Excellent programme. It’s a pity our local radio stations don’t show the same interest in rugby league in South Yorkshire.
Derek Beaumont talks a lot of sense. He was also on Rugby League Backchat this week talking to Rod Studd. He’s got the experience of both being in the Super League and the Championship so can see things from both angles.
Whichever way we look at it, the pot of money available to rugby league needs to grow. Distributing a bigger pot of money (whichever way it’s done) is better than distributing a smaller pot of money.
How can the pot of money be grown?The sport as a whole needs to look at what other sports do well and learn from them.
Rugby Union has a great international game. We don’t. That needs to change.
Through broadcasting rights, like it or not, Super League is what brings in the money. We must get that product right. The single biggest influence on our game is how much cash Sky are prepared to pay for the product. There are other avenues available should Sky pull out, or reduce their contribution, but that could leave the game in a hole when the current deal runs out at the end of 2021.
Streaming of matches is interesting but that is only likely to appeal to current supporters, rather than appeal to new fans. I would certainly be trying to get one live Super League game per week on the BBC. We need to do that to reach out to as many people as possible.
What is the best League Structure and how should it be funded?Here are a few numbers: Derek Beaumont said that Leigh’s central funding is £700k, with the club’s overall budget being £1.65 million. Swinton’s central funding is £175k. Super League clubs get around £2m in broadcasting rights. Leeds turnover is around £10m, with Wigan, Warrington, and St Helens around £7m.
It was particularly interesting that Derek Beaumont said that if promotion wasn’t a realistic possibility for Leigh this season, he would not invest the money he has. He can’t compete with Toronto’s bottomless pit of cash so should only one promotion place be available, he would have kept his cash in his pocket until a better opportunity arose, perhaps next season. The structure of the game must always encourage investment, not discourage it.
We’ve been there and done it before with ‘one up, one down’ promotion and it didn’t work. The promoted team wouldn’t be equipped to stay up as all the better players would already have been signed up by other established Super League clubs for the following season. Derek Beaumont suggested a ‘one year relegation exemption’ for promoted clubs. It sounds like a decent idea but you can’t really have a team given a ‘free ride’ for 12 months. It devalues the rest of the competition.
The only way the promotion/relegation issue can properly be overcome is if there isn’t a huge class gap between the top of the Championship and the bottom of Super League. With the Super Eights, and the dangling carrot of promotion, the class gap seems to have narrowed. Does this make a compelling case for keeping the Super Eights?
Super League clubs don’t like the jeopardy the Super Eights (or relegation) brings. All Super League players’ contracts are voided on relegation as the clubs can’t afford to keep the players on. This issue needs addressing. There shouldn’t be such a cliff edge situation.
The critical element is that central funding levels between the Super League and the Championship need to be brought closer together. I’m quite in favour of Derek Beaumont’s idea that Super League should be reduced to 10 teams with the funding presently spent on teams 11 and 12 being brought down to the Championship with them. I would then have a 10 team second tier and distribute the money equally between all clubs in the league. This should create a very vibrant second tier that could have much greater appeal from a marketing point of view both for fans and for commercial rights.
Where does that leave the rest of us? There are 18 teams left. I’m reluctant to suggest losing anyone but we must ask the question as to whether the bottom three teams in Championship One really deserve to be in the league? Coventry, Hemel and West Wales have won two games out of the 37 they’ve played with a cumulative points difference of minus 1,878.
I’d opt for a 15 team league (without Coventry, Hemel, and West Wales) leaving room for one new team to enter the competition if they satisfy certain pre-determined conditions. The central funding for this league would obviously be less than the second tier but for the good of the game, it shouldn’t be miles away from it. That’s why it’s vitally important to increase the overall ‘cake size’ so there’s more money available for everyone.
Throughout the structure, if the top teams in one league are as good as, if not better than the bottom teams in the next league, then a straightforward two-up, two-down, from each league should work.
The worst thing that could happen is that the Super League clubs breakaway or try to treat everyone else as second class citizens with short-term greed and self-interest at heart. Surely new Super League CEO Robert Elstone will be wise enough to know that isn’t in the best interests of the longer-term future of the game and will be able to stop the ‘power grabbers’ from wanting to go down this route.
Some of what I have written has been difficult to write because my interests lie with the Dons and I want to see us get as high up the ladder as we can. A 32 team Super League might see us squeeze in! The game needs a properly funded and sustainable road map for the next 10 years. That's got to be in every club's best interests including the Dons. We can’t keep flitting from one idea to another.
