Dave T

The world cup was the killer for me. Should have been world class, was meh at best.

I think it can only ever work as a supplementary thing for fans, it's too niche to replace a TV deal worth millions and millions of quid. Now, maybe if we'd have worked up an interest in international rights we could have sold them on to Oz, France etc, but nobody cares about them, and why would they? We had the right idea in 1997 with the WCC, but we pushed that too far. We should be in our 26th season of a proper WCC comp by now, and the four nations and world cup was the right idea - but everything has been abandoned, the World Cup has just been cancelled. Tbh, I'm not sure I've ever felt so pessimistic about the sport.

Not a cat in hells chance of getting 100k at £37.50 per month.

The bit in bold is the crucial thing here. I think a major problem is that even an offer of £15m is likely to be attractive enough for us based on not being able to plug the gap with internationals or streaming etc. But, there absolutely will be a tipping point, one where other providers are happy to pay a modest amount, and another one takes some for free, plus streaming maybe allowing us to be filling say £100k per club or similar.

Again, it's a bit of a failure. We haven't set ourselves up to remove reliance on them. I do think one of the problems we have now is that Sky have shown they are happy to lose content. A few years back the idea of them losing RU and WWE was unthinkable. There is a very real chance of us becoming even more niche without them, and they know it.

I think this shows that Sky aren't really bothered about whether we get 150k or 175k, that's more an issue for us as a sport. But Sky have little competition and are tightening their belt, so can give us £15m and we'd take it in reality.

The really rather depressing thing in all this is that ultimately we are at the mercy of Sky. SL is our only asset that makes real money. We have completely failed to do anything with any of our other assets, in particular we have absolutely blown the chance to make money from the international game. We are now getting what we deserve as a worldwide sport.

Indeed, it would appear odd to lose £5-7m per annum, and then reduce the comp by 4 or 5 weeks. It does suggest group cup games to replace them to me at least.

I think the main problem this highlights is that one international window a year isn't enough. Not when the game is split across hemispheres like it is. We should have 2 windows, one with tests down under, 1 with tests here.

A lot of offers tonight, maybe could have hoped for better, but then it's a bank holiday weekend, so positive that we were in 5 figures.

Didn't Doncaster do ok with a couple of internationals when we held them there? One thing I would say, last year's game was clearly never the 9k plus they claimed (remember they claimed the seats were sold out and there were huge empty sections). I thought it looked _ok compared to that, and I would add that the feedback from people who went (non-RL fans on my social media for example) was that they seemed to really enjoy it. So that's something I suppose. I'm almost at the point of past caring about the detail, it's a waste of time and energy as a fan. They'll do what they do, I'll pick and choose what interests me. That was the World Cup Legacy for me tbh.

World Cup Legacy. But, I've been criticised many times for this view, but the French national team make themselves hard to want to support.

For a Thursday evening, that is an excellent crowd.

This is my favourite part of this whole episode.

Ah yes, misread, sorry!

Do you know who voted against in SL? Was it Cas?

Yep, if WWR abstained, it seems like the entirely right thing to do.

Always enjoy the spin on stuff like this. Mick Gledhill stating that 'only' eight of the 13 Champ clubs voted in favour. That's a pretty strong endorsement tbh, and twice as many Champ clubs voted in favour as voted against.

Yup. A majority across all three divisions is pretty conclusive aint it?

What's absention? Is it just a typo (over and over)?

I do tend to agree. It's the part of this whole setup that doesn't really work for me. And for all people will talk about the aim being 12+ A clubs, in reality we won't be there for a long while, so designing a system that has some real challenges in it around P&R seems a bit odd. Some of the examples being raised may be to make a point, but it shouldn't be so easy to put examples of poor outcomes together in a newly designed system. You have a blank canvas, you can fix those quirks. Of course maybe the challenge is that P&R just doesn't have a place. But like 15 years ago, we are going with a middle ground to try and please everyone.

I'm not sure how this relates to the posts quoted. The clubs are voting on the principle in reality tweaks have already been made, and will always continue I expect. But the point of my post was that nobody has a moral high ground either way, which is what was claimed.

And thats fine. But I don't think either opinion comes with any moral high ground.

on the flipside, surely anyone who doesn't vote for a system that demands standards from all clubs to allow the sport to put its best foot forwards isn't voting for the good of the game? These strong A clubs are all pretty much safe and can crack on with life anyway, many of the biggest improvements need to come lower down the table.

Wilderspool hasn't held that many for decades. We're probably talking biggest crowd in Wire for 40 to 50 years or so.