Well, I can only talk about the Raiders financial position based on what I picked up from people at the club last year. Basically the club was not budgeted to receive any grants from either News or its 4 leagues clubs (although in the leagues clubs case this isnt out of the ordinary) last year. Poor crowds might of facillitated some sort of small grant, though I havent heard anything about it.
Basically, I am led to believe Canberra can comfortably survive in the current environment. They have some advantages over other clubs at the moment that make up for a lack of income from leagues clubs and crowds. Firstly, because of smart work by the club a few years back, Bruce Stadium is very cheap for the club to rent (Manuka was actually more to rent). Because of this poor crowds dont have as severe effect as at other clubs. Secondly they have a very low wage bill at the moment, which is obviously a big change from a couple of years ago. Thirdly, the club is well sponsored. With Canberra been a IT hub all the canberra sports teams have done pretty well in attracting IT related sponsors and the Raiders recently had theirs (Oz-Email) re-sign for another couple of years.
Lastly, the club is increasing its local assets, which is illustrated by the recent opening of a 2 million training facillity in Bruce. If there is another quick hike in player payments or if our performance, crowds etc stayed crap for a while then we would probably be in trouble and would have to look to the local goverment or the leagues clubs for money. Financially we cant compete with the biggest clubs anymore and it will take some pretty good work from those in charge to stop us from continually losing players to these rich clubs. player retention is probably our number one problem at the moment and the club is moving to sign our key players to longer-term deals before they hit the open market. I am also not guarenteeing that we arent going to go broke tomorrow because I cant say for sure what Kevin Neal has planned or exactly what he has been up to.
