Quote: Wellsy13 "You could always space out the rounds so that there is more space between games than at the moment. As of now, there are 3 weeks between every round apart from the quarters and the semis (which for some reason there is a 10 week gap?!). Plenty of room to manoeuvre there.'"
The reason for the 10 week gap is television and potential conflict with much larger televised sporting events. As the cup runs from Jan/Feb through to August it conflicts over a four year rolling period with
Year 1 - Football World Cup, Wimbledon tennis championships
Year 2 - RU World Cup, Wimbledon
Year 3 - Football Euro Championship, Wimbledon, Olympic Games
Year 4 - Wimbledon
With other events like the Commonwealth Games thrown in too it means that the CC rounds cannot be fitted in on terrestrial tv during June and July. Therefore in order to have all rounds televised a gap needs to be in place during this period so the SFs can only be shown 9 or 10 weeks after the previous round. It is an issue that needs addressing and has been cited as a contributory factor in the loss of crowds to CC games.
The Challenge Cup is stuck as it is until the current deal ends but after that needs to either
1) Have the Final restored to May to allow rounds to all be played at 2 or 3 week intervals without clashing with large events (as it used to be)
OR
2) If the final is delisted then the tv rights sold to SKY (as they are unable to show the big events named above and so would have the schedule space) under condition that they allow the rounds to be played at 2 or 3 week intervals and keeping the end of August Final.
