£329,440.00....based on £20 a ticket, split between 12 heartland clubs, this is £27,453 each.

If you admit that the average Turn over of a SL club is approximately £5,000,000 then London cost them about half a percent of their turn over.

Sky wanted London........would you rather they took their £1,350,000 a year elsewhere so you could welcome 1,350 halifax fans to your club once a year?

Incidently, using the same maths Catalan cost every club £21,000 , Salford cost each team £15,000.....and Widnes £12,500......all based on attendance v average at £20 a ticket and allowing for those games where the team above attracted a crowd higher than the average.

See....I freely admit to London not bringng away fans and therefore costing the hosts lost ticketing revenue...but I then back it up with facts to show the loss is minimal in the greater scheme of things......

.....as in, a host club in the heartlands would need to attract only a total of 1,350 more home fans to 13 games in a season to cover this "supposed" massive loss.....105 fans per game
Surely with all their sense of community and herritage they won't have an issue doing that....maybe they could pull a Bradford and have a bucket collection

rlRugby League

Quote: wire quin "After several weeks of rumour and negotiation, Richard Branson's Virgin group has taken a majority shareholding in the London Broncos - with a promise to make them the best club in the world.
'"

An annoying publicity seeking RL chairman, promising the earth .... I thought it sounded familiar

How would sir like his freshly spanked handed to him?

BTW.....I never said that Sky would walk....I simply summised that they might. Either way...with all that herritage and history, as well as a sense of community, surely the 12 hearltland clubs can find 100 more fans per home game.......I mean to say.....it's the heartlands

Catalans and London are not the only teams with "so many Aussies." Take a look at Hull KR, Wakefield, in fact most of the SL clubs except Leeds and Huddersfield are stacked with Aussies and Kiwis.



Who is putting a gun to the head of English fans and forcing them to fly to France? They all go of their own free will, and the overwhelming majority love the experience. You should try it. Or don't you travel abroad?



It is quite relevant. The distances between many clubs in the NRL is much greater than in the SL. Townsville is more than twice the distance from Sydney than Perpignan is from Salford. Nobody in Sydney area NRL clubs have complained about this problem when North Queensland fans don't travel from Townsville to Sydney. It is only the parochial whinging fans from failing clubs in the north of England who do.

And that's a good thing?


Fans want to watch the team they support. Why should they have to pay above the odds to do so? Don't be so arrogant as to dismiss the fans - if they stop going the whole game is f*cked.

Oh, and I lived abroad for several years and travel internationally all the time with work. I've been to Perpignan several times and enjoyed it massively, though I've not been in the last couple of years as I resent paying so much to watch my team.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but crowds in the NRL tend to be bigger. Losing 1,000 travelling fans when you've got 15-25,000 turning up every week is a loss, but of far less impact than when your average gate is perhaps 6-8,000. Multiply that across visits from Catalans, London and according to your epic plan, the mighty Toulouse, and you're impacting club matchday income significantly, and that's before we talk about the flat atmosphere these clubs bring to games with no travelling fans - something you're all conveniently ignoring.

No....you made a false claim, I showed it to be false and unfounded....in fact, based on a lie. Admit you were shown up and do it with some grace....you had your handed to you, end of.

Away fans are nothing.......they are less than 4% of the TV revenue across the board and less than 1% of the Superleague clubs turn over. I suggest you stop digging and support a second local side so you can have a home game to go to every weekend without leaving your postcode

They should kick out all clubs east of the pennines. How can you expect Yorkshire folk to travel that far? Only so much petrol the pit wage will pay for!

There are many reasons why Salford and London may not have a long term future in SL but travelling fans are not one.

East of the pennines? I agree

Below are the number of Antipodeans in each club's squad number 1-17s:

Bradford - 5
Cas - 4 (5 if you include Chase)
Catalans - 8 non French, includes some English.
Huddersfield - 3
Hull FC - 5
Hull KR - 8
Leeds - 2
London - 10 (Though to be fair that discounts players such as Sarginson and other local talent not wearing 1-17.)
Salford - 4
Saints - 7
Wakefield - 5
Warrington - 3
Widnes - 7
Wigan - 4

So a bit harsh on Wakefield I'd say to label them as 'awash' with Aussies and Kiwis. And "most" being "stacked"? 9 of 14 have 5 or fewer, with Catalans having 8 which includes some Brits, and whose first 17 squad numbers doesn't include such as Fakir. Aside from London; which I agree is disappointing but at least for the first time that certainly I can remember there seems to actually be some good talent coming through the youth system; I'd say Saints, Hull KR, and Widnes are disappointing. Widnes hopefully will head downwards in number as their SL structures bear fruit. Was a little surprised/disappointed with Saints, who arguably have one of the best academy set ups... Good to see that last years CC winners, LLS winners, and GF winners are 3 of the 4 lowest numbers on the list.

I'd hazard a guess that if you compared that with 10 or even 5 years ago you would find a higher number back then.

How can you expect a team 30 years old to have "generations" of local fans? There are plenty of sticks to beat London with, but rubbishing them for not sending fans back in time to start loyal Broncos families in the 1900s is not one. And if you really can't see a single benefit from having London in SL then he or anyone else won't be able to convince you there are any.

If, done *right*, we can't get a team based in one of the world's biggest cities (and full of Aussies too as it happens) with an average home gate of more than 10k then I'm a monkey's uncle. There's nothing whatsoever fundamentally wrong with the idea of a team in London, it's just been messed up time after time. As I've said, if Sky can run a cycling team I'd strongly encourage them to run a Rugby League team too. We need serious professionals to get a grip of the need for a good London club and make it happen with the proper commitment and investment, not the half-baked messing about we seem to have had for decades.