in Beijing and one in Shanghai. Chelsea have played one in Shanghai and two in Singapore. Liverpool have played two in Hong Kong and three in Germany. Tottenham have played three games in the United States. Man City have played three in the US and one in Reykjavík. They do this annually because they see the market potential in these parts of the world.


Yes it does.

The NRL will kick-off with Canterbury, Souths, NZ Warriors and Melbourne playing in Perth. Perth is 2,500 miles from Sydney, and 3,300 miles from Auckland (roughly the same as Manchester to Toronto).


Yes it does.

Super Rugby in the southern hemisphere is a league of clubs from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and Japan. Closer to home, the Pro 14 has clubs from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Italy and South Africa, and there have been two fixtures from the Aviva Premiership played in the US.


The responsibility for promoting the game in Newcastle and Sheffield lies with Newcastle Thunder and Sheffield Eagles. They are the clubs active in that market, they are the ones who will reap the largest benefit of any work done in those markets, and the onus is on them to promote themselves to that market. Given that both of those clubs (in one guise or another) has been subject to a merger and given that one of those has played fixtures on a University playing field (and has had more grounds in the Super League era than the perrenial nomads in London), it is perhaps indicitive of the level of interest in that market.



That remains to be seen. I've said in an earlier post that there is room for RL to really carve our a niche in the North American market. I think that it's a risk worth taking, given that the risks of not pursing this opportunity are even greater.

You are right. Of course, neither will they have any interest in NY v Salford, Castleford, Wakefield, Hull KR, Widnes,Huddersfield, either. And, very soon would lose interest in NY v Saints, Wigan, Hull, Warrington, or Leeds. And, once the novelty of 'vive la France' had worn off, I would suggest they would quickly lose interest in NY v either of the Championship 'quality' French teams, either!