No way the council will do anything in the current economic climate.
But while several posters have said bad for RL if no Bradford - equally - if not more so - bad for Bradford if no RL. Admittedly not in the last few year's but the Bulls have been one of the few local success stories for the city in the last decade.
In the circumstances if any newco can be formed from this disaster you would hope they would be open to any ways of creating a stronger a wider capital base?
Newco are debt free, although if it involves anyone who took the club down or into admin there would be some issues to address with both the RFL and HMRC. I still cannot for the life of me see how the RFL weren't complicit in all this, these problems must have been visible to the RFLs auditors?!?!
It continues to amaze me how few people can see the elephant in the room.
Hood said, a year or more ago, that the whole competition was built on foundations of sand.
He was surely correct?
IMO Bulls are just the tip of the iceberg. There is far too little money in the game, and too many clubs surviving only because of the largesse of their wealthy owners.
Do you think the RFL are not very much aware of all this? How many more clubs are teetering, just under the radar, that the RFL are fully aware of and supporting or at least turning a blind eye to? If the RFL was to come down heavy on one club for its financial basis, how many other dominoes would that topple?
I have been ploughing this lonely furrow for years, frequently derided.
Bulls will not be the last, IMO. Watch this space.
I would take the stance that average players are on salaries which are too large and the sport can not afford.
For the Bulls to have signed Matt Orford on a three year deal while the finances of the club were in shambles is the perfect microcosm of the insanity within the game.
I have been ploughing this lonely furrow for years, frequently derided.
Bulls will not be the last, IMO. Watch this space.
FWIW I agree with you. Any business model which requires an injection of £250-£500k per annum to continue trading is fundamentally flawed. I also believe the image rights issue has caught a lot of clubs out. The whole system needs an overhaul - lower the salary cap, better financial governance, mergers of clubs in the same area.
People are asking for a utopia which does not exist. Namely big sport, big clubs, big players, but all paid for by some brilliant business models that bring all the money in.
Whereas in reality big backers are the only way for a club to be in the top echelons of sport. Any sport.
All the guff about some new business model that will operate in profit is just so much piffle, there is no such league. The reason is that to compete at the top end, you need to be able to pay top-end wages to some of your players, and those are always out of kilter with what the sport, as a whole, can afford.
The reason for that is because the big backers of the leading clubs set the market for the top players and the rest of the wage structure of a league trickles down from that. And there is nothing you can do about it, as the biggest clubs always have poached the best players with big money offers, financed by backers who are most certainly not in it for a profit, and always will. To keep a top-class squad, at your level, you will always need more money than you will generate from activities. The odd club that occasionally turns a small paper profit only does so because it has a big backer of one sort or another. If you want a top two club in SL that is purely self-financed, with no backer, like the Bulls, it simply can't be done.
You might not like it, but it is a reality. Without "investors" (what a euphemism!) it simply cannot be done.
It continues to amaze me how few people can see the elephant in the room.
Hood said, a year or more ago, that the whole competition was built on foundations of sand.
He was surely correct?
IMO Bulls are just the tip of the iceberg. There is far too little money in the game, and too many clubs surviving only because of the largesse of their wealthy owners.
Do you think the RFL are not very much aware of all this? How many more clubs are teetering, just under the radar, that the RFL are fully aware of and supporting or at least turning a blind eye to? If the RFL was to come down heavy on one club for its financial basis, how many other dominoes would that topple?
I have been ploughing this lonely furrow for years, frequently derided.
Bulls will not be the last, IMO. Watch this space.
Adey I couldn't agree more, the RFL and sky make the game out to be something it isn't. This whole license thing is an absolute sham, not one thing has worked and much of it has caused financial over stretching for the clubs.
People are asking for a utopia which does not exist. Namely big sport, big clubs, big players, but all paid for by some brilliant business models that bring all the money in.
Whereas in reality big backers are the only way for a club to be in the top echelons of sport. Any sport.
All the guff about some new business model that will operate in profit is just so much piffle, there is no such league. The reason is that to compete at the top end, you need to be able to pay top-end wages to some of your players, and those are always out of kilter with what the sport, as a whole, can afford.
The reason for that is because the big backers of the leading clubs set the market for the top players and the rest of the wage structure of a league trickles down from that. And there is nothing you can do about it, as the biggest clubs always have poached the best players with big money offers, financed by backers who are most certainly not in it for a profit, and always will. To keep a top-class squad, at your level, you will always need more money than you will generate from activities. The odd club that occasionally turns a small paper profit only does so because it has a big backer of one sort or another. If you want a top two club in SL that is purely self-financed, with no backer, like the Bulls, it simply can't be done.
You might not like it, but it is a reality. Without "investors" (what a euphemism!) it simply cannot be done.
At the end of the day clubs should live within their means. It's really as simple as that.
Fax have managed to turn a profit this year without a backer.
