Why?

Why didnt the EPL or the FA buy City when they were on thier knees?

Maybe they were too busy buying Portsmouth

WTF has that got to do with rugby league

reading....

“Under the ownership of SLE, we can plot a course for Bradford Bulls which is in the best interests of the club, the competition and the wider game.

“If our offer is accepted, SLE will welcome approaches from all interested parties who have an interest in helping us secure a bright future for professional Rugby League in Bradford.”

... In the SLE press release, I wonder if its been bought short term to stave off liquidation, and extend the time to get a new bid/owener that is acceptable to the RFL etc in, rather than a permenant arangement?

In effect the SL company being a short term holding body.

I think - and hope - you are right.

It also says nothing about retaining the SL status or suchlike, so perhaps not quite as cut and dried, as some people think.

Would be interesting to see the offer though, is there any requirement fot details to be made public etc?

Bingo.

But why wait for the details when you can be damning for effect.

What utter tripe, but if by any chance it did happen you could kiss goodbye to at a good 100,000 gate money every season and add to your ever increasing losses.

rlHetherington explainsrl

Really does seem fair enough to me. The RFL have taken action to prevent liquidation and effectively buy time for the Executives to find a new owner. The difference between here and Wakefield is the administrators found a buyer for Wakey.
I think that there's been two possible reasons for the offers not being accepted. Either they wanted the ground off the RFL for next to nothing or the RFL wouldn't give any promises of the license not being revoked.

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Sets a precedent for every club to go bust in the future.
Why don't we ask SLE to pay our club's wage bill as well.
Salford are strongly rumoured to be teetering on the brink - can we afford to run 2 SL clubs this way?

Some on here really do have selective memories.

Try casting your minds back to rlNovember 1999rl When we merged with Gateshead, we received a loan of £1.25 millions and IIRC Superleague held £500k worth of shares for a number of years.

Stones & glass houses spring to mind

Short term, fair enough, nobody wants to see a club go bust. Long term, the precedent this sets is ludicrous.
Bradford have happily spent money they don't have on players they can't afford, flogged tickets at massive discounts to boost crowds etc to try and compete. That's fine, that's their prerogative, but it hasn't worked and they have to take their medicine for that. They knew all along it was a possibility - not like sport is short of examples of clubs that overreached and crashed and burned.
I'm confused why people - fans, executives, the RL - keep going on about them being one of the game's historic names, a club of great prestige etc. Are they saying, in not so many words, that when Salford go the same way in a few weeks that they're just going to be allowed to go bust and disappear because nobody really supports Salford anyway and we would quite like to bring the number of teams in the league down?
Can we see this list of clubs that are historic and prestigious that they can do and spend pretty much as they like safe in the knowledge that if it goes tits up the league will buy their ground and then, if that doesn't work, the whole club? What about Widnes? Are they historic and prestigious enough? Castleford? Hull FC? Where's the line here?
This is up there with when they allowed Wigan to ignore the salary cap and avoid what looked to be relegation a few years back. It's bizarre. We're propping up a loss making venture because it's an old club.

What about Crusaders? And why now? Fans, players and supporters have pledged the best part of £1m to try and help out the Bulls. Not to mention all of the staff that went into redundancy.

Yes, RFL helped is out in the past with our merger etc. But the league didn't buy us. We struggled, got demoted, then promoted again and worked our way back up.

I'm glad for the Bulls, and hope they do get sorted out, but I just think it's been poorly handled from the start.