Lenegan's Salary Cap comments and the worry for RL

Quote: cadoo "The blame for all this lies firmly with the RFL and the Super League Chairmen who have made some wholly moronic business decisions taking this sport forward. The worst one has to be giving away the Super League sponsorship for free to Stobart to have a few RL players on the backs of lorries. We now don't have a title sponsor at all and is it any wonder? Could you imagine Rugby Union officials making a similar decision? Incidentally Rugby Union signed a four year £20 million deal with Aviva. We gave our name out for free to Stobart. The previous Engage deal was (reportedly) worth £1.2 million a year.

How is it that a sport that pulls in better viewing figures than Rugby Union ends up with a £90 million over five years (approx £18 million a year) tv deal and RU are able to negotiate a £152 million tv deal over four years (approx 38 million a year)?

It is situations like the ones mentioned that is crippling our sport.

We are in a difficult situation. Our salary cap is not going up anytime soon. The wages for a professional RL player deteriorate every year. The fact that in sixteen years we have not kept RL wages in line with inflation is ridiculous.

The key decisions our administrators make for our game in the next few years are of the most important in our history IMO. If we continue to make poor business decisions as a game that does not encourage growth in line with other competitions then I cannot see any other result other than us becoming a sub-standard competition that has to revert back to being semi-professional.'"

the new superleague tv deal is £23m per year (the rfl released a document, now gone) see posts 12,15 and 16 on this thread forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1699938

as for sponsorship RU just has a different type of market and so can attract larger sponsorship.

agree that the stobart deal was a disaster.

the new TV deal for RU with bt is only about £18/19m per year for the domestic game. the rest (upto £152m for domestic and European) will come down to what European competition is in place. there is a disagreement going on regarding sky/bt/rfu and other nations