Could easily have happened in the past, pretty difficult nowadays.

Large proportion of RFL income comes from Sport England and has lots of strings attached in terms of what it gets spent on, as it all is monitored pretty closely. There have been other sports were this has happened (hockey) and Sport England works pretty hard to keep individual governing bodies on the right path financially.

Obviously, If the government reduces public spending on sport, then the RFL income will take a cut and development officer posts etc. will go.

Leeds and Bradford dont have a banner to unite under, but if they did, and it was needed, then i would support that a club under that banner, yes, i have consistantly said the game means more to me than my club,

and i dont doubt some Cas and Fev fans would never support a team with Wakefield in the name, i think the number is much lower than you imagine, when Cas and Wakefield are at a similar level, it is easy to say you will never support a 'Wakefield' side, when Cas are removed and the choice is a 'Wakefield' team or nothing its a much more difficult decision

If in the next few years one club doesnt move forward it will be swallowed by the other, If neither move forward then a merger is really the only option,

and your point re: the district etc. You have to remember, Kids dont care what happend 15 years before they were born. The only identity Cas has is the RL side, outside of that its no different to the numerous areas of Wakefield district, and you remove that, Kids arent going to ignore the game because they are angry at a decision regarding a Cas club they barely knew.

Besides, there are 35k people in Cas, in a district ten times that size, if the district is that parochial, there is only a small amount of people in Cas that a 'wakefield' club couldnt tap in to

Viewing figures would shoot up, whatever the level the game is played on, if you put a 2 hour video of Dally Messenger looking in the mirror talking to his 'friend' for two hours at 8pm on a friday night on ITV or the BBC at least 3m people would watch, likely much more for a saturday.

as such sponsorship would shoot up massively, as would crowds

Clubs would make up a fair amount of the money they lose in TV rights very quickly though not all of it,

BUT: The TV rights we get take this into account, Sky pay extra because we are missing out on these things, they have to, if ITV offered three quarters of what Sky do, the RFL would say bye-bye to Rupert very quickly

While you're on

i would think so,

There are apparently plans to put more corporate opportunities in the southstand without lowering the capacity,

though i dont think the design has been set in stone yet

The thing is, I don't buy the sponsorship rise argument. After all, the CC has been a guaranteed fixture on BBC for years, and despite audiences in the millions, we've really struggled to find a decent sponsor for it. I don't see why that would change. We also have an image problem - sponsors don't just hand over cash for exposure - they want to associate their brand with something they feel is appropriate to it. Big international companies sponsor RU because they see it - rightly - as a wealthy sport played and watched on the whole by above-average wealthy people. RL, like it or not, has a very different public image, and the sort of companies who want to market to that demographic don't have large sponsorship accounts.

Premier Foods must have a sizeable chunk in their Bisto advertising budget.

If we campaigned to bring back beer and fags sponsorship, we'd be rolling in it.

But that is the politically world we live in Roy



You cant even kill yourself these days without some ' do gooder ' whingeing at you

Well said.

Really?

I would never have guessed...

Unless you get a job promoting it...

hes an expansionist apparently.

Maybe the RFL and SL should become realists instead of dreamers. Having said that what is there to dream about, especially as the expansionist dream has turned into a very nasty nightmare (again), and it will continue to be so until they all wake up.

Yes I am, just I have sense with it. Unlike you who supported Crusaders and look how that worked out, it was pure stupidity to put them in SL and it was so obvious what would happen.

Well I don't have any CEO experience so maybe wouldn't be the best person, but I'm sure I'd do better than you. Still I wouldn't have done serious harm by letting the Crusaders in

Definitely a good question. It's probably not something that's on the horizon, but information freely available from Companies House shows that the RFL had losses of around £800k each year to Dec 2005, 2006 & 2007 and only made around £200k profit last year. The Net Worth shows a defecit of around £1.9m. If any of the applicants for SL licences last year had demonstrated such performance it's unlikely they would have been playing in SL now!

The one thing that has improved year on year is that amount of cash held by the RFL (£4m at Dec 2008 compared to £900k at Dec 2005). You'd need to work out what the true cash flow is to find out how they've done that as it could be down to a simple matter of the timing of funds in & out.

The question that all of this raises is whether the RFL really hold the moral high ground over questioning the ability of clubs to manage their finances or is it just a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Compare the total revenue now with what it was a few years ago, though. They have an extra digit on the end! I think Richard Lewis has got quite a few things wrong while running the RFL, but the amount of money coming into RL at the moment compared to any time in the past is an indicator that he has got some things very, very right.

I am amazed it cost Quins 3.5millon pounds to run the club for a season. Shows how much income clubs need and most are bringing in less than that.

It's impossible to support an expansion club and be against expansion. What I am is against a repeat of Crusaders/Gateshead/PSG, which you are in favour of endlessly repeating

Yep, but BARB figures aren't the whole story (there's a high degree of statisitical error in the methodology - Sky have their own proprietary viewing data as well which is allegedly more accurate). The advertising sales teams work on "impacts" which is people seeing the adverts rather than the programmes, and this is where a lot of the demographics come in. Besides Sky look at RL from three angles, one as a broadcaster who sells advertising, two as a broadcaster who sells subscription content, three as a distribution platform who puts boxes in people's houses, this last angle is arguably where RL is least important to Sky as it's just one possible part of a wide offering.

Serious question, but do you actually know what the rates are? Not every game will be the same.

we do have an image problem. and a that is a big problem for[i some [/isponsors, this rich demographic only really applies to aspirational products, ASDA for instance will have a huuuuge marketing budget and would probably find that RL was a better fit for its consumer base than RU

however, if you think about what the challenge cup really offers in saleability of the clubs its very very little, a club is only likely to be featured a maximum of about 3 times, with a fair few never on it. Its nigh on impossible to sell sponsorship on the basis that once a year a club may be on TV in the secondary competition, it hardly grabs the attention. Thats ignoring the fact that throughout sport most cup competitions seem to be on the wane, not just in RL

SL on FTA would be a completely different proposition