In the meantime, as I've said already, the Knights are either losing money from sponsorship or else not advising their sponsors that their website would be receiving monumentally less traffic - considerably less, I'd estimate it would be about 1/5th of what it was.
Just a quick perusal around the now deserted Knights website made me realise it isn't just affiliated sponsors who advertise on the site. Minor sponsors, and even unrelated businesses have advertisements on the site.
To name a few I saw:
xbox - this one IS affiliated to the NRL
Rebel Sport - not an official sponsor, yet their advertisements are widespread throughout the site.
sportingbet.com.au - not an official sponsor, yet they too have several places of advertising.
Legends Genuine Memorabilia - not a sponsor, yet they also have a number of ads.
I'm neither playing down nor juicing up these facts about sponsors - the fact is that if I were a business that signed up to advertising on a website with 'x' amount of traffic each week then I'd want to know if that figure was reduced by 20%, certainly 40%, but especially if a popular section of the site is shut down.
Maybe actual traffic statistics can be found, but my estimations point to about 1/5th of the previous traffic.
The Knights are doing one of two things:
* They've told their sponsors that there is less traffic and therefore either reduced their sponsorship prices or the sponsors aren't that worried about less traffic.
or
* They're hiding the fact that their main source of traffic is now gone, and therefore deceiving their sponsors by not telling them.
Harsh judgement, but I can really see no other scenarios - it isn't a wise business or ethical move in either case.