I should give it up wrencat.
Either blindy support expansion in all forms on here or get ridiculed and abused.

Im actually in favour of expanding the game and nothing would make me happier than to follow a sport that was as popular as Association Football.
I also believe that Perez has more vision and drive than anything we have seen in the UK for a very long time, if ever.
However, if something is clearly flawed and I believe the 2 x 10 (SL 1 & 2) is definitely flawed, then it's only right to "call it our".
There is nothing wrong with having dreams but, in any business model, there has to be a little more pragmatism.

Also, and more importantly, there needs to be proper thought put in as to how we "marry up" RL in the UK (and France) with a few wanabe clubs in N. America and exactly how we achieve the best outcome for the sport.

Back to SL 1 & 2, NOBODY will give a toss about the 2nd tier of the sport, other than passing though to any club vying for promotion.
It's just dreamland stuff to expect the same investment and desire to watch the 2nd tier of our sport.
Hell, we cant even sell the top flight well enough, never mind the next rung down on the ladder.

so if its going to 14 clubs in 2014

will anybody be relegated come the end of 2018 season?!?! million pound game loser may get a nice surprise...

Potentially yes but probably not.The simplest way of doing it is top 5 in the qualifiers go to the superleague and have a 6th and 7th playoff.
You'd think the 4 superleague clubs would finish in the top 5.

The successful clubs are going out and finding investments. That's what they employ commercial teams to do. The issue is that whilst there is money within certain clubs, there isn't in the game as a whole because we struggle for central funding - namely TV and commercial sponsorships.

You can't (and shouldn't, IMO) insist that the revenue that Leeds or Wigan generate from their sponsors and commercial agreements is shared with the other ten teams in the league, but the hard part is making the "package" of the league as a whole appeal to broadcasters and sponsors to generate central funding that can and should be shared. This is the crux of the expansion / anti-expansion argument - what is the best "package" that we can sell to broacasters (be that Sky, BT, Premier, ITV) and sponsors (whether that is Barclays, Land Rover, Ladbrokes or Uncle Joe's Mint Balls)?

I know that there are some that simply think that we need to demand more from a Sky deal that they argue undervalues the sport. I personally don't think it's that simple as that and that collectively, the sport needs to really look at what more it can offer broadcasters. Sky knows how much RL is worth to the business, it knows how much advertising slots in and around RL content are worth and Sky probably has a good idea of how much the loss of RL content would cost them (or in BT's case, how much the gain of RL content would generate) in subscription revenue.

They aren't going to offer the sport and the clubs more money just because they ask for it, so it is up to the sport to be a bit creative, ask some hard questions, and come up with something that offers Sky or any other broadcaster something that is worth more than they currently pay for. Is that better players? Is that a higher standard of competition? Is that promotion and relegation? Is that big events? Is that more internationals? Is that a bigger geographic spread? Is that a different audience? These are all questions that I think many fans and clubs shy away from, because it exposes some hard realities.

I've made no secret about my views on expansion (despite the risks it presents) because I think that the "package" the sport offers both to new fans and new partners needs to change. For me it's simple, if we want to insist that the future of this sport is in towns where the local High Streets are filled with bookies, pawnbrokers and fast food outlets, we have to acknowledge that the only companies that are likely to be interested in this sport are online bookmarkers, payday lenders and tinned mushy peas.

No we must not, let them get there like every other team by winning games and earning promotion.

Will you take that feckin large Leigh chip off your shoulder, seriously.

you are one sad pathetic fake individual

This is a particularly interesting comment.
You are bang on, about Sky knowing what a sport is worth to them in terms of revenue and viewing numbers etc.
However, they are a business and they will try and negotiate the minimum figure that they can "get away" with.
The flip side of this is that The RFL should be achieving the maximum that it can achieve when negotiating their broadcasting deal.
Certainly, the last deal appeared to be done in double quick time and it looked from the outside that, for whatever reason, "we" couldn't shake their (Sky's) hand quick enough.
There can only be 2 reasons for this> Either it was believed that the offer was so good that it shouldn't be passed up or, "we" are inept at negotiating and at a time when BT were trying to hoover up just as many sports as it could, to fill it's air time, I'd go for the "inept at negotiation", rather than the first option.

How so. I've already shown that Union on BT gets similar audiences than we do on SKY and how their Internationals dwarf our audiences on FTA TV, so which other sports get more money than us that makes us undervalued? Just because you repeat the myth regularly it doesn't become fact......the latest BARB figures available are for the week JAN 1 to 7....the AVIVA got 185k, 102k and 92k and they average 13,500 a game so far this season in attendances....how are we undervalued by comparison?


"Insane" would be a polite term to use if you think that we could attract the same cash as the NRL. Their new deal is worth £200,000,000 a year......or AU$1.8 BILLION over 5 years......our entire TV deal across all competitions is 20% of that figure...in fact we get £182,200,000 over 5 years and that includes internationals and the Challenge Cup. Toronto are on Premier TV and deliver nothing to the game...they waived the £75,000 of central funding last year and will waive the £150,000 this year....thereafter if they make SL they will receive £1,825,000. SKY pick up the French Feed and get 50,000 viewers.....I'd be stunned if Premiere sports get 10% of that but you're genuinely suggesting that NYC and Toronto as well as Toulouse playing out of a 4 stadium that they can't half fill will deliver the £164,000,000 a year to make us better off than the NRL

Hasn't the RFL historically outsourced the negotiation of TV rights to IMG?

They might be a lot of things, but inept at negotiating isn't usually one of them.

And remember that the clubs vote on any proposed agreement. The RFL can't carry the blame entirely if we have undersold the contract.

Ignore IT Roy, hasn't got the b@lls to reveal who it actually supports. Used to be Chorley Borough I imagine, now IT just pretends to be french. IT will be loving all the attention on here, and I have just added to it, unfortunately.