The balance between giving the clubs some consistency in terms of being able to plan for the future with some financial certainty and keeping things exciting is a tough one.
I'd still be in favour of Franchising, to give them the knowledge that they are not about to lose their revenue streams, and add new franchises when appropriate based on open and transparent criteria. However this doesn't address the stagnation that can occur at the lower end of the table and the lack of interest this brings. We've still only had 4 teams win SL (Leeds, Wigan, Bradford, Saints) and I think it's almost mission critical that someone else breaks that cycle (Warrington or Cas look most likely).
If we did go back to Franchising, how do we keep it interesting to those in the bottom half of the table?