Where did speak about expansion? if you mean increased participation as expansion how can the game not afford it? I would agree at Salford he needs to increase revenues - having a better team will help that, to start now and put a structure in place to deliver that - as Leeds found - takes years. Perhaps a dual process as Leeds did with youth development being underpinned by a suitable quality team e.g. Graham Murray and Iestyn Harris, Brad Godden, Richie Blackmore etc.

Offering poorer quality entertainment at higher prices will only lead to one thing - reduced revenues.

Gates across the opening 5 rounds of SL (when compared to the opening 5 rounds in 2012) are down from an aggregate of 313,653 to 289,280.

That averages at 9,505 over 33 games in 2012 compared to 8,508 over 34 games in 2013 - a drop of just over 10%

That is a worry if we say the average price is £10 if you include kids that is £200k lost to the game in 5 weeks in a year we need to be building interest unless we want a repeat of the WC fiasco of 2000.

Why is there only 33 games in 2012? Which two games have been taken out?

Catalans game v Hull was abandoned as well as Leeds missing one fixture for the WCC

well we know the attendances for those games 7388 and 12272. So the average for the first 5 rounds of last year was slightly higher at 9523.

Though we are still missing a Leeds home game for 2013. Which we dont know what the attendance could be. Could be up, could be down. If its up that gap gets smaller, if its down it gets bigger, if it gets exactly the same, its up to 8646 average for the first 5 rounds.

And we are comparing it to the first 5 rounds of a season where we had two new stadiums opening.

I can see the argument that you have to speculate to accumulate. But a lot of the sport doesn't have the money to speculate with. Letting Salford's new owner boost their marketability by free investment in the on field product might work well at Salford. But what then of the other clubs, lacking a sugar daddy, who then find their own product worsened because they can't remain competitive without a sugar daddy?

The salary cap is designed (and it's a long-term project that the jury is still out on) to create a model where clubs can, with the right management, be competitive at a level of spending that is at least in relation to a plausible income for an RL club. That is not to say that it's easy to generate that income, or that it makes it impossible to mis-manage your finances.

Football has created a model of competition across the major European leagues (to a slightly lesser extent in Germany, but only slightly) that basically says "Get billionaire benefactor or fail." The result is that despite the relatively (i.e. relative to RL) enormous revenues available to football clubs, they're still going bust at an alarming rate.

Football has nearly 100 full time professional clubs in this country, RL has 13 (ish, how many Championship clubs are?), massive crowds and TV income linked to its historical place in our national (and indeed the global) culture. Thus when it loses the odd club to insolvency or the kind of near insolvency that plummets them down to the lowest rungs of the ladder (Leeds, Forest, Luton, Pompey etc)the sport as a whole (thus far) doesn't suffer.

RL doesn't have that luxury, so while they are both sports played on rectangles of grass in front of crowds of paying punters, there is almost nothing of value for RL to take from football's business model, except perhaps from the lessons learned about the consequences of not cutting your coat to suit your cloth.

So while Billy Slater at £1M a year might be a more immediately effective option than Mick the Development Officer on whatever small fraction of that he gets paid, if the game can't sustain that level of investment across a reasonable spectrum of its clubs, it will have to find a less flashy, more sustainable way of doing it that runs more along the lines of "grow business first, spend cash later" rather than "spend cash now, hope business grows later." This is true regardless of how inconvenient Dr Koukhash finds it.

If he can find another 20 or so like-minded wealthy benefactors who will commit to that level of investment for a reasonably long term then it's a conversation worth having. Until then, he needs to put the toys back in the pram and get on with investing in some more gradual wins, following rules that most clubs could live by if they got their a**es in gear.

Gentlemen, an excellent discussion well had. I've read everyone's points and my opinion remains the same so I won't re-hash in a long post.

I'd just like to add how much the exchange of views benefitted from the absence of the usual idiots and trolls.

But the converse would be true aswell wouldnt it. That maintaining the product of other clubs is damaging Salfords product.

But that model is different for every club. Which is the problem, if spending 50% of turnover on players allows some clubs to reach their potential, but we then limit the likes of Leeds to spend only about 15% then we are doing one of two things, either allowing other some clubs to overspend or stopping Leeds or Wigan etc from reaching their potential.

Where is this money to spend later going to come from? If we aren’t spending money where is this growth going to come from?

Yes an unsustainable model is stupid and shouldn’t ever be implemented, but you wont find many business who would argue that spending money on improving their product is an unsustainable model.

Lets look at it from the other side as well. If attendances fall, and continue to fall what then? Do we cut the SC again? If we don’t then we have simply created an environment where what was a ‘conservative’ spending model becomes unsustainable, an environment where revenues are lower but we are having to spend the same just to stand still, where the game is losing money but not growing. If we do then hwo do we stop that becoming a spiral? Where we spend a lower cap, put on an inferior product, get less revenue, have to cut the cap put on an inferior product, get less revenue, have to cut the cap etc?

