has somebody explained what franchising means?

agree with the sentiment but i understand why people dont always want to come to belle vue as you are open to the elements (although on a warm day cant beat it). the willows has cover if you want it as well as terracing. when there's a few in its a decent atmosphere. all they should do is tart it up and maybe improve the facilities a bit, cant imagine it would cost that much. oh and get some stronger flood lights

I perfectly understand the ' franchise ' process thanks

So tell me which clubs are unable to fit all the people that want to attend in their stadium ?

Which stadium sells all its seating capacity out for all its games ?

Which other club apart from Widnes will improve SL from the level it currently is at ?

crowds would be higher in newer stadiums than the jungle, BV and the willows. these clubs can not progress into clubs that can challenge the likes of leeds and st helens in their current grounds. therefore you have 3 heartland clubs essentially wasting space

add CC and Quins that arent that strong either and you have a league dominated by the same teams.

at least hull fc, warrington and huddersfield can build and challenge the big clubs.

until at least all your heartland clubs challenge the top clubs regularly your league wont progress.

other than widnes there are not many other standout candidates.

potentially halifax but time will till

id thought leigh in their new ground would progress but they havent.

edit : toulose would add more to SL in terms of expansion and strength of club and crowds than wakey or salford.

The most important thing after what happens on the pitch

The best sporting events have atmosphere and that is best created in older grounds rather than modern ' stadia ' if they are not full , and unfortunatley very few if any matches play to anywere near full capacity

1. the rfl has done a bit lately on clubs outside SL to progress. but the clubs have to help themselves.

2. every club that has moved to a new ground has experienced very large crowd increases. how can you expect to attract fans from soccer when soccer stadia are so modern and many RL grounds are dumps?

Totally agree. Biggest let down at Salford is warm beer from a can!

This large increase in support only happens if the club sells it to the fans. I think Starbug will agree that Leigh have been an exception to this rule and should be looked at as how not to take advantage of a new stadium.

Also this is harder to achieve bellow SL.

And the RFL has not done a great deal bellow SL. To be honest they need a shake up of the Entire Championship structure to make it feasable. How can Doncaster be expected to run at a profit with only 12 or so home games a season? And that goes for any club in the Championships. We need more games. if that means 1 Division of 16-18 with a Conference Division with a one up one down structure then that might go some way to pay the bills.

As it is it feels like the season is ending just as teams are warming up. A club will struggle to help itself if there is no money coming in for such a large slice of the year and teams can go so long without a home game.

Have they , what exactly ?

Did W1gan increase attendances when they moved to the JJB , have Doncaster and Leigh ?

Why should we be trying to attract fans from other sorts ? , Do we want those fans ?

Stop thinking Australian when trying to solve the problems of British RL

Very true , but there are some mitigating circumstances , the LSV is not owned by the club and the club has no say in how it is run , it is a council ' facility ' run by council employee's

They seem to have got the worst bunch of ' jobsworths ' they could find to run it

Basically nice shiney council run stadia dont work outside the top flight , this combined with no promotion has decimated the interest in the town

While ours isn't quite as shiney and new as yours Widnes RLFC has a very close working partnership with HBC and we've somehow managed to maintain interest and fairly healthy crowds even in the face of no promotion..

Hence why I posted this earlier





You are the only option outside SL at the moment and should have got the spot last year

wigans crowds originally were poor because their old ground was much loved and it was a shock to lose it. arent their crowds now higher than their glory days of the 80s?

hull fc, warrington and huddersfield all have had the large increases i refer too

yep the RFL have done a bit for non SL clubs lately. a paying TV deal is what im getting at.

given the size of RL vs other sports, unless you plan on getting RL fans from australia, you will have to convert fans of other sports to grow.

thinking australian when it comes to RL means thinking right.

the SL is trying its best to be the nrl, i hope it gets there.

The details of this paying tv Deal? As i understand it the clubs get next to nothing for the Championship TV deal. Im happy to be put right if this is not the case but about the only thing i ever hear about with TV games is 200 Tickets for the home team ( paid for by the Co-op i think ).

The best thing about the TV deal is the added exposure for sponsors i would imagine.