Really interesting article this morning the the Courier Mail re: the leaking of commercial revenue for each of the NRL clubs (shocked this was a leak, I would have assumed someone just bothered to do the work could have dived into annual reports, but anyway). The TL;DR (/didn't sub) version is that the broncos have fkn heaps of cash, and the tigers sweet FA (shocker).
Some things that I thought were interesting (ie: support my previous arguments against expansion/ club rugby being professional/ stadium usage etc.)
How little the tigers make from corporate hospitality at suburban stadiums: It's just $600k - and all of the clubs who play regularly out of the smaller suburban grounds (think the dragons, manly, knights, raiders) all make under 2.2M across 13ish home games a year. The Reds make 1.2M from their home games (2023 and 2024). Key point here being that I've seen debates in here and on the WTF facebook group before about how rugby should look to smaller grounds to build up the hype. This would be a key reason why you wouldn't do that.
Club Rugby is way off the mark in terms of what's needed to run a professional club: There is a huge gulf between club rugby and professional football. Wests in Brisbane reported a total revenue of $1.9M in 2024, roughly 15% of what perennial basket case club the West Tigers make yearly (13.4M). The obviously thing to say off the top is that trying to compare them right now, where one is in a professional environment and the other amateur isn't a fair comparison and that in a level playing field the numbers would be different - BUT - it still raises questions about where the money comes from if there were ever to be a professional club comp.