Although it would be great to have a strong competition based on strong foundations in England, you do seem very, very keen to exclude everyone else ?
Surely the ideal situation would be to have RL played in every country across the globe and not just restrict our sport to 2 states in Aus, a small part of France and the M62 corridor ?
To attract serious sponsorship, the game has to have wider appeal and although their definitely needs to be a long term plan, your suggestion of building from the grass roots up will take decades or even centuries.
We've had 125 years so far and the game has barely spread, how long do you want to wait before we actually make any meaningful progress.

125 years of still not spreading the game in England beyond the heartlands, then use the WC as a fulcrum to do so.

Focus on establishing a firm widespread professional game, and sustainable, game in England before chasing further expansion elsewhere.

Its not a case of exclusion, but a case of trying to develop in a methodical manner, rather than (yet another) misguided scattergun approach.

The only two places World Cup fixtures should take place up North are at Newcastle and Liverpool (although do we really need to go that neck of the woods). The rest of the fixtures including quarter finals, semi finals and the final, should take place down south.

In 2013 the Eng v Aus opening match was in Cardiff as Cardiff were willing to pay decent money to host the game. Similarly the 2017 World Cup venues have been selected depending on who's willing to pay for the privilege of hosting games. For this World Cup to be a success financially we need to do the same, so the venues should be wherever the money is.

Why just Newcastle and Liverpool when there are two bigger stadiums in Manchester?

If you want a tournament that nearly bankrupts the game then this is a great plan

We saw in 2000 what happens when you just plonk games slaphazardly in towns that dont care about RL.

I'm all for taking games to new places but they require a much bigger marketing spend and are a gamble. Games involving the small nations aren't very attractive, so the policy of having them midweek in the heartlands is the only way of making money.

RU also copied this policy in 2015 with small games played midweek (some even with afternoon kickoffs while people were at work) at places like Gloucester and Exeter. The only games they risked outside their heartlands were an England game at the Etihad, Scotland games at Newcastle and Leeds due to closer for Scotland fans to travel, and the All Blacks (biggest brand in ether code of rugby) at Newcastle.

2013 worked so why break a winning formula? We just need to try and build and get those 10k crowds to 20k the 20k crowds to 30k+ that 60k for the Wembley Semis to a 90k sellout and so on and so forth.

also learn from the success of The Big Bash in Aus, and keep the tickets prices low and pack out the grounds with free tickets to school kids rather than show empty seats.
the benefit of showing a full ground to a TV audience with a proper atmosphere is worth a lot more in credibility terms than trying to up the ticket prices and take a short term revenue game on gate receipts.

You're right - it's the stadiums fault. We should take it to a northern four sided ground where the stands are close to the pitch, maybe like the John Smiths stadium in Huddersfield, because then the atmosphere will be electric

The real money in these big tournaments is made through sports tourism.
the 25 million from governments is being given on the expectation that the tournament will attract at least that much in tourism dollars for the economy.
For that reason, the best places to hold games will be places that RL fans from Australia, NZ, France, Usa, Italy, Canada etc will want to visit and spend dollars in.

Don't use thought, common sense and logic on this forum, people will give you abuse for daring to actually THINK!!!!