Quote: philipk "it doesnt fund development elsewhere its solely for Superleague europe day to day running- the clubs get little or nothing out of it'"
The point still stands that this money would still have to be spent and would have to be sourced from somewhere else…with the MW money coming into the game, this cash doesn’t have to come from another pot – therefore that pot of money can be spent elsewhere in the game.
Quote: philipk "and your point about NL clubs not complaining about the free tickets in R4 - the Barrow chairman certainly did and in public - the compo from the RFL was £9k , way less than they would have had if the Wigan fans had paid'"
But way more than if they had drawn a NL2 club, for example.
Quote: philipk "and as for the clubs finances and going without a home game for 4 weeks - even the premier league doesnt inflict that sort of planning on the clubs- any firm - sport or otherwise will find it difficult cash flow wise on that business model - its better to have a home game with the usual income streams on a more regular basis than the " small amount" - they get from this weekend - and lets not forget even greedy premier league clubs Baulked at a 39th game distorting the fixture list - i rest my case'"
The clubs know the fixtures in November the previous year, they have plenty of time to plan the cash flow and budgets for the following season, they can’t suddenly be surprised that they have a few weeks without a home game.
Let us assume that they played 1 game at Easter, and played the 2nd game this weekend. Saints’ Easter Monday game against Hull is now played on Friday night this week. Easter Monday it attracted over 13k people, this Friday night it would probably get around 11.5k – immediately Saints have lost revenue. Average ticket price £10 * 1500 people = £15,000 (before you even get into extra revenue from the club shop etc..).
However, SKY liked the idea of playing 27 games, so they reduce their revenue into the competition. Off the top of my head the last contract was worth around £14m per season, or £518k per round (27 games). Lets assume they pay the same round rate, but only for 26 games, so they only pay £13.5m. The clubs therefore used to get £1m per year, but now they are only getting £960k. The decision to scrap MW has so far therefore cost Saints around £55k, which would be the annual salary for an average player. What about sponsors though, Saints are now only able to sell sponsorship space at 26 games, rather than 27 (and a high profile TV game at that) – so expect annual sponsorship revenue to go down slightly.
As for the Premier League 39th game – the clubs came up with idea and would have gone ahead with it, they only backed down because the media and the public didn’t like the idea.
Also, can you please figure out how to work the quote feature of the site!
