Its articles like this, and the small minded ambition we have from not only fans but also those running the game, which perfectly demonstrate why our great sport has never reached its potential.

Play Catalans on Saturday, Toulouse on Thursday or Friday or vice versa. Its not rocket science, nor it it hugely problematic. Its actually a great opportunity.

....the only challenge here is small minded chairmen who only see the cost of 5/6 days in hotels, and losing a couple of hundred away fans (who should rightly be made up by home fans much more interested in watching their team play Toulouse than Wakefield or Salford....I will definitely go to our home game vs Toulouse, over games vs basement SL clubs who i'm bored of seeing us play!

Rather than look at minor challenges and threats, those who oppose this should look at the opportunity and benefit this brings. If we manage it correctly it can be huge for the game.

Extra cost of hotels and flights....stop looking at this negatively and start talking to tour operators to be official travel partners and sponsors of the SL (to line up all the fans packages with them etc). I bet you could find more than one tour operator in 48h who would be only too happy to cover the teams travel and accommodation costs in one of their hotels for the deal.
....Now thats a trade off sponsor with ACTUAL value...much better than free livery on lorrys and free pizzas which achieve nothing ....Toronto achieved it with Air Canada in very little time....If only they hadn't been equally small minded to kick them out, they could go and talk to them for some tips!!

In any business i have ever worked, the senior leaders have been required to continually assess opportunities and threats, and adapt and change in a way which meets the opportunities and diminish the threats. ...unfortunately it seems SL and most SL clubs do not operate this way!
Instead we ignore open goal opportunities and adopt a victim mindset to grumble about the challenges and blame everyone else "the world is against us and its only just possible for us to survive"
...The grand final crowd and the Toulouse 'issues' are perfect examples.....approach this positively, constructively and with a change mindset the opportunities outweigh the difficulties tenfold...they just need to look beyond the end of their nose!!

Most telling bit is that RFL is looking for a 'strategic partner', by which they mean venture capital, but they don't want to put them off by publicly espousing small minded, parochial, low aspirational views. So at least they are half way to underastanding the problem.

Spot on!!
This is also why we DESPERATELY need private equity investment though. It will force them to up their game, force them to think creatively, address the game's challenges and seize opportunities, rather than put their head in the sand, ignore problems and blame others for the difficulties!
The sooner we can get private equity involved the better....the game desperately needs the level of accountability and rigour they would bring.

These people coming in would be the death of the game. Selling the game's future revenues for a relatively small amount of cash now would be absolutely deadly. Thank God Hetherington and McManus blocked it last time.

I think you misunderstand what private equity investment is about. It is not about selling future revenues now for a low price...
Most of the time, particularly with smaller businesses, it is about investing money into them to support and realise growth, for the benefits of both. They only realise value upon their exit if the game has grown substantially, and they bring external professional, corporate knowledge and expertise the game doesn’t have to allow us to realise opportunities. So it’s mutually beneficial.

What it’s not doing is what you describe as similar to a high interest loan....saying give us 100 million now and we’ll give you 500 million back in the future!!
They simply take a minority share in the game, which they only realise money on if the game grows when they exit in the future! So it would be the ideal fire under the @rse of those running the game to get them to actually grow it!! Hugely beneficial

Yeah I know all about PE thanks - I currently work for a company owned by PE and previously worked for a company which was bought by them, overleveraged, incompetently run and then sent bust. They claimed exactly what you suggest, "corporate knowledge" and "expertise". The reality was millions spent on consultants to come up with reports that the expensively-assembled board could approve and thereby dodge responsibility for the consequences. They added millions of overheads but never got to grips with the fundamentals of how to run what was a quite specialist business. Which brings us to Rugby League. . .

PE are interested in short, at best medium-term returns. Which is incredibly dangerous in a sporting context where expansion is a fundamentally long-term, decades-long, investment. Moreover the proposed deals are money up front in return for a large share of SLE's share capital AND going forward a third (!!!!) of the league's TV income every year. It's madness, an historically terrible deal. No wonder the best-run clubs (also those least desperate for cash) vetoed it (essentially Leeds, Saints, Wire).

And let's look back at the history of "professionalism, corporate knowledge and expertise" being applied to Rugby League - it's such a niche business that it really doesn't lend itself to people with a background in traditional business - in fact we've seen over and over again supposedly high-flying businessmen lose a bundle in the sport because they simply don't understand that the usual levers they would expect to pull often simply don't work in a sporting context. From Richard Branson down to Ian Lenagan and Ken Davey we have seen myriad failures whereas the people who have done best have decidedly haphazard backgrounds - Hetherington was a player and a door-to-door salesman, David Oxley a teacher, David Howes a journalist, Maurice Lindsay a bookmaker, Richard Lewis a tennis player and LTA official.

The sort of deal that's been proposed so far is dangerous. The sport needs investment, but not at any cost and with at such a huge danger to its long-term future.

If that was the terms of the PE investment then i completely agree they were right to veto it. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water on this one. There are many different types of PE investors....yes those you describe who are just interested in over leveraging a business exist, but as do private investors who add a huge amount of value.

It is exactly because we have door-to-door salesmen, journalists and tennis players etc. running the game that this is needed imo. Yes, they have been very successful within their own fields, but often have very significant blind spots when it comes to business, which, along with protecting short term self interest, is a huge reason the game has never realised its potential IMO.

If we could secure a minority PE partner who has a longer term exit strategy that could only be good for the game IMO....it is about finding alignment with the partner and what the game needs. The very reason the last one probably failed is they were chasing huge sums, which brings in the corporate PE sharks, with expectations of huge investment and returns.

A much smaller PE partner who brings a smaller value of investment but prepared to provide greater expertise is what we should be looking for, with a longer term time horizon.

What kind of expertise could you get? Given the long history of people bringing so-called business expertise to Rugby League and failing dramatically what are we talking about? What would be different that couldn't be employed by the game direct at much lower cost?

External perspective and business acumen, which are two elements the game has significant difficulty with. As i said before, because of the make up of our owners and chairs, there are significant business blind spots within the game. IMO the game desperately needs support from outside from people outside with a greater level of expertise, professionalism and rigour.

The difficulty is finding the match....rather than look at what we need, they are blinded by chasing immediate £££ which only brings to the table the PE sharks you describe.

very interesting posts, better than the you know who posts. For me PE is about an expertise that can bring in investment at a cost that in turns get's a return higher than the cost. I can appreciate that some clubs may be missing something, but I don't accept all clubs are missing a trick or two. So it's firstly about all the clubs sharing their expertise, their successes and their failures. Is there some genius that can put us on better business footing that comes with a big bill that gives us a "return"

I really doubt it........