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Is there a limit on foreign teams in SL?


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22 minutes ago, Mr Plow said:

We could have 4 overseas teams playing SL in the future but is there a limit?

If overseas expansion carries on i see two scenarios happening

A 2 tier ring fenced SL

Or

2 conferences; SL Europe and SL North America 

In the long term, a conference system has to be the way to go.

Ideally, you have to want as many top tier sides as possible.  The downside of this is that the more sides you have the more you dilute the TV deal, but this can be balanced by having a product with multiple deals i.e UK, France, North America etc...

Conferences have the potential to be all things to all people, more teams, more derbies, less travel, as well as ensuring the primacy of the play off and grand final concept.

That said I think the Conferences would need to be more nuanced than just Europe v North America and would probably require considerable gerrymandering in the initial years.

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I will add to my post above that if you ever truly get to the stage of too many North American teams that conferences can't handle then at that point I think a full blown North American League makes sense with maybe some sort of Northern Hemisphere Champions League style competition between that and Super League. I'd imagine if we ever got to 8 then pressure would come from North American TV for that with more North American teams then added to make a full league.

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1 minute ago, Damien said:

I will add to my post above that if you ever truly get to the stage of too many North American teams that conferences can't handle then at that point I think a full blown North American League makes sense with maybe some sort of Northern Hemisphere Champions League style competition between that and Super League. I'd imagine if we ever got to 8 then pressure would come from North American TV for that with more North American teams then added to make a full league.

Which would probably end full time pro RL in the UK 

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24 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

Which would probably end full time pro RL in the UK 

More money, bigger profile, more sponsors but no the end is nigh. If Rugby League ever got to that position then it would be in fantastic shape.

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I don’t imagine there is and I don’t imagine that under this current format (or even the old one) how they could enforce a cap, so to speak, of non-UK teams. 

We could have ended up with London, Toronto and Toulouse winning promotion under the old format and with Catalans already present in Super League, we could have ended up with a third of the league being non-heartlands or non-UK based and there would have been no way to stop such an event occurring. 

If over the next three years we have Toronto, Toulouse and Ottawa winning promotion from the Championship under the current format, as long as they’re financially viable, they surely cannot be blocked from taking their place in the Super League. 

I do imagine that The RFL/Super League are capable of deciding how many non-UK sides they will allow with the game, so that offers an answer. 

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We don’t need conferences. We need a couple of French teams to increase the player pool, a couple of NA teams to increase exposure, then we need to ensure the clubs with the biggest potential in the UK are thriving. 

Eventually we’ll have a 16 team comp. 

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2 hours ago, Cdd said:

We don’t need conferences. We need a couple of French teams to increase the player pool, a couple of NA teams to increase exposure, then we need to ensure the clubs with the biggest potential in the UK are thriving. 

Eventually we’ll have a 16 team comp. 

Why stop at 16 teams? I can’t see SL or RFL turning away NA or other European teams if they want to join

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31 minutes ago, Mr Plow said:

Why stop at 16 teams? I can’t see SL or RFL turning away NA or other European teams if they want to join

The key is player development. It doesn't matter where the teams are if the player development isn't expanded then you can't expand the league without reducing the quality. 

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9 hours ago, Copa said:

Why?

More money in the game is great. 

Because in that scenario the potential rise in the salary cap that the NA clubs could decide upon , which few if any UK clubs could match could potentially see the UK top tier become nothing more than a feeder competition to the NA one , this is something that has been discussed years ago , long before Toronto 

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18 minutes ago, yipyee said:

The key is player development. It doesn't matter where the teams are if the player development isn't expanded then you can't expand the league without reducing the quality. 

Best post on this thread ?

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9 hours ago, Damien said:

More money, bigger profile, more sponsors but no the end is nigh. If Rugby League ever got to that position then it would be in fantastic shape.

With a NA competition operating with a 25 million salary cap and a UK competition operating with  5 million cap , where would all the best players go ?

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9 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

With a NA competition operating with a 25 million salary cap and a UK competition operating with  5 million cap , where would all the best players go ?

It must be a barrell of laughs being such a pessimist. A 25 million a year salary cap certainly isn't going to come over night, if ever. Maybe by that stage North America would be producing fantastic players who were superior to ours anyway and wouldn't care less about ours? The best players currently go to the NRL anyway and if such an event happened they'd have far more to fear than us and would be in far more trouble.

