Would be interesting to see if the RFL could call SKY's bluff.

I am going to make a guess that 12 months before the RFL contract with sky ends we start hearing rumblings of BT taking RL on-board. Wether we switch broadcaster or not the cap needs to increase and one way is to get rid of 2 sides from the Super League.

That would not hinder SKY at all they would get the same amount of games on just better quality.

The way soccer got billions out of Sky was via a blind auction. Sky thought they were at serious risk of losing soccer completely to Al Jazeera believe it or not. This forced them to over bid. Richard Scudamore who was in charge of the bidding played a blinder.

We need the same thing - competition for the sports broadcasting rights but not just a rumour.

Do we have someone with the same nous as Scudamore in the RFL who could get us into that position playing Sky and BT off against each other?



Well if you take that as adding two teams cap to the mix the cap is just over £1.8m now they rolled the special dispensations for long serving players etc into the main cap so that is £3.6m divided by 12. That is £300K per club extra. It would be a start but not enough really is it as it still leaves us way short of the competition. We need a big increase so some serious money is available.

But it's not two clubs is it. Bradford are currently not getting their Sky money, so it's actually only one payment saved.

But the salary cap did not get increased the money just went to the clubs and that's for 1 season only. Long term SL needs to get rid of the 2 worst on field and off field performing clubs.

Not going to quote your reply Dave0

Its so bloody simple if the RFL cut 2 club thats 300k. Should be you can play 1 marquee player what you like upto 500k per season. I am right in thinking that Sam is on approx 300k per season so if you add that to the 300k from cutting 2 SL clubs it would give 600k to us in extra cap space without the top earner on it. So you could divide the 600k around some of the better players in the squad.

Only issue you would get is the lesser clubs could not do this but its not the lesser clubs that are losing players to the NRL. I can see a tinkering in the cap in the next 2 years which might end up with something like i have mentioned.

Do we have the product that would play Sky and BT to bid off against each other?

Arguably not.

On the contrary.

Our sport is far better than the middle class/media supported sports such as cricket, tennis, golf and rugby union.

That is supported by the Superleague viewing figures.

Our viewing figures are probably even better than all the above boring dross put together.

Maybe it's a game of numbers ?

On the M62 corridor, I know personally many,many people, who subscribe only for RL.

We live in a populous area. These people pay SKY to watch RL.

Lancashire and Yorkshire are very populous areas of the country.

Advertisers pay to have their ads broadcast, Regional identity does not go amiss.

m.watoday.com.au/rugby-league/le ... 2opac.html

m.watoday.com.au/rugby-league/le ... 2opac.html

The Twittersphere seems to have exploded....

I'm not surprised if Twitter has exploded, this is disastrous if true. Well done Lenaghan in getting rid of possibly the greatest ever British player in my lifetime incl. Boston and Hanley.

You seem to have inside knowledge that this is IL doing and not Sam's, care to share?

Sam has just tweeted

@ samtomkins1 Plenty of rumours on here today...