Well the teams really come down to what they are meant to achieve. I assume it's a mixture of increasing player base, increasing fan base and (very unlikely) creating a stream of income.
All those, but:
Not any old player base. There are already 12 premier shute teams, 9 (going on 10) qld premier teams, and so on in the other states. While there are good players in those comps, they're not condensed. The national competition is about developing elite players to become pro players.
That's one reason why there's not a licence for any city with a 5k stadium that can support a franchise. Super Rugby players (the non-test guys) are needed in this competition. It's desirable for the future pro players to play with and against the existing pros. This will limit the number of teams.
Another thing is cost. For historical and rugby-political reasons, this competition has to run a
very tight ship. The first iteration of this comp, the ARC, folded in 2007; the lesson there is that you can't be incurring a quarter million plus in reddies to relocate a squad to live and train in a far-flung city for a few months each year.
The NRC teams for now are based in capital cites near where the Super players already live. Country teams are fly-in, fly out for game day only.
Could the marketing and branding of the NRC and all teams improve? Yes, but the foremost goal of the competition is to survive, and then grow. The format will evolve from here.
In terms of income stream, no one is suggesting it can rival AFL, NRL or even A-League, but dollars are possible. Pay TV worldwide has hours and hours of programming slots to match with "filler" … sure, it's patrononising to describe the national comp as filler but that's all you need to get a few million duck beaks as they do now (or longer term, tens of millions).
