What you are saying may be correct.
However, using your measure of crowd numbers, EVERY club outside SL has the same problem.
Does this mean that we should cease to have promotion and relegation ?

The current difficulties, many of which are due to the current 3 x 8 system, which utterly prevents any promoted side from gaining a foundation within SL destabilises half of the SL clubs and around 40% of the Championship Clubs making life extremely difficult, if not impossible to sustain a top Championship side.

Promotion can only be gained with serious long term investment and/or huge amounts of luck and even when all the stars are aligned, hanging on to the coveted prize is equally difficult.

IF we are to continue with promotion and relegation, we have to move to a 1 up 1 down system (either with or without a MPG) or, find a way of levelling the funding between ALL Championship clubs.
There could still be an element of prize money, depending on final standings but, the current imbalance between the top 4 and the rest is just bonkers.

Leigh going bust = The RFLs fault.
Clubs employing ne'er do wells who arent allowed to travel = Torontos fault

I see a pattern emerging here

Regards

King james

I am amazed that the 3x8 format is being blamed for financial difficulties. As it stands a championship club already has to be in a position to beat SL clubs before moving up. Under the old one up one down system you only had to be good enough to beat championship clubs and the outcome, year after year, was that the promoted club took the players of the relegated club, who were already not SL quality, and who again ended up in a relegated team. Personally I would like to see any promoted club being given a license that guarenteed safety in their first year or the new system will be just more of the same. You can already see too many teams preparing not to get relegated and a long summer of dead rubbers.

They voted for it because it gives Championship clubs a chance of promotion but some bigger gates at the end of the season. It also prevents some SL clubs from drifting without any sort of risk.

Who will be next to fail? The club that has no contingency plan obviously. From a championship perspective the key is to approach the top 4 with a long term aim not a or bust attitude. That way missing out won’t mean dramatic changes are needed overnight.

Perhaps we need a parachute payment for clubs that finished in the top 4 that then do not the following year? Perhaps a more gradual distribution of funding is needed so that success is rewarded but failure not penalised so heavily? I don’t have all the answers.

What I do know is that many SL clubs are no better run than clubs in the Championship or L1 and they remain their solely while their backers are in place. In some cases there are healthier clubs in L1 and the Championship than in SL. Consequently any system for movement of clubs between L1, Championship and SL should be a majority agreement not something imposed by a minority.

The RFL will happily let millionaires throw money at expansion clubs because it saves them the trouble...even if these millionaires are "fly by night" merchants like the guy at Crusaders and now Del Boy Beaumont......the minute David Hughes passes way or Argyle gets bored, London and Toronto will vanish, but the RFL won't care, because they'll still collect their wages, sky will still pay us a pittance and the fans will still (in fewer and fewer numbers as we die) roll up to games......

People will blame the RFL for anything.

Beaumont is solely to blame if the club has financial problems - in the absence of a viable business he was underwriting/guaranteeing the club's position.

If you want the RFL to micro-manage every club I'm sure you won't object to funding the organisation properly to do so? Another £500k slice of TV money might do the job.