CONGRATULATIONS to Derek Beaumont for finding a new club partner in the airline Jet2.
And well done to him and to the Leigh club for arranging those photos of the club officials standing in front of a Jet2 plane on the tarmac presumably at Manchester Airport.
As we have seen in recent years, Derek has a flair for salesmanship combined with tremendous enthusiasm for his club and for Rugby League more generally.
Some people claim not to like his brash style but my only wish is that we could clone him and appoint his twin to run Rugby League’s commercial operation as a whole.
I suspect we would soon be hearing about more commercial partners coming into the game.
Unfortunately RL Commercial doesn’t have a great record on doing that. Neither does IMG.
Although they may say that securing new partners for the game isn’t part of their remit (and I would love to read their contract to check if that is so), there were strong hopes that their very presence in the game would attract other major sponsors into it.
That doesn’t seem to have happened.
I find it worrying that there appear to be no break clauses in the IMG twelve-year contract and there don’t appear to be any performance requirements for IMG to satisfy.
If that isn’t correct, I would be glad to hear from whoever signed that contract on behalf of Rugby League and I would be happy to state the facts.
On the other hand, if it is true, then the people who signed the deal should be thinking very carefully about their positions.
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