Definitely a good question. It's probably not something that's on the horizon, but information freely available from Companies House shows that the RFL had losses of around £800k each year to Dec 2005, 2006 & 2007 and only made around £200k profit last year. The Net Worth shows a defecit of around £1.9m. If any of the applicants for SL licences last year had demonstrated such performance it's unlikely they would have been playing in SL now!

The one thing that has improved year on year is that amount of cash held by the RFL (£4m at Dec 2008 compared to £900k at Dec 2005). You'd need to work out what the true cash flow is to find out how they've done that as it could be down to a simple matter of the timing of funds in & out.

The question that all of this raises is whether the RFL really hold the moral high ground over questioning the ability of clubs to manage their finances or is it just a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Compare the total revenue now with what it was a few years ago, though. They have an extra digit on the end! I think Richard Lewis has got quite a few things wrong while running the RFL, but the amount of money coming into RL at the moment compared to any time in the past is an indicator that he has got some things very, very right.

I am amazed it cost Quins 3.5millon pounds to run the club for a season. Shows how much income clubs need and most are bringing in less than that.

Yep, but BARB figures aren't the whole story (there's a high degree of statisitical error in the methodology - Sky have their own proprietary viewing data as well which is allegedly more accurate). The advertising sales teams work on "impacts" which is people seeing the adverts rather than the programmes, and this is where a lot of the demographics come in. Besides Sky look at RL from three angles, one as a broadcaster who sells advertising, two as a broadcaster who sells subscription content, three as a distribution platform who puts boxes in people's houses, this last angle is arguably where RL is least important to Sky as it's just one possible part of a wide offering.

Serious question, but do you actually know what the rates are? Not every game will be the same.

we do have an image problem. and a that is a big problem for[i some [/isponsors, this rich demographic only really applies to aspirational products, ASDA for instance will have a huuuuge marketing budget and would probably find that RL was a better fit for its consumer base than RU

however, if you think about what the challenge cup really offers in saleability of the clubs its very very little, a club is only likely to be featured a maximum of about 3 times, with a fair few never on it. Its nigh on impossible to sell sponsorship on the basis that once a year a club may be on TV in the secondary competition, it hardly grabs the attention. Thats ignoring the fact that throughout sport most cup competitions seem to be on the wane, not just in RL

SL on FTA would be a completely different proposition

No, I don't I'm afraid. Martyn Sadler mentioned it when explaining why his union magazine advertises on sky but RLW, etc don't.

Like it or not RL is tied to Sky, probably forever. Without Sky most SL teams would be bankrupt almost overnight as they'd have to renege on player contracts they could no longer afford for starters.

The only way to reduce the dependency on Sky is to make more money elsewhere. The only major source to tap into in a bigger way - IMO - is a bigger international competition. Unfortunately England (and France) will need to be genuinely competitive for that to happen, which if it ever does will take years.

There's a lot more RU on Sky, so the rate cards for some RU games might be lower, but rate cards are just guides. What you pay for an ad in a Saturday morning Currie Cup game is going to be less than what you pay for a Saturday evening SL game. All this comes before any negotiated rates, so Martyn Sadler will probably not get the same rates as Tesco for prime slots.

Sadler was comparing advertising rates for the Guiness Premiership games to Engage Super League games.

Shame.

We had the forms filled out and everything...