Before you anti-Australian/NRL start bashing me up, please read the article in full and note this particular statement from UK born Dave Smith. Super League needs to serious start embracing the business model the NRL has to take this game forward. Obviously it will require tweaks and adjustments to suit the British sporting culture of SL.

"It doesn't make good business sense to be so dependent on one thing - we need to de-risk the game from the five-year media rights cycle,''

Meaning

The NRL is up against AFL and both control NSW and Victoria respectively. The RFL plays 2nd fiddle EVERYWHERE to soccer and still trails the other rugby code in respect of crowds and media attention......before world domination I suspect paying the bills at Bradford and cutting the top tier to 12 or even 10 self sufficient clubs would be more important than pretending that RL will ever be as popular in England as it is in Sydney

The weird thing is that SL on fta in UK would get bigger ratings, sadly fta in UK won't spend big bucks on sport like the TV channels in Oz will do.

Also NRL doesn't have the equivalent of soccer to compete with. In the two states were it is popular the other codes are not any sort of competition.

Re participation numbers does the rfl release these? How many registered players are there in UK? How many jnrs playing the game?

Finally RL doesn't have the class based system to deal with in Oz or the north/south divide and biased media.

No doubt the game can be better run in UK but pointless comparing the sport in different countries as the variables are huge.

The biggest problem with League in Australia was that hundreds of empire builders had found ways to dress in a suit and attend meetings where they spent years arguing over whether to crack their eggs at the pointy end or the blunt end. These guys not only kept the game from acting in a united way, they also all drew big wages that sucked a heap of money out of the game for little or no return.

The Rugby League Commission is an idea borrowed from the very successful AFL Commission, and it basically means 6 or 7 separate organisations that all drew huge wages for their office holders and all basically spent their time fighting each other for funds to pay themselves with have been replaced with a single body whose job it is to move the code forward in the most efficient way.

In short, the benefit comes from sacking a lot of old guys who basically spent their days finding ways to get their snouts into the trough, and replacing them with a much smaller number of well paid professional administrators with a specific job to do.

In SL that would require the club chairmen giving up control. Which is always the sticking point. They have the power and there is little to no reason for them to vote to give it up. It's how it was set up over here that the clubs were gifted the power and the money. So no one looks to the long term good, just the next battle.

If someone came in and started barking orders the clubs would just ignore them, hence the situation we now have where the RFL make recommendations which the clubs vote on and then the RFL has the last say if there is deal lock. The only way the break this is for the RFL or some other body to fill the clubs with enough gold to give up their power. Also going back to the OP. SL does not rely on TV income alone, in fact far from it. The clubs major income is from ticket sales. With an average crowd of 10,000 any club over this gets £2.6 million roughly from ticket sales. Even at an average of 5k crowds you still get more from ticket sales than SKY.

The reason SKY gets so much control is because it's something that is seen as free money. ie money for nothing. Where as to grow crowds and merchandise takes effort. Also the margins are so thin in pro RL in the UK that without this money nearly all clubs would go bust. 2-3 would survive.

FTA would be a possible solution but the loss in income from TV would need to be matched for the clubs to jump for it. That's assuming you can get someone from FTA to bid for it. We all know what giving something for free does to the value of something. (Stobart)

The good news about Dave Smith, with his non-Rugby League background, is that he already seems to have identified that there is a lot of money to be made from the International aspects of the game. He has already stated we need to get more games played and improve the standard of the second tier nations.
I expect a lot more effort will be put into the next WC to make teams more competitive with the big 3 - which will mean bigger TV deals and more sponsorship dollars - basically we will spend more to make more - which might not mean a bigger profit in the next WC - but it means the concept will grow.
At the moment we put peanuts into the WC and get peanuts in return, while Rugby Union seem to put in hundreds of millions and get the same sort of return.
We need to get us some of that, and everything Smith has said about the international aspects of the code indicates that he sees that very clearly.

The biggest challenge for RL in this country is for the clubs to relinquish control to a neutral body.

Ego's, my club, my club, will continue to make this nigh impossible with clubs thinking that next season is long term investment.

