Would you like to quantify ' Hefty ' ? , and also ' regularly ' ?

Or do you just mean Leeds and whoever wins the Challenge Cup ? , providing it isnt Leeds?

That's the decision that's been taken, don't ask me why. I've already said the licensing experiment has not been given long enough for us to really know whether that works.

Do you have a link for that? , last time it was much less and tied in to Wigan and Warringtons Cup wins

Same for my club (Cas Tigers). We might as well pack in developing our own juniors. All we do is prepare them for Hull. We might as well cancel our youth teams for next year and use the money to sign a boat load of mercenaries.

An illustration of how the newly promoted team has faired in their first year.

1996 - Paris - 11th (out of 12 teams)
1997 - Salford - 6th
1998 - Hull - 9th
1999 - Gateshead & Wakefield - 6th & 11th (out of 14 teams)
2000 - N/A
2001 - N/A
2002 - Widnes - 7th (out of 12 teams)
2003 - Huddersfield - 10th
2004 - Salford - 9th
2005 - Leigh - 12th
2006 - Castleford & Catalans - 11th & 12th
2007 - Hull KR - 11th
2008 - Castleford - 12th
2009 - Salford & Celtic - 13th & 14th (out of 14 teams)
2012 - Widnes - 14th

Goes to show how the challenge of staying up has got harder and harder, with only Hull KR managing to avoid finishing bottom in the last 8 years.

Hull FC's most recent available figures are:
2009, profit of £77k
2010, profit of £29k
2011, loss of £250k

Pearson is on record as saying he anticipates a loss in the region of half a million for 2012 and that previous reported profits were not reflective of the clubs overall health.
Tbf, he's investing in infrastructure and presumably paying off the ebt tax bill he inherited.
Saints, with their incredible youth production pipeline and years of on field success lost £1.35m in their last season at Knowsley road and over 2 million as tenants at Widnes. It'll be interesting to see how they get on at Langtree, but losses are pretty much endemic at most SL clubs in a way that is self-fulfilling.

No, last time I posted the first two links, one for warrington, one for wigan, you then invented in your head that clubs only made profits in these years and no others, and then further extrapolated your nonsense to decide clubs only ever make profit when they win the challenge cup.

True - but I'm equally sceptical about the spin of the Hetherington-Rule era. It suited them to report modest profits (big profits would risk looking like they were milking it), so they did. As a Rovers fan, talking down Hull FC's financial position would only send this thread one way, but I'm sure most of their fans are aware they face some challenges.



We can swap selected figures all day and argue about what is sustainable and what is subsidy - I'd have a different take on the Salford model, for example. The headline figure is that the 14 SL clubs lose about £8 million between them - some contributing nothing to that deficit, or even mitigate it, others more than their fair share. Wealthy benefactors at a number of clubs make this (and thus SL as a full-time comp, as we know it) possible, but also necessary. More income wouldn't even solve the issue as the big clubs would demand the cap rose. That is why SL is not 'sustainable' in a business sense. Franchising and P&R have very little to do with it, and we should choose between those two based primarily on what suits RL as a sport.

People can argue all day about what is ‘profit’ some will count some things, some others. Its not really the point. Hull can’t on one side have claimed 5 years of consecutive profits, and play the poor man. Unless there was some severe financial irregularities, the very maximum we would be looking at is a difference between a small profit switching to a very small loss. Either way, Hull FC aren’t financially struggling.
If we remember that between them London (losses C£2m) Saints (losses over the past few years of between £1.3 and £2.5M) are contributing pretty much half of that. 12 clubs, losing £4m, that’s not bad. Its not terrible. It certainly isn’t panic-worthy. SL becomes sustainable by building the bottom clubs of SL up. They have decided to do the opposite and exacerbate the gaps between the big and small SL clubs.

Or if we bin off the profitable outliers at the other end of the spectrum...

But yeah, I agree - it is only panic worthy for individual clubs when the benefactor(s) they rely on are no longer willing or able to offer that subsidy. Well structured P&R would gives them somewhere to go, while those fortunate enough to come into money in the second tier could move up.
Realistically, even if building the smaller clubs up under licensing was a given, then once they became 'too competitive' the big clubs would likely push for a cap rise to butress their position at the top of the game. We could do with an evening out of strength, but short of mergers [ithat worked[/i or forcing every third person at the DW to move to the LSV or Stobart, it ain't going to happen - so it ain't going to happen.
The effects of licensing were always going to be subtle at best. Even simply pumping more cash in would oil the wheels a bit better rather than improving the 'sustainabilty' of SL - looking at the money that PL football sucks in and then pours out. Only by structuring ownership of clubs differently, as[i clubs[/i, could we become sustainable - and that locks out the 'investment' of benefacrors, making the game poorer.

Franchising would give them the exact same place to go.

That would be a good thing, it would be the bigger clubs dragging the lesser clubs up, a levelling up of standards without holding back the bigger clubs. This should have been what we were aiming for.

If we want SL to be sustainable then we need to treat SL as a whole. That would mean mergers, it would likely mean some clubs were locked out, it would likely mean expansion clubs. It would also mean drafts, it would mean clubs marketing together, it would mean more income distribution, it would mean central ticketing, sponsorship, merchandising. It would mean trying to make the best competition. It would mean the needs and wants of some sections being sacrificed for the greater good.

But that wont happen, we will just get regressive decisions like this, where short-term self-interest trumps all and the game will keep setting itself back. When people ask why the game isn’t growing, why it struggles for visibility, why its under-valued and under-sells itself. Its because it does things like this, taking decisions which take the game back to 2000, when in 2000 we were taking the game back itself. Only RL would try and sell going back to what we were doing 5 years ago as innovative.

If you were starting from scratch and designing a new sport rationally, then I agree with much of that. But much of our strength derives from our accumulated history and people identifying with their club. For better or worse we've evolved to where we are and we have to deal with the situation we face rather than a virginal blank canvass.
[iSelf-[/iinterest might hold us back, but [idis[/iinterest is, literally, game over.