Quote: Highlander "This is my understanding of how the academies are funded - I'm happy to be corrected if someone knows more.
The RFL is in charge of academies - funding them, assessing them, licensing them. But, the funding the RFL doles out comes from SL TV contract money which is transferred over from SL, rebadged and handed over to the clubs which have academies. Mainly SL, but now down to 3 non-SL clubs.
A couple of questions. Only licensed academies can receive central funding. Is there anything to stop a club setting up an academy if they can afford it without central funding?
Academies are another point where responsibilities/funding are shared between SL and RFL. Could the RFL fund academies without SL financial support? Important question if the next TV deal is 25% less than the last one.
Could SL assess and license academies if they took them over? Would SL have any interest in non-SL academies in this case?'"
Well thanks for the interesting post. The listing of the monies provided by the SKY contract showed £17.8M paid by SKY for the SL clubs [i"coaching and charitable foundations"[/i so it seems that the money to run academies is paid for by the clubs from their own funds? Thus clubs can choose not to run an academy like Salford choose not to if they don't have the money. AFAIK Superleague has an element of control of the academies in that they appear to be able to veto an academy if they do not see it having any strategic worth.
Strategically SL see academies in London and Newcastle important as they underpin clubs important to widening the footprint of the game, conversely they have knocked on the head the ideas of academies 10 miles down the road to an existing academy, again IIRC.........Not sure they can stop a club opening an academy but if it isn't allowed in the academy league then there is no point as there is nobody to play.
Notwithstanding Hull having two acadenies, then combining and i think splitting again