Greg Florimos Boots wrote:I suspect that next season we will hit the 12 A graded clubs in SL mark making it pretty much impossible for any Championship team to get in there. I challenge anyone to go through the grading criteria and come up with a realistic way in which a Championship team can get to 15 points. It is pretty much impossible.
You only have to look at the score that London got this season to see the advantages of holding a place in SL so in my opinion the best thing for Championship clubs is to ride it out and in the RL tradition, IMG maybe gone in 3 or 4 years and we are on to something else. The big question for teams like Bradford is if the money men will stick around and wait that long as we also know there is zero chance that the clubs vote to extend SL to 14 teams so that is not an option.
It all comes down to IMG fulfilling their core job - increasing revenue. And the tv contract is the lever for 14 clubs.
Agreed, if they say we’ve got interest in 7matches per weekend and have a 25% uplift in the contract but because it’s to be shared 14 ways you’ll only see an overall 10% uplift, then it’s possible. But it’s all on IMG exploring the financials with bidders for 7 vs 6 games per weekend.
