I find this Cumbria for Super League rhetoric bizarre. Yes the amateur game is played up there but one club is at the bottom of the Championship and the other 2 are in League One, they generally get attendances of under 1000.

The towns are too small and isolated to become anything other than a Championship club. It would be great if the three of them were able to become strong Championship clubs.

Promotion and relegation needs to be decided on the field, with a minimum criteria for entering Super League. The only exception to this is I would grant any North American club an exemption from relegation, a transatlantic Championship makes no sense whatsoever.

I agree Sir Kev but is this even up for debate???

I disagree about P&R. It exists to keep a few teams happy, does nothing for the long-term of the sport and the 'interest' it creates is really closer to panic as clubs struggle to get up/stay up and makes it really hard for anyone to build for the future.

There are lots of pro sports around the world where P&R doesn't exist, and I don't see that the supposed benefits (keeping a few thousand Championship fans happy) outweigh the costs. Don't anyone say 'tradition' - the sport has still had far longer without any P&R (right up to the early 70s) than it did with it. The long term solution for me is franchising from a position of strength, and gradually expanding if possible, based on expanding total player numbers.

P&R makes sense when you have a very strong second tier with plenty of viable top flight clubs around. Like football. RU has all but got rid of it because they recognise that they have basically just 12 English teams of sufficient size and the rest are nowhere. That's in a much richer sport with a far bigger geographic base. In SL we have 4 or 5 genuinely 'big' clubs, and a bunch of second tier ones. Suggesting that Widnes or Leigh, neither of which will ever be more than mid-size in SL is no different from Leeds or Wigan is laughable.

Great post.

I’m not sure I really agree with any of that.

Franchising only ever seems to be proposed by the “haves” not the “have nots”.

If there was a genuinely independent and fully transparent way of doing it that not only looked at lower tier clubs wanting to come up but also upper tier clubs that weren’t making progress then I might be on board with it.

The fundamental problem isn’t P&R it’s a lack of money in the game IMO.

The problem with franchising is their is very little between Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax, Salford, Leigh, Widnes, Bradford, York, London in terms of what they add to the competition. How do you choose who should be in Super League and who should be in the Championship.

You may be right but isn’t franchising a better vehicle with which to bring in new money, rather than the merri-go-round of “traditional” clubs dancing between the leagues every year?

A big component for me would be youth development and community work. Spreading the catchment for players just can’t be a bad thing. Too many clubs squabbling over too little talent in too small a geography isn’t the future IMO.

One of the problems with the old franchising model was that the criteria and KPIs were so poorly thought out. They measured the wrong things and encouraged the wrong behaviours.

The attendances one was a classic case in point - clubs were graded on whether they averaged 10k or not (I think that's the number). For clubs that could sell 10k reguarly, it was an easy box to tick. But for the rest, it simply encouraged them to offer cheap and free tickets across the board, under-selling the sport and cutting their profit margin.

It was particuarly acute for a club like Bradford. They were on that 7/8k mark at the time (if I remember rightly) and introduced "The Pledge" campaign - cheap tickets if enough committed to buying them. It meant that they ended up giving massive discounts to people who would have happily paid full price, rather that offering more targeted and tactical promotions. It was a stupid idea, lazy marketing, but the franchsing criteria encouraged it. Whilst it wasn't the cause of their financial worries by any stretch, it certainly didn't help their cause.

We're still seeing the fall-out of that culture. The sport has massively under-sold itself for years to the point where, despite being one of (if not the) cheapest professional sports to watch in the UK, we have discount codes left, right and centre for England internationals, Magic Weekend tickets with extended "50% off" offers and clubs like Huddersfield still offering tickets for barely over £100 a season. And seasoned fans know the drill now - there's no 'fear of missing out' encouraging you to buy early, and buying later usually means you can take advantage of special offers and discounts to what we keep being told are showpiece or "blue ribboned" events.

It's one thing to say that we need to get more money into the sport, but this culture of under-selling has been practically giving money away for years.

Got any evidence for that? How do figures compare in past periods of P&R vs periods of Franchising?



Until you can clearly decide what the criteria isand agree it with all clubs and make the final decision totally transparent and independent it will be criticised and seen as a conspiracy by those that miss out. It also has to apply to SL clubs who may be relegated as well as those wanting promotion.



How you decide what components should be part of a bid and how important those components are is key. For some clubs they already have a big catchment so they might not do a great deal. Some others might do heaps for little return in a non heartland area. Who provides the most value to the game? It’s not an easy decision.

I actually think that RL is incapable of running a franchise system that is fair and independent. There isn’t the will or expertise to do it properly. There will probably be another half assed attempt soon that safeguards everyone at a certain point in time. The rest will be given warm words but see their funding reduced and get forgotten about. That’ll see off a few clubs. The game will shrink making it less of an attraction for broadcasters and so attract less money. Then what?

I would imagine for most SL clubs, their TV money income is higher than gate receipts over a season. Of course you have concessions etc once fans are at the ground, but it’s not all about ticket sales revenue - although you’re right about the KPIs driving the wrong behaviours.

As with all KPIs, the devil is in the detail and often they’re just done wrongly. That’s not to say licensing/franchising can’t work though.

The world of professional sport has moved on lots with the power of media; a game rooted in an outdated view of gate turnout from local working classes is going to become less and less competitive.

The game needs some work to improve the spectacle,
and new markets need to be developed.

A basic problem with the KPIs/criteria again comes down to the fact that not all SL clubs are equal in size (actual or potential). In order to avoid having a league of 4, if you apply criteria you have to set them based on the lowest common denominator to let the number of clubs in you actually want.

In terms of revenues for most pro sports (excluding some like basketball and baseball) its around an even split between TV money, sponsorship and gate receipts. Too much in any one basket leaves you open to real problems if the income from there dries up. I suspect in SL far too much comes from TV, and not enough from sponsorship. For some clubs (London, Salford etc) gate receipts will also be much lower. Its a bit chicken and egg as they are all interrelated, but as a sport we need to look at ways of increasing other income sources and being less dependent on Sky just to break even.

Having said that we're not the only sport with issues. The other source of income, and where RU for example is far better off (not to mention football) is cash from rich owners. As I understand it most Premiership RU clubs are underwater based on revenue versus costs, and are entirely dependent on continuing support from owners. Bar a few cases SL team owners simply don't have the levels of cash (or willingness) to prop up their team every year.