Quote Steve0="Steve0"If Toulouse had 2 or 3 years exemption from relegation like Catalan did then they'd have time to build up a half decent team, rather than signing the cast offs from Leigh, who signed the cast offs from Toronto etc etc. If the French broadcasters knew there were two competitive french teams playing each week, it comes a more attractive proposition than showing Toulouse getting beaten each week...Sky have cut their funding by £14m, so the sport isn't an attractive proposition currently in the UK for broadcasters either...I don't think promoting Leigh or fetherstone will suddenly make Sky give us the £14m extra funding...do you? Only so many sky dishes you can sell to small northern towns.
Catalan regularly get crowds around 10k, they also hold the record super League attendance of getting 31.5k fans at the nou camp...that game generated a lot of press attention. Crowds are down amongst pretty much all super League clubs , very few games sell out anymore, so it's not just a French issue, we don't sell out the kcom, Leeds don't sell out headingley, Wigan don't sell out the DW (they only open 3 stands now for a lot of games)
Toulouse crowds are poor currently around 4/5k, but could increase if they were to become more successful, there is a huge potential market to tap into there given the size of the city...whereas Featherstone and Leighs potential market is a lot smaller...Leigh's crowds are a similar sizes to Toulouses and they've been in super league 3 times.'"
Catalans have been with us since 2005 and the TV deals have gone backwards. One off games in Barcelona are bound to attract a crowd. We had a decent crowd in Oz. I was there.
Nothing to stop two uk teams playing at different venues. (Magic)
As I said I’m playing D’s A here.
