Quote: Jaywire "I imagine it was to avoid the absolute chaos of having Bradford disappear from this year's league before it finishes. I believe the league will stay at 14 because as well as being easier to deal with for the moment, dropping to 13 may well breach the Sky television contract and will almost certainly result in less money when it is next renegotiated due to fewer games and viewers.'"
We don't know the terms of the Sky contract, but our legal guys will have crawled all over it before it was signed. I would be very surprised if they did not have a 'get out clause' for a club going into administration and hence reducing the size of the league. That would surely be a basic precaution.
I would think it more likely that the agreement allows Sky to pick and schedule any game from the league that they wish. One team dropping out will hardly make any difference; each team in a league of 13 will play 24 matches, so that is still a hell of a lot of games to chose from in total.
By far the most important aspect of the agreement will be the TV viewing audience as this dictates the price that Sky can demand from advertisers. As we already know, viewing audiences have risen 30-40 % this year, so I doubt Bradford dropping out of SL will affect this much.