Playing your game though if North America had a salary cap like that then it would mean Rugby League has truly arrived and would be fantastic. See I'm a Rugby League fan first and foremost who wants what is best for the game. Who knows the positive effect of the sport being huge there. Maybe the sport could ride the crest of the wave and become popular in the UK and have a similar cap. It may mean the sport in this country becomes a cool and happening sport with young people like the NFL. Maybe Rich Americans would set up franchises hear and plough money into the game like Toronto now. Who knows.

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45 minutes ago, yipyee said:

The key is player development. It doesn't matter where the teams are if the player development isn't expanded then you can't expand the league without reducing the quality. 

Hit the nail on the head there

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21 minutes ago, paulwalker71 said:

Best post on this thread ?

Absolutely. At the risk of sounding like Parky, we wont be able to sustain much more expansion if we don't increase the player pool which means the NA teams need to have realistic plans in place to develop players. UK and France could also obviously do more too on this front, getting development officers back in places like London would be a start.

The idea of Ottowa or New York is good in principle if they can replicate the Wolfpack's success. Obviously, they will start out with mainly English and Australian players and if they make SL they will simply replace an existing club as there just aren't the players. Maybe SL could expand to 14 at a push but at the moment the quality would be down.

Hopefully, this is the first step to developing a NA conference but the requirement for players would mean this is a good 15 years off I would say.

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14 hours ago, BladeHearts said:

In the long term, a conference system has to be the way to go.

Ideally, you have to want as many top tier sides as possible.  The downside of this is that the more sides you have the more you dilute the TV deal, but this can be balanced by having a product with multiple deals i.e UK, France, North America etc...

Conferences have the potential to be all things to all people, more teams, more derbies, less travel, as well as ensuring the primacy of the play off and grand final concept.

That said I think the Conferences would need to be more nuanced than just Europe v North America and would probably require considerable gerrymandering in the initial years.

How long term are we talking?

For me the dream is to have 3 strong domestic leagues in the UK, US/Canada and France (and others if possible), with an expanded WCC (including the NRL).

I am happy to have overseas teams playing across here if it is helping the game establish itself and grow in new areas, but long term I don't think a "world league" would work, and I wouldn't want it anyway.

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On 3/22/2019 at 4:31 AM, yipyee said:

The key is player development. It doesn't matter where the teams are if the player development isn't expanded then you can't expand the league without reducing the quality. 

Ah, the quality word. I get what you are saying and many agree but it doesn't work for me. I'll explain why.

Point 1: People watch sport to be entertained. The NRL has much better quality that SL. However, people go to SL games and enjoy the lesser quality product. Why? That is because they buy into supporting their club and enjoy the product. The same reason why fans enjoy Championship games. Of course, the standard has to be of a reasonable level too, but once a reasonable standard is reached, then this idea of diluting quality is debunked. Which leads into the next point.

Point 2: There are thousands of young players who come through the RL systems in Australia, NZ, PNG, Fiji, the UK, France but with limited opportunity few make it to the top. Some may have potential and given a chance would shine, but it didn't happen for them. Many hundreds of such individuals disappear from the game as players each year. There is more than sufficient talent out there for the current 30 pro teams (approx) we currently have.  They need a pathway and opportunity. 

Summary: There is talent to support what Ottawa wants to do. Too much of it is wasted with current limited opportunity. Expansion shouldn't be too fast but steady growth can be accommodated.

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It takes reasonableness to end that discussion. 

 

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16 hours ago, Mr Plow said:

We could have 4 overseas teams playing SL in the future but is there a limit?

If overseas expansion carries on i see two scenarios happening

A 2 tier ring fenced SL

Or

2 conferences; SL Europe and SL North America 

I would have the thought the more the merrier which will attract more sponsors, but the people running the game in this country wont be able to see that and Parkys head will explode at the thought

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10 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

Lets say this is successful and the game grows massively in US/Canada/France on the back of those clubs being in SL.

What justification would there be, why, what benefits or reasons would you have to then trash this wildly successful competition and rebuild as 4 smaller competitions?

If it is successful (and it's a big if), why just stick with a world league where you have to limit yourself to handful of teams from each country? If the game ever does take off properly we want to cast the net far and wide and having a few countries with proper, full time, high quality leagues is surely a better way to do this. On the back of that you can have a much stronger international scene and a bigger world club series.

Not to mention that teams who don't make the world league will likely just die out.

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