Quote: Donnyman "VERY astute.
Do any of us think that Eric Perez and Ralph Rimmer are going to sit back and allow Superleague to take a reduced £150M SKY deal over the coming year and do nothing about it?
Superleague wanted to cut Rimmer and 17 small championship clubs adrift the other year, Superleague want to kill Perez's American dream.
All bets are off - Lenegan McManus and Pearson are currently touting an English League to SKY, but there is nothing to stop Rimmer, and Perez touting a transatlantic league to NATV
The only glaring mistake in your thinking is Bradford Bulls will certainly be the first English club touted in a Transatlantic deal. In addition Ottawa Aces and New York may have no substance now - but Perez and Rimmer will no doubt be saying that players for these clubs will be found from the squads of the English clubs who don't make the transatlantic cut - and your right - Fartown would be killed off.'"
Yeah I did think of Bradford but the game would have to ‘bung’ them a lot of cash to sort out the perennial mess they are in.
The problem is that the premier competition and the RFL have different ideas where the game is going.
The transatlantic thing is rubbish unless it’s in a world where cheap airfares exist or the thought of travelling away fans is virtually a thing of the past.
Catalans and Toronto have done a great job of setting up a club in a local area and collecting a fan base.
However in the bigger RFL picture that hasn’t really expanded the game beyond those local areas which has to be the aim of this or it is just ‘folly.’
Toronto is essentially team England/ Australasia and the original aim for Catalans was to create a competitive French team which along with the emergence of Tonga, Fiji and PNG would have given us a strong seven team international world. Of course that’s not happened so essentially millions of pounds of sponsorship have been pumped in and without a strong French team it might as well have been pumped into Featherstone, Leigh or Bradford.
You can see why SL are going the opposite way as how long will the rest last with constant trips over the channel and Atlantic.. and with NFL NBA MLS MLB and massive College Coverage of American Football where’s a Lucrative American or French TV deal coming from... nowhere....