£100k a month??? How is that even possible.

They spend £1.6m a year on first team players, get £1m a year from Sky so they have to pay £50k a month out of their own pockets for the players.

You would think that other staff and rent would get cancelled out by shirt sales, sponsorship and gates.

I guess having 10k fans that pay buttons for their season tickets doesn't help but there has to be something else going on to lose that much during the season.

Im with you, it just doesnt add up. what the hell are they spending the money on!?
whilst its very sad, i think bradford should just be allowed to die now, hopefully coming back stronger in the long term as a result. why should the rugby league community bail them out again? most of us dont support bradford, yet many of us are currently keeping them going with our recent donations (small or not). now they need more money. And if they get that money, what happens a few months down the line? because there seems to be little action to drastically curtail expenditure.

still not gone bust yet then load of old tripe!!! will still be playing next season

Why do you suggest it was a myth?

Bradford shouldn't be treat any differently than other clubs that have gone belly up - but they will.

The whole system is a joke, and until we get big changes at the top then it will continue to be a joke.

RFL -Fail again

It was no myth. What was done at Keighley regarding pre match entertainment, family marketing, community involvement, emphasis on encouraging kids coupled with a successful team on the field bringing huge increases in attendances and creating a positibe buzz for the club in the town was copied, line for line, word for word at Bradford by Deakin I think and became Bullmania.

Absolutely correct.

Mike Smith and Mick O'Neill were the architects and made Keighley the place to be pre-Super League. Bradford (pre-Bulls) copied it on a larger scale and took all the kudos while the Cougars were denied the promotion they had earned.

The irony was that a certain Bradford director (think hard now) saw a game at Cougar Park and declared it to be 'like a circus'.

Miscreant,
I don t want the Bulls to go belly up but, after the way that certain director, was instrumental in the backroom shenanigans which resulted in our promotion being denied, it s hard not to think that it s some kind of richly desrved cumuppance which is going on right now. After all, ultimately, it was that denial of promotion and the place in SL which ultimately led to the Cougars bankruptcy.

Nowhere does it say the club lost £1.2m. Be careful of drawing false conclusions from selective bits of info released by the new board with an axe to grind with the old.

The Bulls paid only a peppercorn for Odsal. There was no unpaid rent. It was not that sort of lease, else how could the Bulls have sold it?

Still a big cash black hole to be explained though. Maybe we will gain some enlightenment tomorrow, when I gather Hood seeks to refute what the new lot have said in League Express?

Caisley is not (yet) a director. And the majority of fans I talk to would prefer him not to be so again. Some hold similar views on him as you do.

Because the reason most of us put money in is so we didn't have to see our young stars leave. It would be one mighty way to pi$$ us all of if they sold Bateman and Elliott now.

Yeah, they should chuck us out like they did with the smaller clubs like London, Wakey and Crusaders.

Oh, Wait...

Point of order.....London set the trend...there were no rules in place and therefore, none were broken. In addition,the RFL never gave us a brass farthing and didn't buy our ground for us and we didn't beg for 500k by tugging heartstrings...other than that...good point well made

TBH, if anyone was surprised that Caisley's "independent review of the club" found that the financial state was "far worse than thought" then you'll be in for a terrible shock when I tell you that there's no Father Christmas either.

It's long been Caisley's plan to let the Bulls fail, then come charging back in and be hailed as a hero. The only reason it's taken so long is because of the previous board trying their best to sort out the mess he left the club in when he stepped down as chairman in 2006

Stadium upkeep (now rent), debt interest etc etc

Players under contract, the commercial facility at Odsal

This, and the similar "time to reduce the cap" argument will lead us into a race to the bottom. Similar to the Tories austerity plans. We (the game) can either go all out to grow our income (not without risk of course), or obsess with shrinking our costs. The latter plan is deeply flawed, because unfortunately we have the spectre of Union which can pay for talent if we decide to pay peanuts across the board. This just leads to a downward spiral - who wants to sponsor a sport of amateurs? RL's only long term hope is income growth. 'Local' challenges at Bradford worry me far less than the overall lack of inspiration from the RFL as to how the game's income is going to grow - primarily, how are we going to attract sponsors and media? The answer BTW... no need to thank me - not my idea

... is to concentrate marketing around the players, the rivalries and other stories. Banging on incessantly about what a great set of rules we have is totally pointless.

Well, the RFL are putting that gear in reverse by offering sponsorship for cack all. I've not even seen a SL Stobart truck yet.

If the game is to expand (you do that by enticing investors) then racking up massive debts isn't the way to go. You want to go down the Gordon Brown/Greece route? Why would any investor touch a Northern sport that's massively in debt and which has no popularity whatsoever outside the M62?

Now, show that all clubs can make a decent profit and you'll have investors willing to take the game to other areas of the country.

Yes, it's all very fanciful and we all know that every sporting club in the world runs at a loss, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately in the UK, the game of Rugby League is stuck along the M62 corridor with a spattering of interest in the South of France. It will NEVER EVER be anything different no matter how many dreams this may shatter. Get used to it and try and improve the game we do have left in this region of the country.

No, don't want to rack up massive debts...BUT...profit equals income less expenditure, and, as with the 'austerity' debate, its not at all obvious that cutting costs doesn't have an even bigger impact on income. ( e.g. if we lose star players )

FWIW, those clowns who think RL would be better off without Sam Tomkins, etc. are first class idiots, or else hate the game. Hate him, fine, hate him as much as you like, just like people hated Beckham, Rooney, and all those others than put bums on seats and sponsors on shirts. But to say we don't need the likes of Tomkins is the ultimate in defeatism by people who really would rather see us an amateur feeder sport for Union.

I'm sure they'll be fine now they appear to be a charity, as shown by Kearneys choice of charity to donate his £100 to tonight. Forget the starving African kids or steve Prescott, donate it to my club, wages wont pay themselves you know!

You're joking right

Bradford are a joke. Why are they just sitting back and expecting everyone else in RL to sort out the huge debts when THEY'VE run their club so poorly they've ended up in this mess?

If they go to the wall who really cares except their fans? No one. Bradford will quickly be forgotton and it will soon be business as usual for the other clubs and their supporters.

Never has a truer statement been made on here.

Cumbrians may as well pack in as well then.

If this is true, the sport is doomed to a future of going back to part-time with minimal TV coverage.