At the risk of sounding like a record with a scratch, the WHOLE game in this country needs reorganising to bring it to the fore and competitive long term with the southern hemisphere. It will be painful, it will involve hard work, some noses will be put out of joint but if all those involved WANT it to succeed then it can. It need dedication, whole hearted involvement and some sacred cows to be sacrificed.

They did it in Australia, and currently have minimal consistent international opposition, but what were the "easy beats" Kiwis are making better strides than here and both have lower populations to work with.

The clubs still have the strange notion that signing overseas players is a better deal than developing their own players. Clubs seem to think that is the way to go. The excuse being that it improves the "quality" of the game and the clubs benefit.
This has been stated since 1982 and since then England/GB have won SOD ALL and with the current set up are likely to continue in the same vein for years to come unless change is made.

We have just had a successful World Cup, the consensus being that we can take that success forward. It ended in November, the new seasons start in February and all the news is of financially stricken clubs, overseas signing of players no one knows and nothing about the future, how good the game is, absolutely next to nothing.

As you sow so shall you reap. The game since then has sown on stony ground or not bothered to sow at all. It looks like another meagre harvest so people will go elsewhere for their needs.

But how do you take power from the clubs? At the moment the clubs are after more power not less? They have the power and I people rarely give up power. Even less likely for 12 clubs to give up power all at once.

It's a catch 22.

Once the clubs have all the power they then can't agree amongst themselves!

Getting the same tv deal would open up endless doors, we can never be a NRL though but can be so much better if we focus our product on the culture of our own shores and stop this licensing garbage

The RFL are the governing body not a commercial enterprise.
This is why many club chairmen are frustrated at the RFL trying to do what they have proved repeatedly that they can't do and that is run the whole game on a commercial basis.
SL needs to run its own commercial affairs, It needs its own Chairman, CEO and the power to raise its own funds from commercial sources.
It seems to me that they are trying to create a body like the "Barclays Premiership" in soccer and the same in Union. Not a breakaway but a body that can decide its own future and not have it imposed upon them by people who are incapable of running the whole of the game.

After the WC which was a great success, that's not due to those at the very top but their offshoot RLWC2013, we need to build on it very quickly. International Rugby can take us forward but it is now up to us to make the Four Nations comp here more competitive. That means improving the French team considerably.
There is only one way this can be done and that is by having another French team in SL, Toulouse.

Toulouse should be given notice they can be brought in from 2015 or 2016. SL should be the body to supervise this ensuring they have the commercial backing not just to survive but thrive in SL. Interesting note on their crowds was that when Catalans went there with an on the road game around 15k showed up to watch, and Toulouse weren't even playing.

IMO SL should be working to strengthen itself commercially and broaden its scope of clubs in the League. They should be working alongside the RFL to take the game forward both at club level and take the International game forward too.

I give you

Bradford Bulls
Castleford Tigers
Hull HR
Wakefield Trinity Wildcats
Salford Reds
Crusaders
Paris St Germaine
Sheffield Eagles
Huddersfield Giants
Hull FC
Gateshead

All SL clubs who could run the game financially better than the RFL. The same SL who dived up the cash they "stole" from the Bulls and still clubs could not make ends meet.

SL was initially run as a seperate organisation but soon found it couldn't cope and came back under the RFL umbrella.

That track record really shows me, and probably some others just how brilliant those that run SL clubs really are.

And after the FREE sponsor of SL, a year of no sponsor, this years is............................................................

I'll take your comments under advisement!

He has a point that lack of competence is not limited to the RFL.

Would the clubs give over any more power to the new SLE chairman than the RFL chairman. For me it's the set up of the clubs holding all the cards that is the biggest issue. It leaves no power for anyone else. Just advisory status.

Clubs need to be less reliant on the "Sky money". Total amateurs running clubs like Wildcats, Cas, Bulls, Broncos, and Widnes.

Why? I very much doubt there is any prof sporting club in the world that isn't 25-50% revenue reliant on media contracts. In NRL clubs would now be up around 30-40% of their revenue being from the NRL contract.