First a couple of quotes, then my financial plan.
Clubs have had significant increases in grant revenue since 2011 and most have seen significant increases in self generated revenue in last few years. Despite this most still make losses (or rely heavily on significant pokie funding to remain viable). So how much is enough?
The AFL, being far smarter than us, recognised a decade ago that it would need to create a culture of unequal grants and ticket taxes if it was going to support the poorer clubs to keep them sustainable and competitive and allow for continued significant expansion plans. Whilst not everyone is happy with their income equalisation strategy it is hard to argue it hasn't worked out well for them.
Back in RL land the clubs don't want to help each other out, cant make ends meet despite significant revenue increases, now demand more of the pie from the NRL at the cost of expansion and want to play a game of dirty politics through the media.
You can easily see why corporates sponsors don't flock to RL like they do other codes.
This is exactly what we should be doing. The club bosses look like tools, I do agree. They dont even seem to know AFL exists and has shown us the way.
OOPS! Thats right, the NRL tried to introduce something similar, but those girls wouldn't have a bar of it.
The 16 clubs are united.
To be clear, I don't believe a breakaway comp is at all a possibility here, but IF push came to shove and the worst case scenario eventuated, the clubs could form a new competition fairly easily. Newcastle an Gold Coast aren't going to stop it.
How would the NRL go about forming 16 new clubs?
I know you stated a pre-case for that, but in reality you are still saying its ludicrous to suggest they would even bother, let alone be able to. Setting up a comp like that is easy? Its going to be a giant headache.
I dont know how the NRL would go about forming new clubs, but the old club names, colours and locations are going to sound very familiar to people.
We see this kind of branding win in the world all the time. It may not help the NRL much, but it will decimate the upstart. Who cares if its origin quality - its going to be lame when they have to come up with a whole new unfamiliar name.
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I am shocked and dismayed at no expansion just like everyone else, thats why I came up with my own funding model that solves everyone's beefs.
They need a large distribution fund that automatically does not reward the poorest teams, but comes in the form of favours and credits and gifts; there's a small automatic scaled distribution, barely 1/3rd, then the next 2/3rds are worked for. A committee and submissions decide on the rest of the money. The money accumulates each year and at the end of 5 they get a larger automatic amount. Its not to be used for pay packets directly.
They won't get 3M a year each but by the end they should be getting close to it. Its not difficult to access this fund, there just needs to be a reason.
The ARLC can use favours to buy votes on it, but they all need to save money.
We want expansion, so 3M a year extra based on a 10m/year salary cap just won't work.
If they can save 16M each year, to my mind thats 16 they can put toward an expansion team - while at the same time they have been directly boosting clubs fortunes. At some point they would put on a football department spending cap - but only once the clubs felt they were up to speed on everything and stood a good chance from then-on. So the clubs would agree when that time was to be.
And as to that, they would have another committee looking over (blindly to each other) the clubs and ranking their performances. This would help in distributing the money. So the clubs even get their board-to-clubland phone line....
ITS NOT an even distribution. It works on the premise clubs are accessing it for genuine growth things that help them all round, so it expects not all clubs will access all they can each year. It would reward longer-term plans too I suppose. If they can save 10M a year even (on what it would have been), thats 10m extra (minus the final large payment before the football cap is voted in) for an expansion team.
They can do their grassroots to a certain level, and do their data/media thing too.
To be clear, I am kinda skimping on club payments - but think with new commitees/people it can put funds where they will be most visible to all, and I am kinda skimping on the junior strategy. But I am thinking they will all be able to do much more than now with the new stadia, hopefully that balances it out.
If they have credits+/loans, favours and gifts, that would be nice. Favours build with trust over time, but get wiped hard if a club needs financial support.
