Quote: Erik the not red "why should we take his self serving views seriously?'"
Well, without him and the other club owners who fund the losses, we wouldn't have full time professional top flight RL in this country. At least not on a sensible or meaningful scale. They're among the most crucial stakeholders in the sport. They have a variety of views and Hudgell's is just one among them. He's arguably been vindicated over the newco-end of licensing thing. Though his assumption that letting/making them start again at the bottom would have meant fewer rather than just different SL teams wasn't a given.
And the Stobart thing he and Pearson and others were against, also turned out badly.
Identifying problems is easier than finding solutions though. Increasing revenue would be lovely but is no doubt difficult. Dividing the pie between fewer mouths is easier, but comes at an obvious cost.
And if Hudgell or Pearson are being self serving in their similar views, then I hope that they recognise that a major and inevitable structural problem will always exist - the willingness of other clubs to spend the extra income in the pursuit of success. Hudgell has expressed a preference for 10 teams in SL. If they got all the Sky money, Rovers would be not far off breakeven in theory - assuming they made the cut. But Leeds, Wigan and other cashed-up clubs would soon start pushing for an increase in the cap (which is long overdue really), and in a smaller league they'd have more democratic clout.
It isn't just about how much money there is in the sport, it's also how evenly spread it is. Smaller and even mid-sized clubs without benefactors will always struggle, on every level, against big clubs or big benefactors. Locking out benefactors locks out vital cash. Smaller, less successful clubs will struggle to grow and (understandably) there's huge resistance to mergers. Breaking up big clubs would be ridiculous. So we're stuck really.