Saddened! wrote:
The restructuring is pointless without additional investment and as MorePlayersNeeded says, it's highly doubtful a league featuring the likes Salford, Wakefield, Batley, Bradford, Featherstone and Halifax is going to pickup anything more than a boutique Channel 4/5/Eurosport one game a week sort of TV deal. It's not going to attract a deal sufficient to ensure full professionalism. The Sky money isn't going to cover it and the Sky money isn't going to go up, unless there is competition from somewhere or the product drastically improves.
What they should be doing (But won't because the clubs have too much power) is getting around a table with financial experts and working out the best way to attract investment into the sport. Then you can discuss how the league is structured to suit the needs of whoever is putting the financing into it.
Moving to 10 clubs in Super League won't mean fewer games and bigger, more marketable matches like it should. It'll mean the same number of games played between fewer teams, so the prospect of facing the same team 6 or 7 times in a single season. You could end up playing Wigan 12 times in two years. Whilst the dinosaurs running the clubs might be rubbing their hands at that, that won't produce bumper crowds, just drive even more people away from the sport.
We're going to see clubs folding over the next couple of years. The likes of Hull and Salford are clearly suffering already and with the 'new normal' of post-pandemic RL crowds, it's likely most clubs will be at around 50 to 70% of their previous crowd numbers. Most clubs incurred heavy losses pre-covid, it's difficult to see a long term future for the sport at all if things stay like they are. Fiddling with the number of clubs really isn't going to make any difference to that.
They will increase the quota spots and send all rejects to Leeds.
