I understand all about investing in sports clubs. I was involved in sourcing funding for a basketball team some years ago from a bunch of high net worth investors. The thing is though that even a loss-making sporting team can be of interest to people with real money, if nothing else for tax purposes. But it has to be an attractive, high-profile thing to invest in.
The pitch will be also be that if you can grow the sport enough, you can make a lot of money if you sell out later, even if clubs aren't making big profits during the growth phase.
Those two reasons are why mega-wealthy people are pouring cash into the Football Championship, probably the most financially unsustainable competition in world sport.
We can't replicate all of that, as clearly we don't have a Premiership pot of gold. But I think RL needs to try to attract some of this money, as there's simply not enough money in the game to be able to just magic up major improvements organically. Otherwise we're just reorganizing chairs on the Titanic.
I've often thought that we lack a 'homebase', every other sport has a national stadium, football has Wembley, RU has Twickenham, Cricket has Lords (traditionally), how much do you think it would help England RL both in attraction and expanse if we had a purpose built National RL stadium?
I know RU has some real financial difficulties at club level, but its interesting that their cap is at 5 million already. Even taking into account bigger squads it gives an idea of how much more money has been sloshing around RU. There's also a lesson about trying to maintain solvency while growing, even if we did manage to attract a lot of new money.....
I've often thought that we lack a 'homebase', every other sport has a national stadium, football has Wembley, RU has Twickenham, Cricket has Lords (traditionally), how much do you think it would help England RL both in attraction and expanse if we had a purpose built National RL stadium?
On the face of it, its a nice thought, but I would presume the cost would make it a non starter.
Presumably you would want it to be big enough to stage the CC & GF, so you are looking at 50,000 capacity as minimum? Granted it's in London and 60 odd thousand capacity, but Spurs new stadium supposedly cost £1B.
Even at a quarter of that on some northern brownfield site is a hell of commitment.
On the face of it, its a nice thought, but I would presume the cost would make it a non starter.
Presumably you would want it to be big enough to stage the CC & GF, so you are looking at 50,000 capacity as minimum? Granted it's in London and 60 odd thousand capacity, but Spurs new stadium supposedly cost £1B.
Even at a quarter of that on some northern brownfield site is a hell of commitment.
Sounds like Odsal to me, could me a Game wide Community project. Bring your own brush
On the face of it, its a nice thought, but I would presume the cost would make it a non starter.
Presumably you would want it to be big enough to stage the CC & GF, so you are looking at 50,000 capacity as minimum? Granted it's in London and 60 odd thousand capacity, but Spurs new stadium supposedly cost £1B.
Even at a quarter of that on some northern brownfield site is a hell of commitment.
Taking out the logistics of finance, location etc, I'm more interested in the idea of a homebase for the CC/GF/Magic Weekend/Internationals etc Do people think it would be a good thing for and would it perhaps generate more attention to and an attraction for the sport, if we could focus and centralise a homebase for it?
