IN what would be an incredible achievement, Castleford Tigers are on the cusp of a Grade A IMG rating, according to the club itself.
The club, yesterday, gave an in-depth assessment of where the club is at along all five pillars of IMG’s plans to ‘re-imagine’ rugby league.
Those five pillars are: Community, Performance, Finance, Fandom and Stadium.
In the statement, the club revealed: “Community is graded by the mix of people within the local area divided by the number of Grade A or B clubs within the area as well as the turnover of the club’s charitable foundation. On this section we currently score 1.25 points, this is the same score as 2023, and we aren’t expecting any uplift in our score before the final grading.
“Performance is the ranking given to all clubs across the three leagues based on the finishing position averaged over three years. Clubs may also gain bonus points for winning competitions. If as a club we’re to maintain our current league position, we will receive a grading score of 2.9714. This is a loss of 0.1186 against last year’s score of 3.09. As 9th place is still achievable in 2024, we’re looking to strive towards this. A 9th place finish would not alter our score in this year’s grading; however, it would assist us in the next 3 years.
“Finances are graded through investment, turnover, balance sheet and profitability. We have made some great strides in finance. We’re currently waiting for confirmation on the numbers but so far, as a club we believe we’ve managed to achieve a return to full marks on non-centralised turnover over three years which would gain us 0.75 points. As a percentage at the current level, we have maintained our turnover. Unfortunately, we believe we have lost 0.25 points on adjusted profit. In better news, to counter this we have picked up 0.25 points on owner investment as well as an extra 0.5 points on balance sheet which gives us an overall gain on finance of 1.25 points compared to last year.
“Looking at our Stadium grading, primacy of tenure in unchanged at maximum points. With the purchase of the new Big Screen, we have been allocated an additional 0.125 points. We’re currently in the process of ordering an LED system that we expect to be in place before the grading submission which should deliver an additional 0.125 points. Utilisation is based on a three-year average, with this year replacing the covid year which had restricted crowds of 4000, this will increase 0.1 points. As most of our supporters will have seen, we’ve made multiple improvements around the stadium this year. The works completed so far include: an increase of seats to meet the seating capacity, additional press benches in the press overflow section, separation of the directors box from the main stand, a resurfaced car park to ensure the broadcast area is to a required standard and has sufficient drainage. We have also completed a number of other pieces of work to hit the required standard for facilities. We are now left with one final job which is to enlarge the TV studio in the gantry from three metres by three metres to four metres by four metres, the drawings have been done and the work is booked in to commence after our final home game against Leigh. Once this work is completed, we will move from 0.5 points on facilities to 1.5 points, giving us a predicted total stadium score increase of between 1.225 to 1.350.
“Fandom, this is all about you, the Tigers Faithful. Last year on viewership, social media following and total engagements we scored 2.2 points out of a maximum 2.5 points. We’re delighted to say that we have maintained the same score this year and we’d like to personally thank you all for the following and engagement on social media this year. The other element of Fandom is attendances, this is on a three-year average. In 2023, the grading included a covid year with restricted crowds which meant we could only score a possible 2 points out of a possible 2.5. For this round of grading, attendances are being taken from 2022, 2023 and 2024. If we can fill the Jungle on our final home game of the season, we will hope to achieve maximum points on attendance and move our Fandom score to 4.7 out of a maximum 5 points. The higher the crowd on the final home game, the greater chance we have of increasing our utilisation score up slightly. Doing this would also see us have a total increase in our grading score from last year of between 2.856 and 2.9814 points.
“We’re asking for your support in achieving a sell-out crowd for the Leigh game as this will help us secure our Super League status for 2025. As a thank you for your loyal support this year we are launching a deal for the Leigh game.”
If Castleford do hit the required full house against Leigh, the club will score between 15.01 and 15.14 points, securing Grade A status.
Without that full house, the Tigers will fall below the automatic Super League Grade A spot with a score of between 14.51 to 14.64 – it really is that close!
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