Quote: Ant80 "why there isn't a Cumbria team in the Super League?'"
1996....11 Home SL games for Workington Town...average attendance 2,305.
I have no doubt the Cumbrians are all RL mad, but logistically, getting gates anywhere near the 8k needed to be self sufficient would be a hard ask....and it's 2 hrs minimum for most away fans...4hrs for Hull fans.........a Cumbrian team would have the tradition, but not the population. A combined Whitehaven/Workington team would still need 16% of their combined poplulations to attend games just to break even....
Quote: Ant80 "Now before there are howls of we let a French, London, Welsh team in.'"
Pespective wise, PSG averaged 8,026 in year 1. The folllowing year, an average of 5,509 was enough to see them disappear.......
The Cottage burners of South, then north Wales averaged 3,827 for their 39 home games in SL, but didn't have the luxury of a benefactor willing to throw money at them for the 5-10 years it would have taken for them to get their crowds up to the 8k needed....
London, after 77 name changes and 406 ground moves, have averaged 3,766 for their 218 home games in SL thus far....but have the advantages that 'london' is a weekend away destination, there are many expat northerners who will watch "their" team when they play London (Wigan, Leeds & Saints) as well as an untapped audience of Aussies/Kiwis and a benefactor willing to throw 1.5 million at the problem every year (for now anyway).
Quote:
Ant80 "I'm a strong believer in expansion but this way
Interesting slide here.....from Cumbria to 'stralia and beyond?
Outside of NSW, there are 6 NRL teams....The NZ Warriors are owned by a billionaire Owen Glenn and his millionaire mate Eric Watson 
.....The Melbourne Storm and Brisbane Broincos are owned by the ex-50% owner of the competition and the favourite to secure the next 5 years TV rights, News Limited. The Gold Coast Titans are close to deaths door, the Raiders are currently the worst supported team in the comp and the North Queensland Cowboys had to be bailed out by News Limited (see above reference to Brisbane and Melbourne) back in 2001, or they would have gone to the wall......
Expansion should be about the sport.......but in Australia, it's all about the TV viewers. News have an interest in 50% of the teams that aren't in NSW......of the others, 2 are financial basket cases and the other represents an entire country and is owned by money.....where the new teams are placed is important financially but has little to do with "expansion" of the game.
Back to Cumbria......do you reckon SKY would increase ad revenue/subscription sales if they demanded a team in Whitehaven?
