errr yeah because running a two year trial (forced or otherwise) that was a massive success isn't a good indication of it. How long would it have had to run for you to say it was successful? How long would super rugby have to suck before you say its not.
But I guess when you actually have no reputable other then 'it won't work' then you can resort to talking about super rugby as the greatest rugby sporting comp in the world. You and Your nephew will end up as the only two fluffybunnys in the stands.
Super Rugby sucks - just not as much as something that would likely tank the game does. And brother please - you just need to scroll back like 2 days at most to see the arguments I've made, it's not that hard...
You are defending it though. A competition that's failed Australian rugby for 20 years and hemorrhaged fans. I'm sure a few more tweaks and it'll be great. Lets go down to 2 teams and we could even win it every 3 years.
The big question with a domestic competition is how much money could be put behind it from the beginning, thus determining how many teams are viable and how much the players could be paid. I suspect it'd be more than you think. But even if it wasn't much and we ended up with something closer to an NPC level standard, it would still give professional rugby more reach and a base to build from. The Wallabies would have to pick from anywhere, but looking at Argentina at the moment that might help them.
This...
What is this based on? The private equity we failed to secure last year after firms massively wrote down the value of the code? Consortiums who can't name who is in them, or how much money they have?
This base to build from, the NPC level competition - would mean we have
even less money to pay players and would see us return to amateurism in our code. Like it or not - we don't control the player market - so when all of our best guys leave and we're trying to signal to fans and the corporate world that
'hey - we've actually got something pretty good going on" what is the business plan to actually achieve this when:
- We have 8-12 teams instead of 4-5 and are now paying $20m to run all of them (this is the average cost of a super rugby team pa, and includes everything that would reasonably be expected of any new professional outfit) - so straight away costs are up.
- Our broadcast deal AT BEST would be the same, as we'd be supplying the same amount of content as we are now (5-6 games a week), but likely lower as networks have clearly signalled that quality of product is important. So more cost
and equal to less revenue from our largest revenue source
- At this point we have less money to pay players - it would take a miracle for our best to stay onshore for pay cuts in a lower standard competition, further degrading the value of the competition and teams in the eyes of sponsors and broadcasters.
- Oh, and the average attendance for Super Au in 2021 was 9,498 (this includes the final which people love to cherry pick as a sign there is massive demand....), so it's not like we can hand on heart say that it was massively more popular than Super Rugby Pacific (this years australian home game av is actually higher at 10,720 but massively skewed by Reds games).
All this aside - I actually completely agree with you that having more teams would be great for the game from a development perspective and that we should be able to pick a whole team from outside of Australia if thats where our best players are. But - from a commercial perspective - there is nothing to suggest that a weakened domestic competition would be better for the game, than super rugby is now - even though itself is shit.
The tiniest amount of thinking can land you at this conclusion, yet so far all I've read across hundreds of these forum messages can amount to:
Domestic competition -> cool format -> get paid.
