This country is obsessed with football. The EFL Championship is probably one of the best attended leagues in Europe and with the amount of money in the game there are a lot of EFL clubs who can be promoted to the Premier League and do well, so maybe in football P&R isn’t broken. However in both codes of rugby it is different.
The RFL and RFU championship equivalent league in football would be well down their pyramid. Before starting this post I had a look at some of the RFU championship grounds and a lot of them are woeful for what is meant to be their second tier and will no way support a fully pro premiership team. Rugby League has a wide disparity of clubs condensed in to three levels that in football would be spread through ten so while League 1 clubs are only two tiers below Super League in reality they are miles away.
P&R works in football as it has a strong pyramid to support it, RLs pyramid is too weak.