I don’t know about hurling but Gaelic football certainly made “expansion” type moves and attempted to change its nature with exhibition games in other countries and tie-ups with both Irish Rugby Union and Aussie Rules. And also include overseas clubs/counties in their leagues/comps.

As Bramleyrhino says, if the heartland clubs were working then expansion wouldn’t even be mentioned. They’re not, and haven’t run themselves properly in the last 30 years. And that is not the fault of any attempts at expansion. The RFL haven’t given extra funding to any expansion club, unlike in the NRL where they backed the Melbourne expansion club and it massively improved the competition.

I’m a lifelong RL fan. I don’t enjoy RL because it’s played in small northern towns. I enjoy RL because of the nature of the sport, it’s honesty, it’s toughness and violence shown on the pitch combined with its values and lack of violence off the pitch.
If RL could be a league of:
Leeds
Hull
Newcastle
Manchester
Birmingham
Leicester
Coventry
Liverpool
Plus a few London clubs

It wouldn’t make the sport worse because they’re not local.

In RL I think we have a touch of the Phoenix Nights about us. Trying hard but ultimately in the wrong direction for an outdated view of what people want now.

In answer to the poster - " him " with the sentiment of your wishes on your posting, I am sure wigan, saints, warrington, huddersfield will be in total agreement with you ! How silly, there is no culture of RL in the named areas you pointed out, what a success storey of events that would be ?

This.

We are 100 years too late to expand, in that 100 rugby union did everything to stop us and football has grown exponentially.

We’d be aswell strengthening our heartlands and that’s it. Go insular.

Re-read the post. I wasn’t suggesting those cities as a league for the future.
It was to point out that if RL had historically been made up of teams from those places it wouldn’t have made RL worse. Which was the suggestion inferred earlier by saying people enjoy the “local” aspect of RL.
It doesn’t make any difference to me, nor I suspect the majority of RL fans.

I’m a Leeds fan. We’ve had strong rivalries over the years, yes some because of the locality but that was only really in the past ie v Hunslet. The recent rivalries have been between ourselves and another team challenging us. Earlier it was Leeds v Bradford, that gave way to Leeds v Saints, then Leeds v Wigan (soon to be Leeds v London the way we’re going!). But none of those rivalries were really to do with locality.

A SL club will (should) turn over £4,000,000 a year, with £1,850,000 coming from SKY TV.
If the average "away attendance is 1,000 and a ticket to a game costs £20, with say another £15 spent on food/drink/shop etc. then the away Support is worth £35,000 to the home side......
....so less than 1% of the turn over and about 3% of the SKY money.
Sky get 14+ games on the cheap or even Free........so as for bringing "nothing to the game in the UK", I'd say it was your post that hasn't been thought through...

What does "strengthening our heartlands" mean? What does it involve? Throwing more money at unviable clubs?

Focusing on the heartlands has got us to this point, with falling crowds, declining sponsorship values and players receiving real-terms pay cuts.

If there was a way of reversing that by "focusing on the heartlands", expansion isn't on the agenda.

What about Belgrade, promote the Serbian SL.

A misleading stat there comparing annual turnover and Sky's annual contribution with only a single game income from away fans! A fairer comparison is multiplying that by the number of home games (14) which gives £490k ie about 25% of the Sky income so not to be sniffed at.

If we're talking about improving the current teams then getting more home supporters is far more important...

It means a coherent plan for:
- SL (incl keeping competitivity at both ends of the table ie promotion and relegation);
- Magic Weekend - what is it for? Has it outgrown any usefulness?
- Better marketing of the game in general
- Review of the impact of the Sky contract - particularly the impact on crowds of Thursday/Friday games
- Review the impact of the salary cap and whether it is set appropriately
- Help the clubs market their games better

I'm far from convinced that the game is less appealing than it was 20+ years ago, in fact in many ways the game is better (certainly non-fans I've taken to games have all enjoyed it, some even went more than once!), but yet it is undeniable that the game is struggling.

There doesn't appear to be any long term strategy from many of the clubs and definitely not from the RFL.

Was it not obvous the pont I was responding to, or are you colour blind?




Catalan deliver SKY about a dozen or so "live" games for 2/10th's of FA....SKY deliver 1.8 million to UK clubs....my stat that Catalan visiting and delivering £0 in revenue instead of a team from a bus stop away bringing £35,000 is very relevant to the expression "Therefore they bring little to the game in the uk". If there were 11 Catalans and only 1 UK team, then you might have a point, but replacing Catalan with 1 UK side would add £35k....or less than 1% of a clubs turn over......loop fixtures aside

Halifax, Hull, Wire and St Helens will be at the jamboree Semi-final cash cow double header.....Hull and Fax replacing Leeds and the hated French from last year......26,086 was last years attendance figure. Surely Fax will bring more than Catalans......so, according to your logic, we'll see a vast improvement in that figure?

