"BBC Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and BBC Inside Out North West, presented by George Riley, will be shown on Monday, 28 January on BBC One at 19:30 GMT. The programme is also available on the BBC iPlayer." Should be interesting viewing tonight. I'll be catching up on iPlayer being in the deep dark south. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330

"BBC Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and BBC Inside Out North West, presented by George Riley, will be shown on Monday, 28 January on BBC One at 19:30 GMT. The programme is also available on the BBC iPlayer." Should be interesting viewing tonight. I'll be catching up on iPlayer being in the deep dark south. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330

Yep, the new SL season got a mentioned on five live this morning. Unfortunately it was regarding the this programme due to be aired tonight which is about the collective debt of the SL clubs. Although it pales into insignificance when compared to football, the debt is thought to be approx. £60m.

Obviously it’s been done to gain maximum exposure, but it still stinks that they should chose now to air it.

I've just posted something similar on another forum Khlav.
The new season is just a few days away and the game of RL gets a kick in the whatsits.
If they made a similar programme for the round ball game, we would look like a well run cash rich sport.
I.m not aware of RL clubs borrowing against future ST sales etc ?

Like Gary Hetherington sais, every pro sport is hugely in debt, Football, Union, Cricket would all look skint if you wrote the figure on paper.

Nobody is saying RL is in Rude Health , however a large portion of this debt will be owed to incumbent directorshttp://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/premier-league-clubs-are-24-billion-854183rl

Spnish Football $4.61 Billion in Debt .

Rugby Union Clubs in the Premiership were running on a combined annual Debt of 10 Million a year in 2007-8 , are they really rolling in money 5 years later , definately not Wasps.
Wasps were staving off administration last April with debts of 1.5m ,rlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/9198640/Wasps-optimistic-a-buyer-will-step-in-to-save-Premiership-club-despite-threat-of-administration.htmlrl

Where's the BBC's gripping expose' on these other sports finincial issues , ??

I try not to think it but sometimes it does feel like a conspiricy.

A fair comparison would be to compare the level of monies put into the sport ie tv revenues, sponsorship etc against the debt.

Did I miss the announcement that the BBC is now the RFL's PR agency?

The BBC, as a source of journalism, is doing it's job. This is clearly a topic that will raise interest and the BBC is right to ask questions about the running of organisations that are key parts of their communities. If the SL clubs don't want bad PR, don't give journalists the ammunition to fire at you.

As for the timing, of course they're going to time their content for maximum effect - they're not going to go to that time and expense only to air it at 2am in mid December.

And those who say that the Beeb wouldn't do this for football clearly don't remember the Panorama programme broadcast just before the World Cup bid delegation flew out to Switzerland.

Fair points. I totally understand why the Beeb are doing it and when, my point is that it's a non-story when compared to other sports debts.

Sounds rubbish to me. My team is around 2.2 mill in directors debts, that would suggest the other 9 clubs are sharing around 66mill, bullox I say.

Disagree.

I'll grant you, the numbers in football are much more noteworthy but so is, in many cases, the ability of those clubs to service them.

Manchester United seem to have little trouble servicing a debt of £515m yet Bradford Bulls made national headlines by going into administration with a debt of £1.5m.

It'll be interesting to see if this programme shows which clubs are most in debt but more importantly, as bramleyrhino points out, if the clubs in debt can service that debt or are struggling with it.
For instance Leeds will probably have to incur some kind of debt to build a new South Stand, yet no-one would describe Leeds as a club in financial trouble.

Is 3 million per club really that bad? (quoted in the article) but even if you straight average it, its just shy of 5 million each.
any club bringing in 10000 average gate should really have over that in income every year anyway, so its more than servicable for most, but some of the clubs with smaller incomes will struggle.

What could saints debts be with the cost of building the stadium plus general running costs?

Have clubs taken on extra long term debt in order to build/improve stadia?