the income from Sky isn't enough to fund 14 teams to spend up to the full cap so a 2 tier league of 10 + 10 wont have equal funding, the lower 10 will be more like the worst 4 teams from SL now and the best of the rest from lower divisions......with a lot less funding than the Top 10 teams

I think this is something that would have to be negotiated with SKY (or whichever broadcaster had the TV rights)

One of the many problems that we have is that, the big boys in SL are looking for a larger slice of the current SKY money, plus the clamour for more "meaningful and intense matches" which, in fairness wont happen until every game is vital for qualification for the playoffs.
So, really we are talking about the lack of investment, plus the greed of the larger clubs.

What we should have done imo, is to promote the top club from the championship each season (providing that they hit "minimum SL criteria"icon_wink.gif until there are say 20 SL standard clubs and then split the league into 2, either as east and west conferences, or have the best performing teams in SL1 and the other 10 in SL2.
This does rely on TV money but, IF the game is attracting larger TV audiences it is not unreasonable to expect a better sponsorship deal.

Finally, which ever path the game goes down, there needs to be agreement in advance so that adequate planning and preperation can be made by all of the clubs involved.

Sky wont pay decent money for the 2nd tier. Whatever viewing figures these SL2 games get, they will be less than that same game if it was SL1. The same with attendances. All SL2 is is sop to some clubs who aren’t capable of being SL sides.

The conference thing does make sense, especially with the play-offs and GF and would be worth it just to stop whining from Wigan, There aren’t however, sadly, 6 clubs in the lower leagues which could sufficiently contribute to SL to make a 20 team SL sustainable. Some would argue there isn’t the player pool for 12 heartland sides, id slightly disagree with that, but I certainly cant see any kind of argument that we could support 18 heartland clubs. Then we come to fans and sponsors. Wakefield and Cas are about 4k each away from where they need to be, Fev are about 9k from that. Are there another 17000 people who will attend every week in the Wakefield district? I don’t think so, are there the sponsors to help support three teams in that area? Again neither of the two we have are bringing in big bucks to from sponsors, why assume that would change if we added another? Unfortunately our game si too constrained at the moment for any expansion in the size of the league, through the addition of new heartland clubs to be anything other than cannibalising the existing fanbase.

IF the rfl were to move towards that kind of set up, they should look at the two most obvious expansion clubs, Toulouse and Sheffield and tell them to prepare for admission in 3 years time, then speak to the heartland clubs and any other possible expansion areas and tell them to put together their bid for Super League, if out of that we can find another two clubs who will add to SL and not simply cannibalise the existing fanbase, whether they be expansion or heartland clubs then we expand to 18, if not, we expand to 16.

I like the idea of two conferences - perhaps each of 8 teams more realistically, though I think we're more likely to shrink than grow in the short-term, unfortunately.
Your last sentence is the really important point, IMO. Whether we like it or not, we're approaching a major crossroads and there doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement of it from the top.
iirc it takes a two-thirds vote among SL clubs to change anything. That is currently 10 of 14 and it is a struggle to see that level of consensus for any option at the moment, so we might just drift on with a pared back form of licensing, which'd be de facto franchising.

I think that it goes without saying that if there is a SL1 and SL2 then SL2 would have less funding than the top division, although there would certainly need to be a higher level of support than the current 2nd tier receives.
However, if 2 confrences was feesable, then funding should be equal, which would of course require additional "investment" from sky.

Going slightly o/t for a moment.
With RL being played mainly in England and Australia, should the RFL take its begging bowl to our antipodean cousins ?
In England, we pretend that we would like a strong international game and this is one of the primary reasons in the development of Catalan and the possible inclusion of Toulouse at some poiint in the future.
As things stand, especially with the $billion Aussie deal, the game in Europe will fall further and further behind and there is a strong possibility that eventually the Aussies just wont be interested in coming over here.
It's like a lottery winner making new friends and not bothering with the "old school". Lets face it, they are the "haves" and we are most certainly the "have nots".

They'll be about as keen to help SL clubs as SL clubs are to help those in the championship - probably less so with it being the other side of the world.

They're already 'helping' our international team by paying the wages of some our best players - Burgess, Graham etc. That is the only subsidy we can realistically expect. Would we really want to become reliant on Aussie largesse, even if we could persuade them?

I think looking for a pot of gold at the end of a Sky or NRL rainbow is pretty much futile, our budget is what it is, it isn't likely to grow dramatically in the forseeable, so it is just how best to divide it.

We've got options, none of them ideal, but we just have to adapt.

The only way that any kind of contribution from the NRL/ARL would work is in the form of a contribution to the RLIF. I’d have no problem with every league contributing 10% of their revenues to the RLIF, which would take independent control of the international game, the rules and any expanded WCC. But I cant see either the RFL or ARL/NRL agreeing to give up any funding or more importantly (to them) control.

I totally agree Smokey and the comment was made, very much, tongue in cheek.
However, the disparity in valuation of the 2 very similar competitions is quite staggering.

Some clubs (including mine) have already started putting together their licencing bids for the next period (2015-2017). How can they do this when they don't know the criteria ?

