With your vast knowledge of all things rugby league & your obvious inside track on Super League & RFL, I wonder, could you kindly list the clubs who voted for & those who voted against ? There's a good little boy !

Quote ="Ste100Centurions"You're not a politician too are you ? Completely avoided answering the question !'" https://www.totalrl.com/beaumont-pledge ... -the-game/ League Express understands that St Helens and Leeds were joined by Huddersfield, Leigh and Warrington in rejecting Novalpina’s offer. If the offer were to be accepted it would have required the consent of all the twelve member clubs of Super League (Europe). And, given the long term opposition of St Helens Chairman Eamonn McManus and Leeds CEO Gary Hetherington, the likelihood of that happening had always seemed small.

Quote ="Ste100Centurions"You're not a politician too are you ? Completely avoided answering the question !'" https://www.totalrl.com/beaumont-pledge ... -the-game/ League Express understands that St Helens and Leeds were joined by Huddersfield, Leigh and Warrington in rejecting Novalpina’s offer. If the offer were to be accepted it would have required the consent of all the twelve member clubs of Super League (Europe). And, given the long term opposition of St Helens Chairman Eamonn McManus and Leeds CEO Gary Hetherington, the likelihood of that happening had always seemed small.

Story without fact. I’ve highlighted the operative word. Just for you!

It's bloody ludicrous to "sell off" a share in SL for a one off cash injection.

These things are great when you get the cash but, you are then worse off for the rest of your life.
Every club should have rejected it and not just the ones mentioned !

On the face of it I agree entirely with this.

But as the season saw no fans but Bills to pay and likely again no or fewer fans 2021, reports have been coming out that several clubs are seriously hand to mouth, and not every club has generous owners. The rich clubs are hardly likely to sub the poor ones.

Superleague appears to go nowhere, and one vote each with unanimous votes preferred before any changes, superleague bosses find it almost impossible to agree on anything and Supeleague drifts to an extent on what may be seen as the tail wagging the dog on such a voting system.

The advantage of venture capitalism was that the venture capitalists and those rich SL bosses who decided to try to get them in, would have been able to change the voting system in favour of the bigger clubs. or shall we say richer clubs.

The Lenegans and Davey's of this world pour a lot of money in and no doubt want more say than perhaps your own man Michael Carter "deserves". They are old men and probably want to live in the here and now, and spend their money in the here and now.

Take the current SKY deal. The initial vote on that was 7-6 and the six contained the richer clubs. They lost the day 5 years ago, and venture capital may just have been an attempt to win it back......

Wrong as ever. The only club to vote against the current Sky deal were then Koukash-controlled Salford.

Super league need an independent commission asap that mirrors the Nrl.

Well your wrong which puts into doubt your credibility.

David Rogers reported on the signing of the current deal in RL & League express.

The first vote was 7-6 in favour with the [i"income starting to kick in within two weeks"[/i with an upront £300,000 payment for each club.

The upfront payment and the bigger TV deal as noted by Rogers was a "lifeline for some clubs" who were under tremendous financial pressure.

The clubs named as being closest to the edge were Bradford, Wakefield, London and Castleford. As guests Les Catalans did not vote.

After the first vote was lost, the clubs followed their protocol of making a final vote in which the losers were expected to give way to the winners and vote unanimously to show a united front to the press. It was THEN that Koucash refused hence the second vote was only near unanimous. The SL clubs were furious with Koucash for breaking protocol and not that long after Koucash gave an interview to the Yorkshire post urging Superleague to break from the RFL.

Koucash was cold shouldered for not following protocol either at the vote or on the unilateral outburst against the RFL and eventually he left the game.

The new deal pretty much puts the top SL clubs in the driving seat now, and we shall see how things pan out for 2022. The top SL clubs fell out with Gausch over recent years so things don't auger well for France 2022 at all, and we've already had a vote on the idea of 2022 being a 2x10 Superleague which saw SL defeated, but it's a possibility a second vote will be on it's way in the next 12 months.

But the bottom line here is that taking venture capital would have seen a change to the voting structure in favour of the big clubs, and the £750K may look like a "lot of money" but it is absolutely nothing compared to the £17,000,000 that the top SL clubs felt they were were denied from this last TV deal.....

In short, Elstone has been a waste of time and Steph’s been made to look the fool. Again.

Credibility?
On another thread another poster informed you of the clubs that voted against the venture capital offer.
I suggest you remind yourself.
Then have a look at how the other code are viewing their venture capitalist input.
Than you may have a modicum of credibility.

If Elstone was appointed to find some common ground between Club owners and develop that then it has indeed been a waste of time.

