DI Keith Fowler

Fair play for them making a virtue out of necessity.

I think that is one of the most incredible things I've ever heard a professional sports team say.

Sunday night would be ideal. All the weekends games, now recorded to broadcast standard I might add, and not clashing with the Championship coverage on the Monday. Gives you an RL fix Thursday through Monday on weeks where C4 have a Saturday game.

I tell you what I bet Martyn's hands were quivering over the keyboard when all this conference discussion started.

I don't know what the plan is, no one does, including you. We're just speculating on how 20 clubs could arise. I don't know why you think £100 million wouldn't go far if you gave every SL2 club 800k say you'd have over 10 years funding. I don't think there'd be any sane person who would look to bankroll it for that long but a few years is certainly possible. I imagine they'll have in their mind clubs they want in the structure that will add to the bottom line. I doubt they're going to throw money at small heatland clubs in small stadiums I think they'll be looking to clubs with some level of ambition/growth potential. I don't think the expectation would be that Batley and Dewsbury would be in it for one. And I don't think there's a direct correlation between number of teams and wealth of the competition otherwise the Premier League would have 500 clubs. If the intention is to just rebrand the Championship SL2 then you're absolutely right. I'm not advocating doing that, I'm talking about the potential of growing the competition, reducing the gap between SL1 & SL2 to create a bigger, more vibrant and geographically diverse structure. We tried this in the TV deal previous by bringing in the middle 8s and got the biggest deal ever. I don't think we need to fall victim to fatalism. In addition we lost exclusivity with Sky in the last deal, we have the potential to sell to a second broadcaster now so Sky not wanting more games might be less of an issue. Everything you've said is predicated on the idea that we will fund everything from the current Sky deal, that the current Sky deal will never get bigger, and that the SL2 clubs would be identical to the Championship clubs now. I'm just saying if the RFL and this investor are pushing this that they're probably not working on those parameters unless they're utterly insane.

I think the argument would be that the 2nd tier folds into the TV contract in the next negotiations rather than being sold separately and there'd be increased value there. If they're going to do this the funding for the 2nd tier in the short term would come from the title of the thread with the intention of growing the overall SL competition so the next TV deals (I think we should remember we are currently negotiating a second TV deal) are large enough to cover both divisions going forward. I've not formed a firm view on whether that's a smart thing to do but I think looking at it through the lens of we only have X amount so how can we pay for 20 clubs doesn't really come into it, it's sounds very likely there is going to be outside investment to get this plan off the ground.

I think if this is a goer in the short term the £100m will be partly funding the bottom 10. With the intention the expanded competition draws in bigger takings and starts to pay for itself over time.

I don't think SL2 teams should be in the SL1 play offs, they should have their own for promotion to SL1. The inter-division games should be there to either boost points in SL1 or steal points for SL2, while providing a few derbies you wouldn't get otherwise (Leeds-Bradford, Widnes-Warrington).

Leeds won Super League in 2017 after being in the middle 8's in 2016 so it's not beyond of the realms of fantasy that Batley could have won the SL grand final.

Suspect the reason the England jersey got marked down in price is that there'll be a new version for the tournament, Dacia have updated their logo I imagine they'd want it incorporated since there's the time to do it now.

I was reading about this, a lot of it is creating a website/app that will be a news source on worldwide football. The intention being to effectively smuggle in A-League content on that site alongside the Premier League, La Liga etc. and give it an air of credibility which I assume it lacks. It's maybe a slightly different situation to us, there's 8 million soccer fans in Australia that could be converted to a domestic game. We've got whatever number we have and that's kind of it. I don't think we'd be chasing latent support we're chasing new support, unless you class the entirety of rugby union supporters as a potential market that could be converted across. It's certainly interesting that they're putting so much money into a digital endeavour, it's what I'd like to see if the £100m comes to fruition, a big push through Youtube and the like advertising (I watch league videos on Youtube and get inundated with paid union adverts, they must be getting something out of it), new media and inhouse production.

Look not everyone's lucky enough to be able to move in with a football club they can give half their turnover to.

Looks good! Good look to them. Put the camera gantry on the opposite side.

Corporate financier here, I can attest Pretty Woman is a highly accurate portrail of the world of finance and suchwhat. So shockingly accurate in fact that my monocle dropped into my champagne flute while watching.

What's somewhat reassuring is that we correctly rejected the last proposal. Suggests we might be acting rationally and not just grabbing what we can get.