Super League Executive Chairman Robert Elstone has set up an investigation into leaks from Super League board meetings.
Every Super League club is entitled to have one director appointed to the Super League board, while the RFL Chairman Simon Johnson also acts as a director of the organisation.
Virtual board meetings are held regularly using Zoom software and Elstone has been alarmed by how often information from the meetings is revealed in media outlets like League Express.
The directors recently discussed the issue among themselves, with Elstone urging them not to reveal information to former League Express reporter Matthew Shaw.
But so far he has been unable to put a lid on the leaks, and now he is thought to be proposing to undertake a “forensic investigation”, to discover who is the source of the information coming out of the meetings.
For example, League Express has published information about the TV negotiations and the negotiations for private equity investment in recent editions, when Elstone would have preferred it not to enter the public domain.
League Express understands that there is a proposal to request Super League directors to hand over their mobile phones to check on who the individual directors are speaking to.
But League Express editor Martyn Sadler has urged them to think carefully before doing that.
“I don’t think Super League would have the right to do that, and the directors might find that they would be giving up confidential information about their own clubs, not to mention their personal lives.
“My advice to Super League is to engage with the media, rather than trying to stop news coming out. I would have thought that transparency is better than secrecy, particularly when we are talking about an organisation that is in the entertainment business.”
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