Is that gonna be enough? Considering the PNG and Perth clubs will start with several hundred million.
Two ways to look at this.
1) No, not even close really. Not if they intend to be a genuine organisation with the resources to bring the best out of both players, administrators and still have fantastic grass roots to filter through their system.
It’s apparent that the actual requirements for a start up franchise (affiliated with previous existing club/brand or not) is a considerably higher cost. The words “business case” get thrown around a lot from NRL HQ and for good measure too.
Whilst $40m is a fantastic amount of money on face value you need to carefully consider that once it’s distributed between infrastructure, pathways, commercial operations, facilities etc (things that the NRL grant don’t necessarily cover) it gets eaten up pretty quickly.
2) However if the $40m is purely for an NRL club’s initial operations over head costs alone and won’t cover any of the other above items then yeah, it can be a decent start up. Theoretically Ipswich bid + NRL + QRL could hop on the coats of the state government Olympic stadia and facilities builds and upgrades to commandeer any facilities based out at Ipswich post-Olympics 2032. That would instantly save them a ton of cash and give them instant infrastructure. It would also very much line up with NRL’s current favouritism of government intervention to fund infrastructure for future proposed clubs.
From a junior footy perspective the thing that’s going for Ipswich and west of Brisbane regions is the amount of junior clubs and already in place pathways: 15/16 junior rugby league clubs in Ipswich, 9 in Toowoomba, 7 in Roma/St George/Miles/Chinchilla. Those are good numbers.
Further to this the population growth of +3% (3.51% between 22 and 23) with projected numbers at around 480k (this is Ipswich alone and doesn’t take into account Toowoomba or any other western regions) by 2041 are also good numbers. I know it’s not what you asked but thought it should be discussed as a point of merit.
Edit: as far as rugby league is concerned once Perth/WA Bears are officially in - you can probably already guess where my energy/time will be spent on next.