League 1 unsustainable?

[Damien]

Just now, tim2 said:

By being 90% part-time and not re-investing in stadiums.

The Sky money is spent on players not stadiums.

[tim2]

1 minute ago, Damien said:

The Sky money is spent on players not stadiums.

Going into soccer/shared stadiums and losing their own grounds has bitten some clubs already, just the SL ones that mostly get away with it. We are largely a nomadic sport at pro level now.

[overtheborder]

1 hour ago, Moscow01 said:

There’s a cost of living crisis.  Why would any person want to spend £15-£20 on a ticket, to be sat in a tired old empty stadium watching a game? As sad as it is, League 1 is not going to be around much longer and some very famous old clubs will be gone. 
 

One of the biggest mistakes teams in league 1 make is to call their league ‘the professional ranks’. A new supporter turning up in front of a few hundred fans will not consider that ‘professional’. League 1 should be what it was set out to be a decade or so ago - a development league.  

I think the first paragraph is really pertinent and it's something I tend to come back to where League 1's concerned. It feels like a league for the purists (which is fair enough, I'd happily watch it myself), but when you're talking 20 quid to watch the likes of Rochdale (no disrespect) vs say 25 to watch a Super League match, you just can't compare the overall matchday experience. And then if you look a league below, you might pay 3 or 5 quid to watch the NCL Premier, which is a lot cheaper and draws the casuals in partly due to how cheap it is I'd imagine (decent places to have a pint in the afternoon while watching a game of rugby for a lot of people).

[Derwent Parker]

54 minutes ago, sam4731 said:

I think we should start getting brutally honest. If you struggle with financial solvency, you aren't ready to be semi pro. Amateur teams choose not to be semi pro because it wouldn't make financial success to. Relying on the RFL for central funding is like the government propping up a failing business, it does no one any favours.

Think you too would struggle if your CF was cut to 20K

There's been quite a lot of whinging going cos the Sky deal has been slightly cut this last week or 2

[ATLANTISMAN]

42 minutes ago, Gomersall said:

Do the Marie give the clubs the stadium or just allow them to play there for a peppercorn rent?

The clubs have use of the stadiums for free and the Marie pays also for the upkeep.

Clubs fit out the stadiums with facilities and get to keep all the revenue.

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

6 minutes ago, tim2 said:

Going into soccer/shared stadiums and losing their own grounds has bitten some clubs already, just the SL ones that mostly get away with it. We are largely a nomadic sport at pro level now.

I make it only 12 of the 36 'pro' clubs own their stadium

[Griff]

21 minutes ago, Damien said:

The Sky money is spent on players not stadiums.

Is it?  Does every club spend all its Sky money on wages?   Can you back that up with facts?  Or is it something you've made up, asserted as fact?

[Derwent Parker]

51 minutes ago, Damien said:

Your analogy is false because SL clubs are getting less too. I personally wouldn't have cut funding as much to League 1, as its peanuts in the Grand scheme of things to a SL club, but SL clubs have taken huge reductions too. Its not a case of the parents eating the same and the kids starving on one meal a day.

Yes SL have taken huge reductions i agree but they huge amount to take it from. But they only lost around 13%

 L1 had a small percentage in comparison and lost over 70% - now thats huge.

Ok that's a petty argument as you know - so I will update the analogy

 

Analogy  - as per JM10 stated "SL generate all the money for the TV deal and are just sharing less of it with the bottom"

So in a family that equates to Father/ Mother and kids each get 3 meals a day - Money gets tight - so in your terms in that same family

Father/ Mother still get most because they generate the money Parents get 2 Meals and a snack, BUT the kids get less and are down to one meal a day?

That better?

[Damien]

Just now, Derwent Parker said:

Yes SL have taken huge reductions i agree but they huge amount to take it from. But they only lost around 13%

 L1 had a small percentage in comparison and lost over 70% - now thats huge.

Ok that's a petty argument as you know - so I will update the analogy

 

Analogy  - as per JM10 stated "SL generate all the money for the TV deal and are just sharing less of it with the bottom"

So in a family that equates to Father/ Mother and kids each get 3 meals a day - Money gets tight - so in your terms in that same family

Father/ Mother still get most because they generate the money Parents get 2 Meals and a snack, BUT the kids get less and are down to one meal a day?

That better?

It is way more than 13%. They were getting £1.8 million, now I believe its in the region of £1.3 million or less. That's a heck of a reduction to what should be a full time, elite competition.

Now just to reiterate I don't think the L1 clubs should have gone from £75k to £18k. I personally think say an extra £20k per club would have meant far more to L1 clubs than SL and allowed a more sustainable L1. 

[Toby Chopra]

2 minutes ago, Griff said:

Is it?  Does every club spend all its Sky money on wages?   Can you back that up with facts?  Or is it something you've made up, asserted as fact?

The Sky money is substantially less than the basic salary cap which most, if not all, SL clubs get up to. So yes, you can say that clubs do spend the Sky money on wages.

Furthermore almost all the clubs up to now who have improved their own stadium - Warrington, Saints, Leeds etc - spend substantially MORE than the Sky money on players, and ALSO funded stadium rebuilds, from external sources.

The Sky money is, and always has been from day 1, there to fund a competition where all players are full-time professionals, something that didn't remotely exist before Superleague.

[Damien]

26 minutes ago, tim2 said:

Going into soccer/shared stadiums and losing their own grounds has bitten some clubs already, just the SL ones that mostly get away with it. We are largely a nomadic sport at pro level now.

