Take out the stadium funding for wa and the state govt isn’t investing much at all into leagueYes ..your first point is true of those two teams … the strategy of requiring significant third party investment ( in these cases Govt investment) seems to have worked for the NRL in those two areas but it’s not going to work everywhere ,,,, perhaps part of the thinking is that there is considerable risk with expanding to Perth and particularly PNG which needed to be subsidised…. There is obviously no chance that PNG would even be seriously considered if not for Albo’s money
I think NZ 2 could be considered a little more like The Dolphins which was admitted on the cheap… it’s a much more positive RL environment amongst the locals than Perth … Christchurch and Dunedin have good stadiums already in place … and they aren’t starting from close to scratch in respect of quality Juniors ( although of course there is much more work to be done )… would leave money to be provided for the COE which I assume some level of Gov would provide …
The NRL also need to be getting future NRL players from somewhere… and I suggest NZ is much better set up to provide these than Perth ( for decades) and even PNG will take a while…. This might make the NRL a little more open to the idea to bring them in on the cheap …
Nz has had govts fund two amazing stadiums for chch to play from