BBC Programme about Rugby League Monday... Inside Out

Might be worth viewing...

bet you they say RL is skint

Which is all the more reason Neil and Rob have given TL time to put up or shut up!!!!

Should be interesting, I'll look out for it.

A point nh made at the forum was that it suits the strong or rich clubs for their competitors to struggle, to some extent. If, hypothetically, we suddenly became a wealthy club, it'd be interesting to see how or if it changed our perspective.

Another point he made was about the disparate agendas of different sized clubs and how it prevents change. You could get shut of Nigel Wood, but I think that is the more fundamental problem.

Iirc it needed a 75% vote to make any changes to the rfl .
The program is on at 7.30 which makes a good change from the gone 11pm rugby league usually gets

Good points by Hudgell. It's hard to solve the puzzle when so many aspects of the game commercially are up the creek.
Not enough quality players to go round 14 teams
A salary cap entirely uncompetitive vs NRL, making the latter a realistic and compelling option for the top 5-10% of homegrown players
A non-existent international platform, which even many diehard RL supporters are ambivalent about
Few teams averaging 10k attendances, with CC gates extremely low.

Going back 10 years, we still have a great product, but how far has the game really come? I'd say plenty of cash wasted but not sure what I'd have done differently, Stobart deal apart. Would the game be managed more professionally if Lenegan was chairman? Sounds like it might be a possibility. It also sounds barking mad IMO.

The loss of the sporting drama that was promotion and relegation, and a drift from licensing to out and out franchising with feeder/partner clubs has been the big controversy of the last few years, IMO. The old model had been coming apart at the seams, though, as the gap between sl and the rest became entrenched.

11 of 14 to pass a vote is less than ideal, certainly.

Given what happened the last time a Wigan Chairman took charge of the RFL, I bloody well hope not. Thankfully Richard Lewis came on board and helped turn things around

And to quote Mike Smith 'It's like Turkeys voting for christmas............It isn't going to happen'.
Now I know he didn't coin that phrase but he is right.
11 needed and I cannot see the likes of wakey, Cas, Salford and Widnes voting to agree to them possibly being kicked out on their ears.

In what way...????

Too many to list but:

The RFL was over £2m in debt following the World Cup disaster of 2000 - Lewis turned that around

Lewis also saw the reunification of the RFL & BARLA after nearly 30 years

Also don't forget, before Lindsay joined the RFL, he oversaw Wigan having to sell Central Park to Tesco in order to survive.

Whatever you may think about the state of our game now, it's in a far better condition than it was in 2002

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330Super League clubs are facing combined debts of £68.5m, a BBC Inside Out investigation alleges...[/url

Geez, how bad was it in 2002?

I'm talking about the state of the game, as in the governing body, not how mickey-mouse clubs conduct their finances

If they brought back P-R how would the clubs carry on that now have feeder clubs if one of them got promoted

The game is in far better condition..???

We have had four Elite level clubs either on the verge of bankruptcy or in administration in the last four years, the game combined is in the biggest financial mess it has ever been in, we have no sponsor for our major elite competition and are struggling with sponsorships elsewhere. The amateur game has become fractured. There are deep divisions between the Elite SL level and elsewhere in the professional ranks. We have seen the end of tours, the demise of the Challenge Cup....etc..etc

And this after the biggest injection of cash the game or governing body has ever seen over the last 10 years from Sky and Sport England.

I would say the Lewis/Wood years have been a complete horlicks...

League has not got money problems, It has a spending problem? the amount of cash from all sources would fund a competition similar to the old two league system prior to super league, with semi pro players with a smattering of full time pro,s at a few of the richer better supported clubs. The down side to that is although we would have a sustainable & possibly vibrant competition we would loose all our top players to Union, the NRL or to other jobs. The only question I have is why are the BBC interested in putting out this programe? on the same day SKY are launching Super league 2013 & the start of the build up to Unions 6 nations, or have I just answered my own question.

The irony of the RFL's argument that the sport has seen greater TV viewing and higher attendances - income streams have increased for the most part year-on-year - is a statistical fact.

But we cannot escape the fact we are in a triple-dip recession. Most clubs are seeing 10-20% fall in season pass sales, and its looking likely this will be reflected in overall attendances. Yet, a significant number of loss-making SL clubs will operate at the higher end of the salary cap (underwritten by benefactors). Therein lies the problem.

