It was starting to happen in SW London........alas, with the move north and subsequent relegation, any groundwork will soon be lost.

Exactly, and that can take decades to build up, therefore the existence of the club has to be ensured.

I would put it like this though, fans want some success. If you are dropped into the top flight you can be waiting a very long time for success as winning SL is a particularly difficult task for any newly created team.

Were as progression through the leagues allows teams that little bit of success on the way and a chance to build crowds and a tradition.

London to me always seemed to suffer from a lack of identity, caused or contributed to by the constant movement of the team. But I would not be a fan of the name London either. It's just too general for my liking, but what do I know.

I hope London can make a success of their new home and stay in one place for a decent amount of time to build up local connections with the communities and schools. Building a RL commune, that will come back in good times and bad.

Club rugby of any sort isn't that big in the UK, club rugby LEAGUE outside the heartlands suffers from a massive lack of awareness OR a very poor image as a northern working class sport for simpletons.

If the biggest most successful clubs in the heartland cities are drawing about 10-15k at best (Wigan got 11k for their last home game, Leeds regularly get 12-14k) then what do we expect clubs in new areas to get?

In an ideal world we'd drop a club in London and magically get 10k crowds but it aint gonna happen. Until the RFL address the real problem: image, PR and awareness nationally new clubs will continue to get 3-4k forever no matter how many people rant on about marketing this and local community that. It's all BS.

Problem is, RL Clubs in London don't last "decades".
South London Storm are 18 years in the running and have now had to merge with the Croydon Hurricanes. Greenwich are 13 years in business, Hills Hoists are a pub side packed with Aussies who either win or come close to winning everything, but have no real "roots" per say. The sharks have become the Chargers, Eastern Rhinos actually started in Felixtowe, then Ipswich before heading to Colchester...no roots there either.
7 Open Age Clubs feature in the London Premier Division and 5 in the SE division. Not many of them will exist as is in a decade, never mind decades and most of them play out of Union Club Houses, so guess where the best young players will end up?

A properly funded and managed top tier team is key to the game achieving growth in the South East. Not meaning to put down the massive amount of work done by the clbs and their coaches, not to mention the volunteers, but without a team to aspire to, the game will continue to struggle to get any traction in the capital.

I've been to Australia several times and haven't met any of the locals who were remotely interested in American football, Basketball or Baseball.

I see that Salford "lose" money on every home game currently.
The fact that any SL club should be in that position shows how badly they are run.
All the clubs have a guaranteed fixed income from the TV fund. That alone should cover their fixed costs with money to spare. Using the clubs lowest attendance as a benchmark then the income stream from that source could be used as fixed income, likewise with concessions etc. that would give a figure for the year. Any sensible business would work within those restrictions but also be aware that the other income streams, excess above planned are nice to haves but not part of fixed income.
I know why clubs don't follow such simple logic but then as stated, it's poor business planning and management.

Or it could be the match officials fault

You can't be THAT stupid, can you?

I don't think LeagueFan is. He's just that desperate to slag off SL and its clubs that he sometimes jumps without looking.

OK my typically ignorant antipodean friend, rather than go down the normal SL apologist root lets look at facts.

On average every SL club take about 1000 fans to Catalan. That is 11,000 fans a season. Good revenue for Catalan and the local area.

Now I don't expect that Catalan should bring that amount in return. However if say just 20% of Catalan fans as a whole (say 8,000) decided to do just one UK journey a year - which is roughly what all the English club fans are managing - then there should as a rough average be (1600/11) = 145 Catalan fans at each of their English games. There simply isn't - usually more like none!

Even at the Magic weekends where you would assume it would be easiest to coax out and organise a large travelling group there is at best a 100 French fans.

So Avenger makes a fair point despite your silly outburst.

SL and it's English clubs bring a huge amount of revenue to the French club - in return - like it or not and spin it any way you like - the Catalan club and it's 'fans' gives virtually ZERO revenue in return. FACT.

At the moment it's very much a one way street.

Always ready to learn.

Explain where I am wrong.

If I am, and could well prove to be, then the game is walking a very narrow line indeed I believe.

The loss of 1,000 away fans is about 0.5% (one half or one percent) of the turnover of a SL club, based on a turn over of 4 million and a ticket costing £20. The Income generated by the supposed 11,000 fans who travel to catalan represents about 5% of that clubs income.
Yes, you are correct that The French bring little if anything financially to the party, but I for one think SL would be a duller competition without them and it costs the other clubs very little to have them there.

Well for a start he's clearly talking about gate receipts versus game day costs.
You can work the rest out yourself i'm sure.

£15,000 a game is about £200,000 a year. Given they lost £5,000,000 last year, the missing 750 or so fans he needs to break even in the stadium is hardly worth worrying about!

Surely all the more incentive for British clubs to go out and attract the natives to fill those empty seats?

If a club knows that it is going to have an empty stand, I'd see that as a fantastic opportunity to attract local people to the game. I wouldn't simply stamp my feet and point the finger as to why my club's crowds are dwindling.

Who's done that?

This started because our pseudo Frenchman wanted to have an oh so tiresome pop at a club which buries his adopted baby when it comes to historical contribution to the game.

Then we had some hanger on make a point which was only tenuously connected to the subject matter of the post to which Vastman added some context and factual information.

Now you've gone off on another tangent with some rant about an imaginary temper tantrum that never happened.

Please read the thread and catch up before posting!

Amazing that the salford contract on the stadium will keep going up until it's 40% higher than the most expensive in SL.

Do you get golden bogs to pee in or something?

- How much does the inclusion of the Catalans team add to the value of the Super League TV deal(s) and other sponsorship deals? How much is the French TV deal worth? Presumably the revenue goes into the central fund and distributed amongst the clubs.
- How much do SKY pay as a premium for the fact we have a pan-European competition?
- How much additional advertising revenue do SKY get from each Catalan home game, which in turn impacts on the value of the TV deal?

It's not as simple as saying they dont bring any fans, without looking at the wider picture.

'...the fact we have a pan-European competition.'? All bar one of the teams comes from the M62, thats hardly pan-European

And who's your team of choice Mr Galliant ?
Haven't seen you posting on any club boards, in fact you only appear to talk RU or talk RL down here on the VT.

"Do you get golden bogs to pee in or something?"

compared to the Willows ... yes.

And what business is that of yours, do you own VT?

Well Gutterfax/Enigmatic/Jim Pooley all follow/support London Broncos.....so there's your answer.

He just owned you, you fraud!

Just curious