And its not necessarily just inconvenience for Dr Koukash, there is a very real possibility that he loses more spending the SC than he would be spending a higher amount. It is perfectly possible that the SC stops Salford getting the investment they need to grow, which stops them being sustainable and the SC becomes the actual cause of Salfords financial issues. It is perfectly reasonable to say that not spending on players causes Salford to be unsustainable.

An excellent post - much I agree with some I don't - the idea of a level playing is simply unrealistic - how can a team like Wakefield ever compete in revenue terms with Leeds? What is the incentive for Leeds to continue increasing its revenues if the competition cannot move with it?

Something is morally wrong when any individuals have a ceiling on their earnings - especially one imposed by the very people who have a vested interest in keeping salaries lower. I would have more respect if the CEO's did the same and suggested a maximum salary for a CEO!!

On sugar daddy's Leeds needed to one to stop it going bust and look where they are now - I bet when Leeds signed Iestyn - the equivalent in his day of Tomkins now - you were not crying foul and suggesting Leeds needed to 'put there toys back in their pram' when they handed over the £350k to Warrington. Dr K is now what GH/Caddick was then - needing something quick to get his show back on the road to recovery.

I'll have a bash at some of this, but will caveat it by saying that it isn't out and out disagreement, because I regard the SC as an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.



Yes, in the short term. Ignoring the inherent instability of relying on an owner who can walk away, there is the problem that actually those other products ARE Salford's product. A 6 team league would be quite hard to market.



I agree. It isn't ideal, but actually clubs like Wigan and Leeds can (and do) invest that turnover in clever things, like development officers, their academies, their training facilities etc. All of which go towards making success sustainable in the long term. Which is actually better for both club and sport than blowing your whole wad on a couple of Aussie superstars.




These are very good questions, and they are legitimate concerns. It is, as I say at the start of this post, an imperfect solution. It comes down to weighing the pros and cons up.

See above, on facilities, academies and imperfect solutions.



Fair point. Pedantically (but slightly imortantly) no individual does have a cap on their earnings, the whole squad does, and the cap is to a large extent dictated by what the industry can afford to pay. In that sense it isn't that unusual, it is just a regulatory form of something most sectors have to rely on common sense and accountants for.



There is a subtle difference in that Leeds didn't need to throw their toys out of the pram in the first place because there was no regulatory obstacle to spending £350k on Harris. To be honest, if thse Sugar Daddies were always going to materialise, I wouldn't have a problem.

I was also only 16 when Leeds signed Harris, so I didn't really worry too much about that sort of thing...

Furthermore, Dr Koukhash is being a bit disingenuous in complaining about the SC a few weeks into his tenure. He knew about both the cap and the state of the club's accounts when he took over. He didn't get that rich by not doing his homework before he invests in a business. He's a shrewd man and I suspect a lot of it is noise for noise's sake, with the objective of getting Salford in the press and letting it be known to the jaded fan base that he's serious about investing lots of money in the club.

Players do have a cap - you need 17 to make a side so unless some guys are going to play for nothing then the wages of the top players are capped. Leeds could not afford to have the 3 stars at Melbourne - they would not be able to field a side with what would be left on the cap.

Dr K is simply pointing out some of the issues in the game - having a cap that isn't moving with inflation is sad state of affairs - he knows like GH did he needs a quick fix to get the ball rolling.

Since when did GH go for a quick fix?

The signings he made to steady the ship when he took over were Wayne Collins, Damian Gibson and Jamie Mathiou. Hardly Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk and Billy Slater.

And when GH splashed the cash he operated within the cap. You're mixing up transfer fees and salaries.

Only because they were probably still in junior school or whatever the Australian equivalent might be.

The Hetherington idea of a quick fix was to turn to a couple of his former charges who he knew very well and trusted to start the job of rebuilding a demoralised club - Anthony Farrell and Ryan Sheridan. (Other Hetherington favourites were to follow over the next couple of seasons notably Daryl Powell and Lee Jackson) In addition to Farrell, Sheridan, Collins, Gibson and Mathiou in came Andy Hay, Paul Sterling, Richie Blackmore and Martin Masella plus the major splash in securing the services of the aforementioned Iestyn Harris and all within the first half of his first season in charge.

In all there were sixteen players making their Leeds debuts in '97, only three (Carvell, Leatham and Sinfield) came through the Leeds Academy with the other thirteen recruited from outside the club.

I won't mention Dean Lawford ..... damn it, I think I just did. Thank gawd it's late and no-one will see it.