Sir Kevin Sinfield wrote:
Is it? The private equity firms aren’t going to give us money for nothing. They may provide a large lump sum now, but for that they would want a portion of the Sky funding on annual basis, something all clubs need to survive. No doubt SL chairman will vote it through to take the short term cash, but it will leave us worse off in the long run.
Yes what worries me is I never hear any strategic planning from the executive. RL's approach is always short-term and rarely evidenced. So they'll talk about improving marketing, improving the game day experience, "investing in youth". Great but you can only sell to people who want to buy: football doesn't do an amazing game day experience, people just want to watch the action; and whereas I'd always agree with youth development, we could easily become a feeder for RU and NRL the way things are going.
I'm not saying any of their suggestions are wrong as such, but where is the vision for what RL is and where we're going into the future?
We could easily waste any windfall on pet projects of the club's gentry and then end up in the clutches of VCs who basically just want to spin a profit.
If we're going down this route I'd rather we amalgamated the RFL, SL with the NRL and became one worldwide sport resourced internally. TV audiences are increasingly global, maybe our sport should reflect that too.
