CURRENT central distribution in rugby league has seen funding to the Championship and League One cut following a reduced broadcast deal with Sky Sports.
League One clubs, especially, have faced a hard time with funding from central distribution reduced to just £20,000 in the past season.
With that, some concerns have been raised about that IMG, in their plans to ‘re-imagine’ rugby league, have not addressed those points raised.
Now the Rugby Football League’s chief executive, Tony Sutton, has revealed that the financial model will be addressed in the coming months.
“What is not included in the grading criteria is the financial model that will sit next to it,” Sutton said. “It’s a core point of what we do with clubs every year in terms of future financial distributions will look like.
“What we did with the re-alignment project was that part of the process of putting all of the games broadcast, sponsorship, commercial and event assets into Rugby League Commercial was then to agree the cascade across the game and that was a direct response to club’s views.
“We embedded those percentages and that financial waterfall probably 18 months to a year ago in consultation with the game. So we’ve got that financial model across the whole game set in terms of percentage allocations for the first time in a long time.
“So the financial model that comes across for all 36 teams in the professional tier is driven by that however the point in terms of the differential between the two is certainly something that will be up for debate again, and whilst it’s not included in the model at this time but it will be in the right time in the next few months.”
All 36 professional clubs will vote on IMG’s proposals at an RL Council meeting tomorrow (April 19).
