Ahem, i will take this one, you fishing Fatbelly?

These kind of figures aren't exactly intrinsic to the cost of living, are they?

Does this mean ESPN wont be getting any games?

Championship, Challenge cup and internationals still up for grabs so who knows.

Keep a FEW players happy, by upping their wages, or ditch 2 teams and let them drift to the abyss of Championship rugby, and possibly never come back (Workington, Oldham)....I know where my loyalties are.

Oour game has lost enough teams over the last 20-30 years, we can't afford to lose any more, or we will become a bigger laughing stock amongst the sports media

If SL increases then surely it will have to go to 16 teams to look after the awayday weekend?

I can relate to your POV LG but I disagree.
There is not enough quality in the league to support 14/15 teams. Watching the likes of Crusaders, Wakey, Salford get tonked at least once every 3 weeks is no good for the competition. Yes they can pick up for the odd game, eg Salford beating us. But on the whole this isn't the norm.
Now not for one minute I'm suggesting these must go (although if I had to be cut throat about it, they would go), they have just been poor this year (in fact in light of what's gone on at Wakey recently I have to congratulate John Kear and the playing squad) but I'm with what TS said earlier this year.
Reduce the comp to 10 teams and increase the salary cap.
NOW... We all know the MASSIVE difference between the championship and SL. Here is a chance, if we do get rid of 4 teams, to plough some of that money into the Championship teams so they can also increase their salary cap.
So, for example, if we increase the SL SC to £2M per annum (it's £1.65M at the mo if I'm correct) and the Champ SC to £750K per annum (currently 300K I think - please correct me if I'm wrong) this will allow the Champ sides to (in theory) double the quality of their squads while there will be a slight increase in squad quality in SL.
This is keeping it really basic, obviously administration costs and other things come into it, but £2M per year x 4 years x 10 teams = SL salary bill for 2012-2016 would be £80M. Lets say club revenues cover 50% of the cap, and they get the other 50% from TV rights. This leaves £50M in the kitty which can cover advertising and admin costs, RFL wages and can be passed onto the Championship & grassroots RL. Not forgetting other RFL income of MM, CC, GF & Champ TV rights which will also be available.
As I said, it's dumbing it down A LOT. But IMO this would be the best way forward.

Just out of interest my 10 would be -
Wire, Wigan, Saints, Leeds, Hudds, Bradford, Quins, Catalans, Hull FC, Cas.

If the RFL reduceed the competition to ten teams, Sky would reduce their monies accordingly.

One would soon get tired of seeing the same 10 sides week in week out.

And if the league is reduced to 10 teams, that's 9 home games per season, that's 4 less match day revenues etc... not good

If you use the football analogy re teams getting tonked, there would be a Prem league of about 10 teams MAX....not viable I'm afraid
Like it or not, we need clubs like Wakey, Cas, Salford.

If we want to increase British quality, you reduce the amount of overseas players, and these ridiculous loopholes to get them in. Then we wont lose our youth players who get disillusioned, because they can't break into their respective first team's.

Going back to Dita's original point of losing players to the 3 point game, we haven't lost THAT many (British) players in the last decade...Robinson, Farrell, Ashton and Eastmond...the rest have come back with their tails between their legs

But would they? Do they negotiate the cost based by per club or per game?
Less clubs = Less places Sky have high profile games at = Less local advertising at grounds
On the flip side, less clubs = higher quality teams = closer more exciting games which is a better advert for RL and Sky to sell the product.

You may have a valid point, my gut feeling is you're right but I think the RFL would have a case to argue to keep the figure at close to if not £90M.

It's better than nothing but won't make a difference other than providing a bit more financially security to the 14 SL clubs, of which only about 4/5 spend (or look to) the full salary cap.

100k per season per team extra. Bare in mind 2 sides went into administration last year with Quins also struggling at one point bringing in another sidecwoukd just make it arguably a worse deal split then clubs get now.

5 years is too long too IMO as economy can change a lot and I just hope we don't get left behind by other deals. Better than nothing but wouldn't call it 'an achievement'

Yes, Sky would reduce their money
Less teams = less games = less things to fill their 4 channels with. If you show less of a thing, you pay less for it.

I do agree with getting rid of the loopholes, definitely. That's another debate in itself.

It's a good point about loss of revenue, that could potentially be up to £1M loss in comparison to currently, but the extra TV revenue caused by less teams in the league could cover this. I would be interested to know if that could be the case.

I don't have anything against the clubs at the lower end of the league, I just don't think we have the pool of talent available to do 14 teams currently which offers a reasonably competitive league.
On their day, bottom could beat top. Thats sport. But if they played a full season against one another, that would probably only happen 2 or 3 times IMO which I wouldn't say is competitive.

