Him wrote:
Relegation does NOT bring publicity. I bet most people don’t know without looking it up who was relegated from the Premier League this year. Yet they all know who won it. Equally did Widnes relegation last year bring any publicity to the sport? No.
As mentioned the NRL and masses of other sports around the world manage to generate drama, publicity and a competitive edge without relegation.
The massively damaging effects of relegation are often ignored by RL and it’s fans, especially the effects of relegation on clubs who aren’t relegated. We currently have at least 4, if not 5 clubs who are risk of relegation. That’s 40% of the sports fully professional clubs who are making short term decisions right now and can’t guarantee any new signings for 2020 or onwards that they will be in a fully professional league.
That is hugely damaging to the sport that 40% of it can’t plan properly for the future.
The NRL has no such problem. Parramatta didn’t have to worry about the future of the club by finishing bottom of the league last year. They’re currently 8th I believe.
We often wonder why only the “big” clubs win anything, it doesn’t half help having the ability to plan 3,4,5 years into the future instead of the next 4 weeks.
The issue is that if they were to pull up the drawbridge and cut the likes of Widnes, Leigh, Bradford, Fev, fax etc adrift, how many fans would we lose to the game?
It has been said that the Championship is more competitive now than it has been in years and this may well be lost if we closed the door on Promotion, so I am warming to the idea of 2 SL conferences of 8 (maybe 9) sides, where you would play your conference opponents H&A and have 1 game against the other conference, alternating H&A each year.
This delivers 11(12) Home games before Playoffs...........
I'd have the top 4 of each play head to head sudden death play-offs until you get the grand final. Relegation would be decided in the same way between the bottom 4 from each conference and 1 side would go down......or at least be involved in a MPG scenario....
...I am a massive fan of Licensing, but the resurgence of the Championship in the last few years has made me adjust my stance. P&R is needed.....but it needs to be more carrot and less stick, so the relegated side would need to receive a parachute payment.
As with all such ideas, MONEY is the issue. We would need a new sponsor or broadcast partner to buy into this concept, because there's not a chance that the current SL clubs would take a fiscal hit such as this.......16 x £1.8 million requires a 30 million a year income.......and I can't see anyone other than SKY willing to back us at the moment.....