Looking back Superleague looking to go to 10 clubs may have been about power not practicabilities......

As for the "fools" ignore them.....

It looks like Elstone may have a bit more to do,as well as the broadcast deal,as it appears a new major sponsor for the sport may be required in a short period of time. https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/ru ... onsorship/

It looks like Elstone may have a bit more to do,as well as the broadcast deal,as it appears a new major sponsor for the sport may be required in a short period of time. https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/ru ... onsorship/

The bottom line is that the main task for Elstone, when he took the job, was to secure a decent broadcast deal.
Has he achieved this ?? If the leaks and expectations are correct, It doesn't seem great and remembering we are a few years down the track and the effect of inflation, albeit it's pretty low and the deal looks even worse.

I suppose that depends on the working environment at present to whether he has achieved or not.

It’s easy to make scapegoats in any business at the moment. Just some are still hiding and he isn’t.

The fact remains that he was brought in to secure the next TV deal and it's worth remembering that the initial leaks, regarding a much reduced deal, were prior to Covid taking effect.
As for scapegoat, if you only have one task and you dont do that task too well, you have failed.

Maybe it really is the best that the sport was ever going to achieve but, if this is the case, I think we are on our way up the proverbial creek, without a paddle.

So exactly the opposite of what Steph wrote then.
In fact the Club's with the most money, Leeds, Wire, Saint's, Giants & Leigh quoted as rejecting a quick & worthless payout of approx £5M per Club in Super League & the rest grabbing at a paltry payout !!!

I disagree. There is no way he could have foreseen COVID-19. I think he has dealt
with the situation very well. Was he slow in responding to the situation? Then no more than the prime minister.

I think we're at crossed purposes here.

Are you suggesting that Elstone has done a great job in securing, what is reported to be, a 25/30% drop in the TV deal (and this doesnt allow for 5 years of inflationary costs).
He showed his hand very early, when he outright supported Wigan, when they breached the cap and that was before any enquiry / investigation.

I agree that its extremely difficult running any organisation in the current climate and on non TV issues he's probably doing ok (aside from the Wigan case).
However, the point remains that his appointment was all about securing a decent deal to help move the sport forward.
Lets also remember that it wasn't Elsotne that secured the government funding to try and help the sport through the pandemic.

Just about every SL club chairman and every RL official and SL official has been slagged off rotten at some time for not building some sort of utopia.

Why hasn't the TV deal gone up? Why don't we have more quality players coming through? why have crowds dropped?

Why is everything not building and building and building and building (and building)????

It's probably because the Rugby League and the Superleague have not got together and interviewed the obvious candidates just waiting to be picked up from these message boards. There's one on the "other side" who says the problem is that the failed M62 clubs simply hold back any modern day attempt for glamorous international clubs across the world to set up and show us how it is all done.

He says time to pull the plug on the M62 clubs except Wigan and Leeds and put out 10 invites across the globe...................

Like it?

How do you know that SKY didn't want to make that a 50% drop?? How do you know that SKY may not have said to Elstone "Actually Robert, we can manage quite well without Rugby League on our schedules"

When Elstone took the job, tell me what cards he was dealt?? If you had done the Job description for his role would you have put:-

[i"Must deliver year on year increases to SKY deal"[/i

And he secured it......

What did you want?

The last deal was levered up on a combination of BT sports possibly bidding....

And it was levered up on more clubs competing with the top Championship clubs coming in on the middle eights.

Both those cards tuened out to be deuces not Ace's

You can't judge Elstone on the headline value of the deal, for all you know SKY were ready to pull the plug.

good to see SL adopting some of the law changes from Oz. the way i feel at the moment I want to get rid of being able to kick in a forwards direction; with that, would need to reduce the numbers on the field, so go to 11-a-side, no scrums. Start match with a ptb on own 20m line. don't you think it's wrong that you can kick forwards but not pass it? why should you be able to charge a kick down and it not be considered a knock-on but a pass is different? We're a handling code.

I'm pleased that you're happy with the alleged deal ?

You say that Elstone cant be judged on the headline value of the deal but, I would argue that this is exactly where he can be judged.
In fact, it's the only measure that we have.

As for the last deal being "levered up", perhaps more should have been done to talk up the value of the sport

we just need to get more middle class people watching.

Of course I am not happy with the deal, but I won't shoot the messenger.

Can you not look at it from the possibility we may have got no deal at all this time, rather than taking a view every deal will just go up and up?

You only work on the simplified position that we got X last time and we got less that that this time. I have explained what we got last time had certain drivers Elstone did not have. If that is Elstone's fault YOU tell us where he failed? What cards do YOU think he failed to play??