In Aus they have 2 more first grade clubs, 12.5% more than SL. Now compare this to the talent pool available in the UK compared to Aus; for every seven people playing RL in the UK, if we stay ln a level comparison there should only be 8 playing in Aus but we all know it's nowhere near this.
10 teams in SL, means 37.5% more in the NRL. This would be a fairer representation of the talent pool available and therefore lead to a closer competition.

All this is figuratively speaking and in theory only. Arguably this is the most competitive our league has ever been, but we are cutting the Championship clubs away almost and it's going to get to the point where due to the financial restrictions on the Champ clubs, we won't be able to relegate anyone from the licensing system without crippling the club in question. This is why I mentioned invest some of the SL TV rights into the Championship to cut the severity of the gap.

The good thing is everyone will have an opinion and no one proposal will keep everyone happy. Let's face it, Mr Lewis at the RFL hasn't done badly for us so far.

In terms of less games, I disagree as you'd still have your two weekly games and arguably these games would be better. 1 week there was a Salford boreathon on the tele, just replace that with a better quality game. The review shows would have more time spent on reviewing individual teams and Martin Erm Offiah would have to talk about Wigan for 5 mins longer on SSN.

I still think a twin tier system of increasing clubs and reducing games would work better

West & East

i'll just go West for this example

Wire
Wigan
Saints
Salford
Widnes
Crusaders
Leigh
Barrow
Hudds
<French club Toulouse or Catalan>

10 clubs bigger crowds would make up the lost revenue of other clubs bringing a tiny following.
top 4 clubs going in to playoff with east top 4 clubs

It enables current championship sides to play to the big boys rules increases the number of clubs in which players can play for. i could see it working.

Any chance of increasing the SC for 2012 do we think?

Only if you want the money the clubs receive from SKY to remain the same for the next 5 years (with some struggling as it is).

It's a good idea, only if we had more players available to create a level playing field. But do we really have the quality to support what would effectively be a 20 team league? I don't think so.
You'd have to slowly work this idea in to build up the Champ clubs which are light years behind in terms of quality currently so they are at a stage to compete. Throwing them straight in would lead to maulings of the likes of Barrow effectively causing two tiers within each division, east & west finalists and the east & west whipping boys.

Its not that the Sky TV deal will influence the cost of living, its that you have to factor in rising costs when judging how big the increase is, because the TV money which goes to clubs will have to go on paying salaries, covering other costs which are rising.

The new deal is £90m over 5 years which is £18m a year. The last deal struck in 2008 was £50m over 3 years which is £16.667m a year. So compared to that deal we have had an 8% rise in nominal terms.

In those three years you've had annual inflation around 2.2% in 2009, 3.2% in 2010 and currently annual inflation of around 4.3% in 2011 so far.

So in real terms, in order to match the terms of the deal struck in 2008 on £16.667m a year, you would have to get a deal worth

16.667(1.022)(1.032)(1.043)=£18.3m

Now we're only half way through 2011 so that figure of annual inflation of 4.3% I'm using for 2011 may be an overestimate if inflation falls in the second half of the year but the point stands, that the overall rise in prices means the new deal is more or less breaking even rather than an increase.

However this is not to be sniffed at because other sports have struggled to break even, the Football League contract renegotiated this year was 26% lower in nominal terms than the last one, even before inflation was taken into account

Thats spot on. But look at the bigger picture.

SL gets £90 Million over 5 years
NRL TV Deal - 1 billion Australian dollars = £656 million British pounds over 5 years

Thats a massive difference, and we aint gonna compete for players etc are we?

RL is (in a couple of Aussie states) THE sport
RL is massivly behind football in it's heartlands

Britain is a selection of countries OBSESSED (beacause we are browbeaten with it, by the media) with football.

We're never going to come close to the Aussie's, until we get more media attention, which in turn, will get more people interested in the game, which will generate more money, which will improve us, etc, etc.

Until we get better media coverage, we're piddling in the wind

We all know, ours is the best game in the world, it's just a pity Joe Public isn't [ureally[/u aware of it

Media coverage doesn't have anything to do with it.

We have had wall to wall media coverage of football for decades and what have England achieved in football since 1986? There's far more media coverage in England of football than there is in Germany, Netherlands or France. Those countries follow football but I wouldn't say it was the national obsession like here. But those three have had far better track records in football than us.

I don't buy this argument that in England all the super talented athletes are turned away from rugby and go to football instead. Are guys like Gerrard, Lampard, Terry etc better athletes than say Morley, Graham, Peacock?

Even RU, which has far more media coverage than league, is there any evidence that RU gets the superior athletes?

That is the salient point. This is a GOOD deal.

My point, Sal, was aimed at money received from Sky, in comparison with the Aussie package the NRL receives, rather than success on the field (it was a reply to RP's, earlier)

Good job it was an improved offer now that Sport England has cut Rugby League funding.