LeagueXIII
First Grade
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And you've just hit one of the main problems with the CC bid right on the head!
To let them in somebody else has to miss out and there're plenty of better options floating around out there.
The population of the CC as of 2016 was 335 thousand (so nowhere near 1 mil and it's not going to reach 1 mil for a very long time), and we currently have a ton of populations bigger and more valuable (broadcasting, advertising, and sponsorship wise) either going without representation or under represented.
The CC is growing, but so is everywhere else, so realistically by the time that they'd be a reasonable option for expansion by todays' standards (which is roughly somewhere around 2050) they wont be by the standards of the of that time cause the rest of the population will have changed as well, and so will have the sports reach to be ability to break into new markets that nobody would take seriously currently.
Also the spread of clubs matters for all sorts of reasons, but some of the main ones are value to broadcasters, sponsors, corporates, etc, the amount of people directly represented by the spread of clubs in your comp, and the legitimacy of the competition as a national competition, and frankly speaking if you can't cover all of the NSW market with 10 clubs then you're doing it wrong, and we are doing it wrong cause we have 9 of those 10 clubs all fighting for the finite resources in 1 city, a big city yes, but not one big enough to support 9 NRL clubs.
Who's going to miss out, the plan is to make league strong so all survive and flourish, not cut and burn to squeeze everyone into the magic 16.
The million I referred to included the population of the Bears old area and CC.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/n...m/news-story/2e55b508be69c71e84906b3e70198ac3
What league needs to do is reclaim the goodwill it once had, and it's feel good factor that made it must watch amongst the swinging sports fan, this is the market we have lost and is stopping our growth as a sport.