Indeed and its sad to see.

[iffleyox]

11 minutes ago, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

I make it only 12 of the 36 'pro' clubs own their stadium

I'd argue there's a slight difference between 'rent' and 'rent with primacy of tenure' though - essentially if you control the gates and all the income generation then aside from not being able to borrow against the land, does it matter if the local council actually owns the site? 

The clubs in the worst position are those renting stadium access on 'pay per play'

[Griff]

8 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:

The Sky money is substantially less than the basic salary cap which most, if not all, SL clubs get up to. So yes, you can say that clubs do spend the Sky money on wages.

That's a gross distortion of logic.  It implies that a club spending £1.5m on wages would only spend £200k on wages, were there no Sky money.  I would suggest to you that there would be cutbacks in other areas besides players wages.

The fact is that clubs can spend their Sky distributions how they wish.

[Derwent Parker]

51 minutes ago, Gomersall said:

How do you think the game survived before SL and Sky money came along?

The game was good then and the sky money drove a huge wedge through the RFL and have caused a great divide - because it all went to only a third of the clubs as it was badly shared out.

Fair enough the Top get most but 1.5 million each v 15k each come on that is far to huge of a step. [1%]?

Cant change now but back then an amount lets say "X" then champ 66%  and L1 a 33%? or even 50 and 25% but 1% WOW

[Toby Chopra]

1 minute ago, Griff said:

That's a gross distortion of logic.  It implies that a club spending £1.5m on wages would only spend £200k on wages, were there no Sky money.  I would suggest to you that there would be cutbacks in other areas besides players wages.

The fact is that clubs can spend their Sky distributions how they wish.

It shows that clubs aren't keeping back some of the Sky money to spend on other things, such as stadiums, they're spending AT LEAST what they get from Sky on full-time wages. As they should, that's precisely what the money is intended for. 

There's been speculation by some that should Fev go up they'd stay part time and keep some of the money for other things. That should be a deal-breaker immediately.

And yes, if the Sky money disappeared, clubs like Wakefield and Salford would indeed see their wage bill drop to the low hundred thousands as they'd immediately have to go part time and survive off their gate receipts. There's very little else coming in or stuff that could be cut.

Two or three clubs with the biggest non-TV incomes might be able to scrape together a bare-bones full-time team but only just.

ie. Just like things were in the late 80s/early 90s.

[Gomersall]

11 minutes ago, Derwent Parker said:

The game was good then and the sky money drove a huge wedge through the RFL and have caused a great divide - because it all went to only a third of the clubs as it was badly shared out.

Fair enough the Top get most but 1.5 million each v 15k each come on that is far to huge of a step. [1%]?

Cant change now but back then an amount lets say "X" then champ 66%  and L1 a 33%? or even 50 and 25% but 1% WOW

Prior to SL there was a levy on 1st division matches which was used to fund the lower leagues IIRC.

[Griff]

1 minute ago, Toby Chopra said:

It shows that clubs aren't keeping back some of the Sky money to spend on other things, such as stadiums, they're spending AT LEAST what they get from Sky on full-time wages. As they should, that's precisely what the money is intended for. 

Does it ?

Maybe they're spending their gate money on wages and the Sky money on their other expenses.

[Gomersall]

1 hour ago, tim2 said:

By being 90% part-time and not re-investing in stadiums.

True but there was a levy on 1st division matches to fund the lower leagues.

[OnStrike]

1 hour ago, tim2 said:

Going into soccer/shared stadiums and losing their own grounds has bitten some clubs already, just the SL ones that mostly get away with it. We are largely a nomadic sport at pro level now.

Yeah I've said the same before. Clubs being separated from their grounds from the 90s on has been a disaster. Without being too dramatic, I'm not sure if we can ever recover fully. 

[Griff]

22 minutes ago, Gomersall said:

True but there was a levy on 1st division matches to fund the lower leagues.

That wasn't its purpose.  It was to fund the RFL's costs, including match officials.

[Blind side johnny]

21 hours ago, Derwent Parker said:

Most of the games will become meaningless once P & R is stopped.

Yes, that NRL malarkey is a load of rubbish isn't it?

[Toby Chopra]

30 minutes ago, Griff said:

Does it ?

Maybe they're spending their gate money on wages and the Sky money on their other expenses.

Obviously, there's no hypothecation of income. There's a total coming in and a total going out. But reduce each superleague club's income by £1.5m and the player wage bill is what's going to take the brunt of the cut, as it's by far the biggest ongoing expenditure of clubs and the only one that can remotely be cut by enough to make up the difference.

[JM2010]

I think the RFL and IMG should look at how many teams the Championship could sustain (maybe split into 2 conferences) and then invite applications for a development league underneath if there are any clubs that don’t make the cut or any new clubs that want to join the pyramid. 

[Griff]

16 minutes ago, JM2010 said:

I think the RFL and IMG should look at how many teams the Championship could sustain (maybe split into 2 conferences) and then invite applications for a development league underneath if there are any clubs that don’t make the cut or any new clubs that want to join the pyramid. 

What is this obsession with conferences ?

They only work if the competing teams are much the same ability.

[JM2010]

13 minutes ago, Griff said:

What is this obsession with conferences ?

They only work if the competing teams are much the same ability.

It’s not an obsession but the other alternative would be a 22 team Championship

Edited August 29, 2023 by JM2010