Bazza that wasnt what your first post requested or stated

Yes it is a business but there are plenty of sporting businesses that dont make money

We have as much money as David Hughes wants to spend -very similar to Chelsea-I suspect there are a lot of clubs wishing they had someone like David Highes as a chairman.

No. Very few RL clubs are businesses. Harlequins definitely are not. Very few people buy a football, cricket, RL, ice hockey, RU, basketball or other sports club with the aim of making money?

Clubs should be run in a business-like fashion, but the main aim of nearly all RL clubs is not "maxmising the profit for the owners of the business".

Yeah, ok then

Not only are Harlequins RL losing a shiitload of money every day they are not even close to breaking even.

Would YOU bankroll that club??

You don't have to be Alan Sugar to see their is no way Harlequins will ever be a good investment for someone.


You might as well just repeatedly smash yourself over the head with a hammer whilst flushing wads of £20 notes down the toilet as financially back Harlequins.

The only similarity between Harlequins RL and Chelsea is that they are both from London.

The only Dave Hughes I've ever heard of is an Aussie comedian from a show called The 7pm Project


Maybe it's the same guy?

Lets face it you would have to be a comedian to invest any money into Harlequins RL

Thanks.

.....you had me at hammer
Bazza.....unlike the real world, where companies make money, sport is different. Apart from the larger European wendyball clubs who sell gazzillions of replica jerseys and get loads of TV cash, pretty much every other sporting club is run at a loss. RL in the UK is very unlikely to generate anything more than a pittance of a profit for successful clubs and if it does, 9 tiimes out of 10, the benefactor/suggar daddy/owner will pump this money back into the club.
An example would lets say be Wigan. An average gate of 15k with a ticket costing (IL stated 9.85 at quins as an average) 10 quid.
1,950,000 income...+ 1,500,000 from TV and lets say another 1,250,000 from sponsors, shirt sales etc.....4,700,000 a year income. Now, little old Quins have admin expenses of over 4 million, so you would imagine that a giant like wigan would have better players on better salaries, more staff in the office and higher costs overall......so let's say 700k more......there, see, Wigan, one of the best supported clubs in the UK, would struggle to make money........
Owning a sporting club is a vocation first........a pain in the ars3 second and never ever a profitable business. I would hazzard a gues that chelsea have cost its owner in excess of 1 billion so far........money he will never see again unless some other russian fool comes along and buys it from him.

Bazza....some of the biggest names in the worlds most popular sport are going to go under sooner rather than later....

Also, only 4 NRL clubs made a profit last year IIRC. Most of the Sydney sides are bankrolled by their Leagues Clubs. The sporting side of almost every team in professional sport loses money. It's not a business for the most part - Union, soccer, RL and RU are all similar in that regard.

Sorry, i dont think i explained myself as well as i could've, i think you misunderstood what i was trying to say.
For me it all comes down to potential. There are big clubs, like Hull, Leeds, Wigan etc that we couldnt have an SL without (imo) There are a lot of clubs that have the potential to be big clubs, eg when Warrington got a good stadium, and got a decent team, their attendences (and thus their income) increased greatly. I think Widnes have the potential to be a fairly big club, beacuse history shows that when we have a decent team, the attendences will be pretty good. History shows that this is not the case for the London team, as in all their various forms, they have failed to become a well supported, financially stable club, even when they had a decent team.

You keep saying that attendence is only 2 points in the criteria, this isnt entirely true. It indirectly effects many of the other criteria. For example it is almost impossible for a very badly supported team to have a large turnover, It is also very hard for a club with little support (and thus a smal turnover), to be able to spend up to the full salary cap (and thus get the points for contributing to the league).
For me this is a major point, because until we have a league, where most teams are able to spend up to the salary cap, we wont have a truely competetive league. Just by looking at the attendences for the last 3 granfinals, it obvious that people are getting bored of the same teams winning everything. Imo for superleague to be successful, we need a situation where each game, and each season is unpredicatable, this can only be the case when all teams are spending the full (or thereabouts) salary cap, and this cannot be the case, when we have teams with average crowds of 3k.


No, i watch all superleague clubs more than i watch Widnes, as i watch all televised RL matches (and there are more SL matches shown), and as i cannot attend almost all widnes games, due to where i live.

And to all the people saying this is a second account, its not, this is my only account (and yes i am a widnes fan).
And to people like 'chirs dalton' who apparently think im just taking the , and pretending to be a 'flatcapper' (god i hate that phrase), why do i not post on the harlequins or crusaders boards, and why are the majority of my posts on the sin bin? i'll tell you why, because your wrong .
Also, i have never lived in, nor supported Salford (i'm not sure where the hell that came from )


If anyone doesnt agree with the following, please tell me exactly which part. This is how i see Harlequins:
1)Judging Harlequins, on their crowds of recent years, it is obvious that even if the team are playing well, and being successful, there are not enough fans willing to pay to watch them play, in order to make them financially stable, and in order for them to spend up to the salary cap.
2)Having teams in the league who cannot spend the full cap, means that the league wont be as exciting/unpredictable as it should be.
3)Having teams who dont have enough fans (even when the team are doing well) to be financially stable, is bad for the league, as there will always be a risk that the backer will pullout, leaving the club to either go under, or rellocate.
4)The fact that they have had to rellocate so many times in the past (and may have to do so in the future, based on the whim of their financial backer) is ultimately bad for the game, as it makes the game look even more amateurish than it already looks, to potential fans and sponsors.



And for those people claiming that 'its not that bad, that Harlequins made a 2mil loss for the past couple of years, after all lots of sporting teams make losses.' Can someone please show me a few sporting teams which have as large a deficit to turnover ratio as the quins (a ratio of losses~2mil to turnover~2mil will take some beating i imagine). Good luck

So...if that's the case, how come Quins made 2 play-offs whilst better supported clubs have not?...Yes..I agree about attendances (see 90% of my posts on the QRL boards)....but Hudds are creeping into the mix and they have terrible crowds according to some....

Just a reminder - he's not actually a Widnes fan.

I'm sure all Widnes fans are glad Mr O'Connor was keen to step in, but there were two other consortiums who made an offer for the club - one of which was also headed up by someone with net worth over £10 million.

You'd think there were enough rich wannabee sports club owners in London that David Hughes could pass QuinsRL onto someone else when he does "walk away".

I suspect there are lots more wealthy people in London than Widnes. 10 Million in the sporting world gets you nowhere-refer to the figures above

They wouldn’t have had to have dealt with the figures above. With an attendance average of around 7,000 (in SL) Widnes would be much nearer the break even mark than Quins – if not actually in profit. Plus it wasn’t just one man. It was a Consortium of several wealthy backers.

That’s the difference.

Widnes did not get thrown out of Superleague. They finished in one of the relegations slots and were relegated. The reason Widnes did not get back into Super League is not because of expansion, but because they couldn't play their way back into it. Expansion is almost irrelevant, other than creating the extra relegation slot.

Some Widnes on here bemoan expansion, but expansion has brought us franchising, and franchising is the only way they will get back in, because they seem routinely unable to win their way back in. They need to decide whether they support franchising, and thus expansion, or they don't. In which case, don't apply.

I would like to see Widnes back in Super League, but they need to put the violins away, because it was their performances on the field that got them in the lower league, and their performances on the field that kept them there.

As for Harlequins, I wish them well. Their presence in Super League arguably brings to the whole game of rugby league than Widnes and quite a few other teams (I include Wakey in this), as the off-field stuff is good for the game.