Until the clubs agree to match expenditure with income, or/and, more radically the benefactors 'investment' is treated as 'sponsorship' (and not directors loans) the worse the games Balance Sheet will appear.

On this latter point, if all benefactors 'sponsored' their clubs the Balance Sheets of every SL club would look 'solvent'. It wouldn't solve the problem (heavy reliance on benefactors) but it would leave the sport looking 'cosmetically' helluva lot healthier (on paper, at least) instead of looking into the abyss (on paper).

TV viewing is at a historical low hence the problems with sponsors. The average televised SL match is watched by maybe 250,000 viewers, a Grand Final between 300,000 - 400,000. Pre SL , we used to have 15-20 live games on the BBC throughout the season pulling in between 1.2 and 3 million. You can go back a few further years and we used to have live league game every week on BBC1 pulling in over 1.5 million . We now have just the 6/7 challenge cup matches and unfortunately the once heavily anticipated cup has suffered from the SL/Sky situation and is not the draw it once was.

The RL non-live market has reduced dramatically to a small percentage of the population, and the national press coverage has followed suit to a pretty much minimum show.

Furthermore the off field wage bills of clubs have just got silly. The actual paying of a maximum salary cap could easily be covered by each clubs Sky allowance and gate receipts. Every club could do this. What we see now is teams coming out to warm up with at least five staff assisting, we have managers of this , that and the other. We have highly paid CEOs hardly worthy of the title etc etc. I do not understand what some of these people actually do for their money.

The game needs an independent inquiry into all aspects of its governance.

Quote ="Legends and Icons"The program is on at 7.30 which makes a good change from the gone 11pm rugby league usually gets'" That's because it's bad news, which is always more newsworthy than good news. Synopsis here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330 Basically the 14 SL clubs have a total debt of £68.5m between them.

Quote ="Legends and Icons"The program is on at 7.30 which makes a good change from the gone 11pm rugby league usually gets'" That's because it's bad news, which is always more newsworthy than good news. Synopsis here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330 Basically the 14 SL clubs have a total debt of £68.5m between them.

Quote ="Kosh"That's because it's bad news, which is always more newsworthy than good news. Synopsis here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330 Basically the 14 SL clubs have a total debt of £68.5m between them.'" Is that over the 14 clubs, or 11 examined? It also says that if you disregard the two with "significant levels of net debt" the average drops to 3mil per club. So, assuming 14 clubs that means the 2 are something like 16 Million in debt each Or assuming 11 clubs, there are two that are 20.5 Million in debt. One excluded club was catalan, any idea who the two with Charitable Trust status are?

Quote ="Kosh"That's because it's bad news, which is always more newsworthy than good news. Synopsis here: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21211330 Basically the 14 SL clubs have a total debt of £68.5m between them.'" Is that over the 14 clubs, or 11 examined? It also says that if you disregard the two with "significant levels of net debt" the average drops to 3mil per club. So, assuming 14 clubs that means the 2 are something like 16 Million in debt each Or assuming 11 clubs, there are two that are 20.5 Million in debt. One excluded club was catalan, any idea who the two with Charitable Trust status are?

Reading through again, my guess would be that it's over the 11 clubs examined. Although that's not explicitly stated. Slightly muddled synopsis really.

No idea who the two clubs are with Charitable Trust status. Intriguing though, isn't it?

Difficult to believe that there are two clubs operating with >£16m net debt. They'd have to be clubs with extraordinarily rich backers/owners and the bulk of the debt as directors loans.

I think one of them is Wigan

link here; [urlhttp://www.wiganwarriors.com/WContent.aspx?id=2663&type=news[/url

The other may be the London Broncos

How does a review into the games running even get triggered? Surely somebody has to sanction a review to take place? The game is in a poor state of affairs and is constantly fending off union and the NRL to keep its best players, even though league is a better product. The season is starting without a sponsor for the main competition, we get little or no terestrial TV coverage unless its at stupid o clock at night, so there is little chance of attracting new audiences. Something needs to happen, the whole game needs to be marketed better but who can/will do this, i dont know!

Well that was worth watching er NOT

think I missed the 1st bit, but it struck me that everything that was on the BBC link earlier was inclueded, and nothing else.