Anyone know what the central funding is this year?

I'm assuming it goes down significantly.

There is a small bonus for us on IMG in this area. There are 0.75 points available for what % your non central fund income is to the total.
So when the CF goes down, the % goes up, if you can keep the income the same.
Of course you'd expect income to go down in Championship but if sponsors stay and people keep buying season tickets and come to game. And buy shirts. We have a decent chance on that score.

Of course that will reverse when back in SL.

Think I read somewhere its around 40K and also previous parachute payments are now much reduced, not 100% and stand to be corrected, obviously any TV deal may impact.

Trinity will receive a parachute payment, although not the £1m it was 7 years ago, I do believe its a 6 figure sum, the central funding for Champ & L1 last year was around the £40k mark which is a bit of a joke.

One of the bugbears of being in the Championship is that details like this are difficult to track down, even though they tend to be of crucial importance.

FWIW Martin Vickers, the CEO at Fev, said last season that the "broadcast money" (ie central funding) accounted for less than 5% of the club spend each month. Fev were rumoured to have spent around £900k on the squad last year (though the spending budget at Fev has been halved for 2024) so you can do the maths from that.

It's a far cry from the Super 8s/Middle 8s era when it was widely agreed that Championship clubs faced an unrealistic task trying to develop into SL-quality clubs and so the top 2 clubs were given funding of something like £800k and £700k at one point.

In susbequent years there have been multiple deductions in the Sky money and, whilst obviously this has affected SL clubs too, the percentage decreases in funding for Championship clubs has been absolutely massive.

As far as parachute payments are concerned, in 2022 Derek Beaumont said Leigh received £400k on top of their central funding payment of £180k, (which incidentally meant that the wealthiest club in the division received three times more funding than any other club).

This makes it really important to bounce back up to SL

Hugely important. I am hoping upcoming signings match that exact ambition. Short term pain for long term gain I guess.

With Toulouse having a new owner plus, other clubs having a dig, it wont be a given. Not to mention the lottery of the play offs.
It should be an exciting season.
Our new found support will help massively !

Has the new ownership definitely gone through?
I haven’t read anything official on it and they have only made a couple of signings and quite a few players have left

It's being held up by a couple of French Directors. Jacques Minnards and Francoise Carter.

I really laughed out loud at that one. Thank you.

There are a few factors at play here.

A lot depends on whether the SL expands to 14, that's two up.

There are also two clubs in SL who from what I'm told might not make it through the 2024 season.

Salford are the obvious one, but I'm also told that London never expected promotion and were caught totally unready. I know they have the SKY money, but as a Championship club they were barely breaking even. In essence the SKY cash is there only income for players, the rest is already spoken for. Unless they can attract significant crowds they may well fold. Plough lane is a great venue, but very difficult for fans from the north to get to - easily a 4-5 hour journey so I can't see them getting much away traffic.

The last two are very speculative, so PLEASE don't take me literally. But if it did all come to fruition you could end up with four promoted teams if I've got my sums right.

Salford Replacement
London Replacement
Further two to make a 14 team comp.

This is RL, it's not as impossible as it sounds.

There'll only be 12 SL teams in 2025, and it'll the 12 with the highest IMG grades. London won't be in whatever happens, and Salford's spot would just go to the next highest graded club. When we get to 12 Grade A clubs then they'll look to expand.