Courtesy of League Weekly and League Express here’s a summary of what’s happened over the last few days along with the potential impacts as I see them:
There was a secret vote last Friday with regards to the future league structures and financing. On Thursday, the Championship and League One Advisory Group announced they would oppose the proposals and were confident they had a good chance of winning the vote.
However, nine Championship and League One clubs voted with the Super League teams, voting in favour of change. The newspapers suggested that clubs with DR arrangements may have been put under pressure from their DR partners to vote in favour of the change but no lower league club admitted this was the case.
What are the financial impacts?At the moment the current Sky TV deal is worth £40m-per year. £30m is given to the Super League clubs; £10m goes to the RFL. That £10m is split between the RFL, Championship, and League One sides. The present TV deal runs out at the end of the 2021 season.
This is where it gets interesting...
Views across the sport seem united in believing that the current £40m-per-year deal will not continue beyond 2021. Will another host broadcaster challenge Sky for the rights? If not, with no competition, the concern is that Sky will submit a lower bid. After all, Sky is a business and they’re not going to pay any more for the product than they have to.
This is where non-Super League clubs potentially start to pay the price for the changes...
Should the new TV deal be the same £40m-per-year, the Super League teams will get £32.25m, with £7.75m going to the RFL, Championship, and League One clubs. Even with this ‘likely best case scenario’ the Championship and League clubs will suffer unless the RFL absorb the £2.25m cut themselves.
If the deal is between over £36m and up to £40m, Super League keep the same £30m they’re getting at the moment. This means everyone else gets between £6m and £10m.
There looks to be a minor loophole here as a £39m deal is better for lower league clubs than a £40m deal. Someone’s maths have gone astray! The RFL get £9m from a £39m deal but only get £7.75m from a £40m deal. That’s a technicality that I’m sure will be amended if need be.
It gets worse...
If the next deal is between £30 and £35m, Super League takes £30m and whatever is left goes to the RFL.
It gets worse still...
If the deal is £29m or lower, Super League takes it all and there’s nothing for everyone else!
Clearly everyone is hoping for the best when it comes to the new TV deal but where would the Championship and League One clubs be in 2022 if they get no central funding? I cannot draw any other conclusion than to declare they’ll be in a mess.
Think about the additional consequences...
If the top team in the Championship is promoted to Super League on a shoestring budget, how could they be competitive in the higher league when they’ve been building a team on peanuts? The class gap between Super League and the rest will become wider.
Things could become trickier for lower league sides as many of the players who play in the Championship and League One may opt to play for Super League reserve sides instead. Dare I suggest that Super League teams will be able to pay players more to be in their reserves than they’ll get playing for cash strapped Championship and League One sides?
It hasn’t been made clear whether the relegated Super League team would get a parachute payment in 2022 and beyond. If they did, we would surely see a yoyo structure where the team that is relegated would be promoted the following year as they would have such a huge unfair advantage over the rest and the team that was promoted would have a gulf in class to bridge meaning they’re likely to be relegated. No doubt, when that happens the Super League teams will say they want to revert back to licensing.
At the moment, the RFL funding for League One is the same for all teams (£75k I believe). In the Championship, the amount of funding is based on the finishing positions from the previous season. This isn’t going to continue although the RFL CEO Ralph Rimmer has said that the funding won’t necessarily be evenly split as other criteria could be taken into account when determining who gets what.
Well, come 2022, if there’s no dosh to split, then everyone will get the same... nowt!
Fundamentally, in my opinion, the future for all sides outside the Super League will become precarious to say the least from 2022 if the TV deal isn’t better than it is now... there were no details revealed as to how much the RFL would get if the TV deal was £50m. I suspect the Super League teams would want to take it all.
How many teams would actually survive without any central funding? Never mind teams at our level being semi-pro, would the clubs have anything left to pay players? Clubs like Whitehaven and Keighley have hit financial troubles this season. Would they have gone bust without their £75 central funding?
Super League teams may be heralding this as the start of a bright new future. For lower league teams, it looks like times of great uncertainty. I hope that Robert Elstone and Super League Europe are able to do a better job of promoting the game than the ineffective RFL.
I tend to agree with Danny Lockwood in League Weekly when he says he doesn’t know what moral authority the RFL board has any longer. They’ve thrown the keys and deeds to Robert Elstone. Their only purpose seems to be to take charge of match officials and an overblown HR department.
I believe rugby league needs to be governed by a body that looks after all of rugby league, not just the elite, but the RFL have failed in that duty for many years. I wish Mr Elstone well because without him the future for the whole sport is grim. I hope the big boys don’t forget about the little boys in the future but I suspect they’ve now got us in our place and will try to keep us there.
How does all of this specifically impact on the Dons?
That probably needs a thread of its own.
