Personally I like the bloke, I wasn't sure at first but now he seems to of calmed down a little. He said in a radio interview that he would break the cap and use methods that others were using to do so. What those methods are we can all speculate.

I think it is time to scrap the cap completely. I'd like to see it replaced with a requirement for all clubs to at least break even over each licence period. Whether the income comes from gate receipts, sponsorship or a simple gift from the owner would be irrelevant but it can't come for loans saddling teams with debt. There are many rich businessmen out there who can't afford football clubs. Let's try and get them interested in RL. The good Dr must have many contacts and could be the start of a revolution.

Would we even have enough teams to form a league if that happened? Others on here will know more about the club's finances than me but I thought most made a loss and relied on sugar daddies?

It was always supposed to be but then they started tinkering with it so it never happened. You may recall it was at first £1.8m when the flat rate cap first came in. It them dropped to £1.6m because they took National Insurance contributions out of the figure which was said to have in effect allowed for a real terms increase (or at least parity - I can't remember). They have made other tweaks over the years such as a player with ten years service only counting 50% and a home grown player the same (both up to a limit of £50K I think) . All those are set to he scrapped and it will be just one allowance of £1.825m from now on. Taking inflation into account that is still well below where it should be.

Does anyone know roughly how well clubs are doing? I wonder how much the 5 richest could afford (who would that be, by the way? Us, Wire, Salford, Leeds and Hull FC? St Helens perhaps?), if given free reign.....

Who says they have to rely on sugar daddies? I think a bit of both is ideal.

If I was a multi-millionaire and owned Wigan I still wouldn't want the club to be a constant financial drain and would like it to be self sufficient on a daily basis but if it wasn't I'd not be after selling my star players to break even. Star player leaves for free having seen their contract out? Why would I care? If the club needed to take a loss every now and again or a large transfer fee was required I'd view that as what I was there for. If the SC was raised to a level beyond Wigan's current income capabilities I'd fund the shortfall while working to plug the gap. Rich owner doesn't have to equal badly run club.

Ideally the "sugar daddy" wouldn't be an individual anyway. It would be a TV company with a much bigger contribution such as the NRL are getting in Oz.

Why wouldn't we have enough teams. It would basically be a rule saying you are only allowed to spend to your means. It's then up to clubs to generate revenue or attract rich benefactors.

because teams commit to a player's wage before they know their income for the year. So you either sign big names and hope the crowds follow, then risk getting booted out if they don't, or you don't sign big names, attendances drop, as does your league position, and you might still get booted out if attendances drop too much. Besides which, there are loads of variables, what if you have to pay for a stadium for example? At present a team could make a loss one year due to spending a load on a stadium, then make up for it with profits from future years. Under your system they couldn't, they would have the best ground in the championship!

Spending on a new stadium would not affect the profit and loss account as its capital spending and would appear on the balance sheet.

Its 5 years since I studied any accountancy and I was rubbish at it then to be honest. What about, a one off big transfer fee on a player who you expect to make that money back over coming years by putting bums on seats, selling merchandise etc. I'm sure there are various one-off expenses that result in a one-off yearly loss

Actually it would in the form of depreciation each year, but I take your general point that it is capital investment.

Big transfer fee would go straight to the profit and loss (as would big transfer IN fee)

Teams have a decent idea of projected income and would have th course of a franchise period to break even rather than each specific year. In the case of significant investment in something like infrastructure this could be disregarded from the accounts with permission from the RFL.

If a club was to get it's figures wrong by say 100k all it would need is the owner to gift the sum to the club.

Great to see Salford & Dr K being discussed on the Wigan forum!

Just to clarify some of the things the Doc has said, ultimately he believes that the business must be self supporting with a number of revenue streams, hence he's said he wants to buy the stadium and have the development opportunities that would come from that.
I think his comments on the SC were born out of frustration and a realisation that simple organic growth will just not cut it in the timescale he has in mind. Hence his support for the idea of at least 1 marquee, off cap signing per team, unfortunately not supported by the rest of the clubs.
Having watched so many seasons of mediocrity I'm suddenly looking forward to the next couple of years!!

I look forward to the the next few years with interest too. I think next year will be too soon for you to genuinely compete at the top but there after who knows. As for the doc what he said re salary cap was a bit silly. Any team with a rich owner is imidiatly under suspicion as Warrington have found out. As I have said on many occasions I think if someone is prepared to chuck money at a club he should be allowed to without limits. In a time when we are slowly loosing our best players to the NRL how good would it be if Salford could have competed for SBW or Benji Marshall.

Salford were the glamour club in RL in the late 60s early 70s, the Willows was the place to be on Friday night, people like Charlton, Law and Best were seen there.
To have any chance of emulating this, the doc needs to look at the transport infrascructure around the stadium, both public and private. The current system is a massive disincentive to potential fans.

Its all underhand, new roads will be completed by next year to make it easier to get away from the stadium and and extra link road that joins the motorway will then be started. eventually things will be sortedout.

They need to arrange better public transport its shocking i was looking at getting back and its so irregular the buses after a game on friday its useless

Tbh its all been put to the club and there doing their best to sort everything out.

I would assume that has much more to do with the local authority than the rugby club.

We have the mayor of Salford involved at the club so I'd imagine he'd be overseeing questions asked.

Good luck to Salford.

You guys shouldn't be looking to level them down you should be inspired by what Salford are doing and saying, if they can put together a quality product that attracts these big investors why can't we?

What makes you think it isn't a restraint of trade for a group of employers to agree between themselves to limit the amount of money they are prepared to pay their employees? I know some people think (wrongly IMO) that this restraint of trade is lawful but I've not come across anyone before who thinks the SC isn't a restraint of trade.

I can only assume you haven't read this thread unless the term 'you guys' means ' the OP'

Actually that too is classed as capital expenditure and is amortised over the length of the contract. Eg buy someone for £300k on a 3 year contract and an amortisation charge of £100k would hit the profit and loss for the next 3 years.

Ah so they are. I am still using the old measure.