The Rugby Football League has signed a three year deal with trucking company Stobart. The deal involved Stobart putting large Rugby League themed stickers on 100 of their trucks and involves no money.
In exchange for this the Super League competition will carry the Stobart.
This is insane! Nothing against Stobart, they’ve done a great deal and made out like bandits. Lets put this in perspective though. The RFL gave Stobart free advertising on Sky Sports television. In return for that national exposure Stobart gave the RFL free advertising on the A57!
The game in England is terribly under funded, and is it any wonder why? How much is a vinyl sticker on a truck worth to Wakefield or London? How much will Hull FC get out of a truck that is traveling up to Newcastle with their logo on it?
If you ran a club and the RFL came back and said “We just sold the naming rights of the entire competition for no money….but look at these cool pictures on some trucks” you would be furious! Clubs have budgets they have to fill out and balance. The naming rights to the Super League competition is one of the few opportunities for the game to draw in some cold, hard cash, and the Rugby Football League blew it!
This deal comes a day after the shocking news that the Rugby Football League had bought Odsal Stadium. Some have suggested that the RFL did this to secure the future of the Bradford Bulls, who the RFL have said they will lease use of the ground to.
So, now that the RFL owns Odsal Stadium, how long do you think it is going to take for the Bradford Bulls to cry poor and claim they can’t afford to pay the RFL anything to play there. What are the RFL going to do, kick out the one team willing to play at what is a dump of a ground?
Some people have said the RFL should redevelop the group. Really? You want the RFL to spend a few hundred million pounds it doesn’t have on a stadium in Bradford?
It seems like every few weeks the Rugby Football League makes one shambolic decision after another that costs the game in one way or another. How long will these people be allowed to continue to run the game in Great Britain and be accountable to absolutely no one?
To give away free sponsorship and buy a relic of a football stadium is unbelievable. Hopefully someone in club land can call the RFL into account and send the current set of administrators off to ruin some other sport.
