Board index ‹ RLFANS MAIN ‹ The Virtual Terrace ‹ Financial Problems In Sport (Slightly OT)

IMO, the clubs all need to concentrate of a balance of attracting fans and sponsors, with the pursuit of glory and the development of players.
21 teams have taken part in nearly 17 seasons of SL but only 4 Have won it. 4 of the last 5 grand finals have been between the same 2 teams. This points to the comp not being as competative as some would like us to believe......outside of the 4 teams that have won it, only 1 other got to a GF and only 1 other won a minor premiership.

None of these 6 teams is in DIRE straits and neither do they average less than 10,000 a game.....there is no coincidence there........fans like winning teams, but you also have to applaud the work done by the marketing teams at Saints, Hull FC, Wigan, Wire and Leeds, who between them all have "offers" when the "smaller clubs come calling......Bradford had the right idea recently....just a very poor execution and insane forcasting procedures.


Of the remaining 8, Catalans seem to be heading in the right direction financially and Huddersfield have made MASSIVE inroads to their pursuit of sustainability....although the continued reliance on KD's money is still a problem.

HKR, Castleford and Wakey, and to a certain extent, Bradford have a traditional area from which to attract the 10,000 fans paying a proper price to ensure their sustainability......Salford and London, whilst maybe having to compete with thousands of other "things to do", should still have no problem attracting 10,000 fans.....

BTW, in a nutshell, 10,000 fans, at home, 13 times a season is worth about 3.25 million in ticketing and residual income to a club....add sponsorship and SKY and you have 5 million.
1.7 cap, leaves 3.3 to run your business and development......as you increase your fan base, your revenue goes up....you become more profitable and you can do more to retain those fans.....even during the lean years....

what you don't do is spend everything in the pursuit of glory hoping it will in turn attract fans....those types of fans don't hang around when the team lose....ask Bradford.

Don't disagree with any of that. For HKR we haven't had the facilities to attract an avg 10K fans but soon will have. You could say we don't then belong in SL but if you are going to set the bar at 10k avg fans then SL would be a very small comp!

Here in lies the problem. With the current salary cap you need to be averaging 10k fans plus have some resonable corporate support and a sugar daddy doesn't hurt for the lean years. Can we have 14 clubs that can achieve that? I have my doubts which is why I would suggest the salary cap is still too high for the avg income earnt by clubs.

SL had better brace itself for a drying up of NRL players and a loss of some of its best English players in the coming years:

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 21u3e.html

JB Down Under wrote:

SL had better brace itself for a drying up of NRL players and a loss of some of its best English players in the coming years:

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 21u3e.html

This is the problem with sport in general....the 16 (+2) NRL clubs will get a bigger slice of TV Pie and instantly waste it on players salaries......as other have said, if "other codes" want to pay stupid money for a few players, then so be it, but don't raise the bar just to stop an imaginary code war......

The NRL needs to plough a fair chunk of their new found wealth into sustainability in future years.....because if the TV bubble bursts or rights revenue even simply freezes, then in 5 years time, you'll have another situation like we saw at the start of this season, with clubs looking for assurances and advances...

Sustainability in Aus is different because of the structure of clubs ownership through communities, but it is still an issue.....getting the average up to 20k would add up to an extra $35,000,000 a year in ticketing revenue alone.......or 2 million each.

TV and in particular, Uncle Rupert, is becoming more important than the game itself and the fans.....to me, that's the cart before the horse and in the long run, not sustainable.

I saw an interview with Lord Sugar a while back, talking about when he was chairman of Spurs at the time of the first Sky TV deal.

He, and a few other chairman, suggested that instead of allocating the huge amount of extra TV revenue between the clubs, that a proportion of it is put aside into a pot to put towards grassroots/smaller clubs etc. His argument was that each club would use this money simply to compete with one another, thus inflating prices unnecessarily.

The majority of chairmen voted against this idea wanting the cash and subsequently players salaries & transfer fees rocketted.