Evidently not, or I wouldn't have had to point out how misleading you were being!



I think you've got the wrong end of the stick! I made no comment at all on the merits of Catalan vs "local" teams - I was merely pointing out the absurdity of comparing one game's worth of revenue with a season of Sky money. Nothing more, nothing less - you seem to want to make it all about the rather unclear point you were making...without even making it a balanced point.

I'll type this slowly........just for you.....the comment was that Catalan deliver nothing to the UK game...the comment was backed up by 0 facts or stats.

Let s pretend that Catalan weren't in SuperLeague and let us say that Widnes Vikings were the 12th side. Widnes fans would travel in good numbers to Saints, Wire, Salford and possibly Wigan........but in fewer numbers to the other "far away" towns.....I have always believed that 1,000 travelling fans as an average over 11 games is a fair estimate, but just for you, let's call it 1,500.
£20 on a ticket and let's add another score for spends.......wow, we're up to £60,000.
So, Widnes, at {enter other club name here} is worth £60,000 to {enter other club name here}........

{enter other club name here}gets £1,800,000 from SKY TV each year........so, to be clear, Widnes visiting {enter other club name here} delivers 3.3% of the SKY revenue......if {enter other club name here} are a well run club, then Widnes visiting will deliver 1.5% of their entire turn over.....

The "bigger picture"...which I believe you are alluding to is that 11 clubs suffer this fate....so £660,000 is lost to those clubs.....but SKY funding for those 11 clubs is £20,000,000........and let'snot forget, SKY get an extra 11+ games to show a year at little cost (if any).

I have no doubt the arguments for excluding Toronto/Catalan/NYC or any other backwater side seem relevant to those who prefer to attend away games less than a 30 minutes bus ride away, but the reality is if we had 6 foreign sides and 5 northern towns and London in SL, attendances would matter little, so long as Rupert was footing the bill

Far from strengthening the "heartlands", IF we end up with 4/5 N. American sides plus Toulouse in SL, the "heartlands" will be about done.
You would still have Leeds, Saints, Wigan, Wire and Hull FC, with the rest either "demoted" to The Championship or gone for good.

Some, like you, may say that they deserve it but, I think this idea will kill the whole game over here and probably lead to the remaining SL sides wanting to switch to Union.
You would see even lower crowds, plus an additional circa £500,000 cost for the overseas games.
Therefore without a significantly better deal, even the "strong" will wither and die

I had a magical weekend recently. I might only be a cowboy and a binman but i can afford the odd break here and there. I saddled up my hog and rode out to Mablethorpe for a few days (thursday-Sunday) and had a lovely time.
The town of Mablethorpe is quaint and there were plenty of people in the pubs for me to talk to about my favourite sports team The Keighley Cougars. I made a lot of great friends while i was there, and i look forward to my next trip.

My hog is a wheely bin btw.

None of this is answering the question of what "focusing on the heartlands" means in the context of taking this sport forward. It's OK to be against overseas expansion, but it's not unreasonable for people to ask those making that argument to explain what the alternative actually is.



I wouldn't put it so bluntly, but clubs aren't and shouldn't be exempt from the realities of the modern world. Every business, sports or otherwise, needs to keep evolving their product to reflect the demands and expectations of the market. It's one of the reasons why Jamie Oliver lost 22 restaurants last month. RL clubs don't deserve to be exempt from this reality just because they're RL clubs or because it's "hard to do".


On what basis? If Leeds, Wigan, Warrington or Hull can be profitable playing alongside overseas clubs, why would they move to another code where
a) the cost base is higher
b) the market is crowded
c) the current situation at Yorkshire Carnegie suggests that there isn't much of a market for professional RU in this part of the world?


Why are smaller crowds a given? If Leeds v Toronto or Wigan v New York can be sold as a big event to the local public, why should we expect smaller crowds?



The whole crux of this debate is about how we offer more to broadcasters and sponsors to get more revenue into the game. I go back to the underlying point - expansion doesn't have to be the way to do this and expansion isn't the end goal, but nobody on this forum who is shouting "focus on the heartlands" seems to have a suggestion on how we offer that added value to broadcasters and sponsors to justify that revenue.