In the build up to the last round of licencing perhaps they should have attended fact finding days out at SL clubs, such as Crusaders, Wakefield, Salford and Bradford. There was much to learn from these beacon of lights.

Indeed there was !
I hope Fax submit more that 2 sides of A4 for their next application

Better that than a catalogue full of lies

Totally agree.
In the modern world style is deemed to be far more important than substance.

obviously in the last round of licences the old adage ran true..." bullsh*t baffles brains"

Or, more likely Wakefield, Salfords and Bradfords bid is decent and they possibly could be sustainable but it isn’t guaranteed, but Fax’s bid is written in crayon over 2 pages of A4 with one of those pages taken up with colouring in, and it is titled Halyfacks Rugbee bid, whereas Fev and Barrow are definitely not sustainable, they don’t even have a stadium capable of containing the level of attendance they would need to be sustainable.

The present Sky deal expires in 2017, and I don't see them re-negociating it so we're probably stuck with the current set-up until then - although I'm in full agreement that things need to change I haven't joined in this thread because I don't think there will be any. To make a wild prediction for the next round of licencing it's Cas' out with Halifax or possibly Fev in and London out (Nigel Woods is making 'we can't put up with this much longer' noises, which he wouldn't be doing if he thought that Sky would object) with Toulouse in.

Bet those creditors loved the glossy applications you half wit. Super? Really?

That was for Smokey by the way

Funnily I knew who you meant before reading either the previous page or this post.......

I bet they did considering both Wakefield and Bradford paid additional monies to creditors so they could stay in SL and minimse their punishment whilst in SL. IN BRadfords case they likely wouldnt have paid anything at all as the club would have simply disappeared had they been relegated.

Bet the Halifax creditors, the numerous times they had the begging bucket out, loved the fact we had P+R to further destabilise them, you silly monkey

Halifax don't deserve a licence. I have said that repeatedly on here - we are just not a viable option and our fan base is poor. I have no argument on that score. My query is with the licence process and the assessors who clearly did not do their homework on Bradford. Gloss over that all you want Smokey, with your trolling and your childish jibes and the argument that licensing is not supposed to stop clubs ruining themselves is insanely wrong. That's exactly what it's supposed to do!!

Fact is there aren't enough quality clubs to give true meaning to the title "Super League".

Silly monkey? Indeed.

In fairness to the assessors we don't know what their actual remit was or how much access they were granted to in-depth financial information. With small organisations like RL clubs it's relatively easy to hide underlying problems. So I'd say the process clearly failed but that doesn't necessarily mean that the assessors failed.

More worrying IMO is that Bradford's demise seems to have been hasted by reliance on a business plan that pretty much anyone should have been able to see the holes in. Whoever passed that as fit was either clueless or wildly optimistic.

Licensing was never supposed to stop clubs ruining themselves, it wouldnt be possible for any system ever to stop that.

If the 'assessors' were picking clubs who were guaranteed never to go bust, then we wouldnt have anyone in SL, not Leeds, not Wigan, no-one. The fact is no sport in the world has clubs who are guaranteed to never go bust. Not the Premier League, RU, NFL, NBA, NRL anything. There is an element of risk in all of them. We are a smaller sport than them, our margin of error is smaller, so our risk is higher.

If 'stopping clubs ruining themselves' was 'exactly what it's supposed to do' i wouldnt be in favour of it, because it would somehow manage the dual failures of not only being impossible, but also a pretty unambitious aim.

In part, I agree with you. Licensing can't do that. It's not the governing body's job to stop clubs going bust. But herein lies the problem. They can't have it all ways. They need to be clear what licensing is supposed to achieve. If they make the claim that its about financial stability, then they should expect to get slated when it apparently achieves no such thing. If it's not, don't say it is in the first place. And since the RFL is supposed to be about more than SL, an assessment of what licensing does or doesn't do needs to be taken across the game as a whole. The problem with the RFL is the incredibly fluid definitions of what they're supposed to be achieving. People with any sense can see that, generally speaking, they're making a right mess of things, but they can defend almost anything - with your support of course - because nobody can pin the beggars down to what they claim to be trying to do for the sport in the first place.

And as for the whole hiding behind the auditors in the licensing process, they've got to do better than that. 90% of whether a clubs plan is going to work is down to whether their plans for getting people to turn up will work. Auditors can't make that call, it needs the good judgement of people who understand both RL and sports in general. The RFL have to take responsibility for the failures such as Crusaders. Ultimately it's just poor judgement. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, yes, but eventually people have to stand up and admit "you know what, I'm not very good at this"

Is he?
[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/mar/08/london-broncos-build-hull-kr[/url



To me, that's him paying lip service to David Hughes, but actually not being prepared to do anything about it........YET.

London will in all probability be left with no benefactor after 2014 or at least a reduced financial input from Mr Hughes.....I really can't see anyone being interested in further investment without assurances of being given time to build the club up....so forme, the RFL will needto take a major holding in the club or guarantee them a licence for 20 years so asto attract a business minded investor.

London will probably drop out....they won't be ejected by the RFL.