Barnacle Bill wrote:I think that demanding clubs meet specific criteria can only be good for the game as a whole. Clear targets for clubs to meet encourage improvement across the board to reach the minimum standards required and since the criteria cover a wide range of targets clubs and the game should benefit in the long term.
I have doubts about the effectiveness of some of the published criteria for the next round of franchise applications for example the (apparently arbitrary) 40% average attendance and 12,000 capacity stadium requirement. Why would a club build or move to a stadium greater than 12,000 capacity when all that does is make the 40% average attendance point more difficult to earn?
So what we now have is a raft of new stadiums/plans all around the 12,000 capacity mark. If the "attendance" point was based on say a percentage growth in average attendance (rather than a percentage of the stadium capacity) then I'm sure some of the new stadia may well have been bigger, which may be better in the long (longer than 3 years) term.
A franchise point for achieveing a sell out, in itself, does little for the game or the club.
Whilst I agree with the gist of your post, I don't believe the 40% of capacity average has much of an effect on the size of newly built stadia. 40% of 12,000 is 4,800. If clubs can't achieve that then I doubt they will be in SL for very long anyway.
40% of 25,000 is 10,000, which is the aim crowd average that the RFL want. So clubs can still build huge stadiums and achieve the other two criteria.
Most clubs have an average of around 7,000, which would allow for a stadium of 17,500 and still covering the 40%.
Having a bigger stadium should make it easier to achieve the 10k average, as just one big crowd will push the average up.
Like I say, I'm not sure about the number of sell-outs criteria which is why I've put it up for discussion. It does give a good indicator of how many people are willing to come down to your stadium though (regardless of promotions, etc.). You could open the doors for free and still no-one extra come, which would show how weak the club really is.
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