Was pottering through the BBC Sport website as I'm sure most of you do when I came across Dave Woods' article on the competition having spoken with the RLWC CEO Jon Dutton.

A few things stood out in this, firstly they will make a decision in May 21 as to whether the WC will take place or moved to 2022. Inclined to agree with Dutton that moving it to the same time in 2022 & trying to compete with the Football World Cup would be shooting yourself in the foot. Not sure how easy it would be to get SL & NRL on boards for that. In any event we know the Aussi's only really care about the NRL.

The second thing that stood out was funding. Dutton said the whole plan for the WC was based on generating 90% of revenue from ticket sales & Government funding. Well the Govt has already agreed to stump up £15m for the event & a further £10m for legacy community projects. The suggestion is that if grounds are only allowed to be part full, they will expect more money from the Govt. Not a great use of taxpayers money in these times I would venture.

The only conclusion you can come to from this reliance on ticket sales is there has not been a huge amount generated from TV or Corporate Sponsorship. Yes, there is a Principle Sponsor Cazoo, no idea how much they have paid, but they are at the end of the day 2nd hand car sales people. Add to that Official Sponsors Deloitte doing the accountancy, Eversheds Sutherland, Kappa, Manchester Met Uni & Kuehne+Nagel & Partners Community Integrated Care, Movember, Northern Powerhouse, Global Climate Action, Sports England, UKSport, Dept Culture & Sport, RFL & Intl RL. Looking at that lot it is easy to see why 10s of millions of pounds will not be generated. Where are the big Global Brands? Should the organising committee called for the Monkey to sort it out?

If you look at the 2019 Union World Cup, they were able to attract the likes of Emirates, Heiniken, Mastercard, DHL Societe Generale plus local Japanese sponsors that are by no means small. They were able to sell their TV rights to every continent to a greater or lesser extent. Have no idea who we have sold our TV Rights to of course or how much has been paid.

On the whole I'm not that bothered if it takes place or not, I appreciate NB & some others on here do but any competition where only 3 teams can win is not competitive & unless we can increase interest, the big hitters won't want to invest. But if it does go ahead, fingers crossed it makes as Harry Enfield would have said, "Loads of Money".

DC.
Dont get me wrong, i would love to see RL teams established and succesful in Bristol, Birmingham, nottingham, London, Glasgow.
Reality is that aint happening any time in any future me or you will see. There is not the money and there are not the fans or the players

Don’t think there is any fan base in Scarborough, their football team flourished for a while then vanished. Barcelona has greater attraction purely because it’s in Catalonia and might tap into regional pride etc . Unlikely to worry Barcelona FC, but expansion to Scarborough isn’t the answer to any question I am aware of having been asked.......

There is probably more rugby league fans in scarborough than there are anywhere near bristol though. At least there is a reasonable community game around there as well. Sadly the SW still struggles to attract any real interest in the community game, and thus comes from someone who has played down there.
At least with barcelona its on the edges of the french league set up.

I only mentioned Bristol as an example of a progressive city that likes sport, there are others of course.

Scarborough not likely to get anyone's pulse racing, least of all TV broadcasters but great if you want to be beside the seaside.

We should be celebrating any new RL venture