Quote: ROBINSON " St Helens or Warrington's grounds are used for 13 home games per annum. That is all. It's nothing, especially when you consider that the crowds they get are about 12,000ish give or take a couple of thousand.
You'll have perhaps one playoff game, two max, a cup game, two max and maybe an international. So, there you have a ground used on 15-17 days out of a 365 day year. That's 204,000 paying spectators per annum, paying say, £18-20 each. And they're viable, supposedly. '"
How do you know these stadiums are viable, not on the back of gate money alone, don't forget a 'national' stadium wont have the same additional revenue that a club has? Given that the large majority of fans buy season tickets and quite a few juniors your £18-20 per head is a little off in % terms.
Quote: ROBINSON "An RL ground would probably have the following...
- The Grand Final - 70,000 people, paying an average of £30 per ticket.
- Challenge Cup Final - 70,000 people, same prices.
- Challenge Cup semi finals, say a double header, say 50,000 people, say £20 per ticket on average.
'"
Whilst i like your optimism, 50k for a semi final is just not even close, if you got 35K I'd say you were doing very well
Quote: ROBINSON "You will no doubt additionally have'"
There's a lot of doubt surrounding fixtures that don't exist, chairmen who are wanting additional income from these types of games and in the current climate fans are just not turning out in numbers so even more games are not always going to be attended well to justify holding the event at a 70K stadia.
Quote: ROBINSON "- Super League Playoff final eliminators (2 games)
- Four, five maybe six internationals per annum
- Northern Rail cup final
- Championship Grand finals
- Perhaps a sevens/nines weekend
- Perhaps Magic Weekend
Imagine also if the RFL had their head office there instead of at Red Hall, and they promoted it for conferences, rock concerts, football reserve grade games (like at Warrington and Widnes) and what have you in the same way as a normal large stadium would.
Putting all this together, I probably struggle to see why viability would be as much of an issue. Rather lack of funds (or lack of a credit line) to carry out such a venture would be more of a stumbling block. '"
In an ideal world some of the events could well be run at a national stadia, however can you see that some of the events you've listed as been totally inappropriate. Even with the best will in the world having 15-20k(max) for chamionship /Northern Rail finals & low level internationals stuck in a 70k stadium makes no sense at all and probably lose money as well as looking pretty poor on TV. Can you also say what 4-6 internationals per year (EVERY year) will take place that could justify being played at a 70K stadium? Maybe one or two every other year but 4-6 every year, sorry that is unrealistic.
Concerts are great however the vast majority of the money goes to the groups and the overheads, only the very biggest artists sell out big arenas so there is no gimme that you could first get the right artists and B actually make a profit that is sustainable given the turnover. What if some events make a loss, what then?
Attracting funding of around £150-200M for the stadium & other buildings (as per your proposal for the RFL) is one thing, however you've got running costs which will run into the millions per year as well.
On top of that you've got the interest payments on tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds, that will be several million pounds per year alone (£75M say at 5% is £3.7M)
Sorry but it isn't as clear cut/viable as you make out
