Actually, I'd argue that when Union was losing talent to League, it was indeed a failing of their sport. They fixed it by making an extremely radical overhaul of their game and it worked.

Is that an endorsement of two Ft tens

A lovely fantasy, but back in the real-world its called a death-spiral. People are less interested in watching a poorer product. Companies are less interested in sponsoring it. Fewer people turn up to meaningless games. So this off-field spending you want to see comes from a smaller pot. Good luck 'marketing that potential' to investors and sponsors.

Peacock can bang on all he likes...reducing the league won't improve the standards on the field and we won't get any closer to beating the Australians in a meaniful international series.

Has anybody said Sky would support S.L 2 and would they even show any of the games live?

The sport has more pressing problems than tweaking the league formats.

Agree with this.
Excuse the football comparison but, just as people in general are not to interested in watching second tier football (the Championship), they will not be interested in watching second tier RL.
It doesn't matter if we call it Super League 2, Not Quite Super League or Second Division.
There will be no getting away from it being a lower grade product.
It may be that the RFL could negotiate an improved contract from Sky, which could help fund a total of 20 full time clubs and this may allow some form of automatic promotion and relegation but, let's not kid anyone that people will tune their TV's in significant number or, turn up to watch live, in the same numbers as the current SL clubs.
The whole concept is about sharing the wealth among fewer clubs and when this is done, there will still be a percentage of clubs in the All New Super Duper League that cant compete every week and finish in the lower portion of the league.

Are you suggesting clubs are doing all they can to get people not only to attend games but also involved in the club and RL? If you aren't then you would have to agree clubs can work harder and smarter. If you are then I'd suggest its you living a fantasy.

No. Because a 10 team league either has not enough fixtures or too many against the same opposition. And if we're struggling to support 14 full time teams I don't see how we can suddenly support 20?

Developing strong links to the local community is a good thing in its own right. Nobody would argue with that. But you suggest we then market that to investors and sponsors. Its not a harmful thing to be able to mention, but don't be under the illusion that said sponsor gives much of a flying anything about your community links. All they care about is brand exposure, and unless by 'sponsor' you mean a local skip-hire firm, then they're far more interested in how much exposure you'll get because you signed some newsworthy players than how good your community links are.

As I say, community links are a great thing, to be encouraged and applauded, but virtually meaningless to the decisions of big sponsors. Its the kind of stuff they'll mention in a nice press release AFTER the deal, but when they're sat in a boardroom making the hard financial decision, its practically irrelevant.

I cant tell if this is serious or sarcastic.

You don’t think that sponsors care about a clubs links to a community? When they sponsor a club, who do you think they are trying to reach? Who do you think they are looking to be exposed to?

It depends why the sponsorship is given.

Sometimes at local level, it is because the Company in question has funds available and wants the Club to prosper.
However, on other occasions, the sponsorship is used to raise the profile of the Company that is giving the cash.

When Embassy sponsored major sporting events in the past, they certainly didn't "care" about the average punter.
All they were interested in was, raising their own profile and trying to increase their sales of tobacco products.

They fixed it by going professional and making sure that union players at the top had no need to look elsewhere.

Nobody denies Embassy or any other brand will sponsor something for exposure. But the question was who were they being exposed to. Alcohol and gaming companies, and formally tobacco companies sponsored sport because a big part part of the sporting community are young men, young men are a huge market for Alcohol, gaming and tobacco companies. Mars and Coca-cola sponsor a lot of sport in the community, because young people and kids play sport, and that is their market. Sainsburys spend millions sponsoring schools, whether it be for computers or sporting equtioment, quite simply because mums care about their kids and mums do the shopping.

Sponsoring a sport is about getting positive exposure to a community(some big, some small), what could possibly be more positive exposure than having your brand align with the local sports club and do some work in the local community?

Every bloody time!!

Why do we get caught up in every game has to be super competitive and intense and no one turns up otherwise??!!

Name me THREE leagues in ANY sport that isn't dominated by a few top clubs & the rest simply fight for survival.

The Premier League & La Liga are the top leagues in the World yet they only have a handful of meaningful games and the rest are just filler games like Wigan vs Everton, infact the league has been won for sometime now and the only exciting thing about it is who will be the worst 3 teams in the league and in La Liga it's the same top teams finish 20 points ahead of the pack year on year.

SL has more competitive league than most, we have probably 5-6 teams this year that could arguably get to the GF

Take your pick. If it's Honest John's Topless Skip Hire they're probably looking to be 'exposed' ( did you see what I did there? ) to the local community. If it's Gillette, then they're probably not hugely focused on the additional sales of shaving foam in Wakefield.

The context for this point, as least as far I understand it given what started the thread, was essentially the 'big stuff' that's going to get the game back on track. Forgive me for thinking the priority (on that point) should be major sponsors, not skip hire firms.

Before you even start...in no way whatsoever do I seek to downplay the virtue and importance of links to a local community. All good, go for it. I am simply stating that it isn't (particularly) relevant to major sponsors. If you're talking about small local sponsors - obviously very important to smaller clubs of course, fine, no argument there.

Not sure about La Liga, but your Premier League analogy doesn't stand up at all:

Until a long way into the season, pretty much very close to the end, almost all clubs have something important to play for. At the top end you've got various forms of European competition - which is genuinely important - clubs want the money, players want the exposure. This is way different to scaping 8th spot in our playoffs which is likely to get you another game or two at best.

At the other end, lots of clubs have the relegation issue to deal with. Your Wigan vs Everton so called 'filler' is a great example - both clubs, for different reasons, have a massive stake in the result.

Both those points have relevance to our game. At the top, it would be excellent to have a genuine international club competition that required a high position to qualify. Sounds like people are trying to make this happen. Excellent. The bottom end is more difficult, because we know the financial challenges of a P&R system. I'm not sure what I think about P&R.

Whatever you think of all these ideas like SL1, SL2, etc. I'm glad people are thinking about it, because we're suffering from a worst-of-both-worlds problem. For whatever reason ( another 50 threads worth of argument ) franchising in Europe at least is not producing the 'anyone can win the league' scenario under which a league with neither P&R nor a big incentive to finish very high in the table works well.

Let's say you're right and 5 or 6 teams could make the GF (I'd argue 4, but let's not split hairs). What about the rest? That's the problem - and its in the stadia of 'the rest' that we see huge banks of empty seats. In the premier league, there's plenty of *meaningful* sub-goals for everyone, and most clubs can pick any two adjacent ones as 'essential' and 'stretch' targets at the start of each season:

1. The Title
2. Champions League
3. Europa League
4. Staying up