Super League clubs will once again hold a meeting on Friday about finalising the details of an agreement to form a partnership with the NRL.<\/p>\n
Meetings have taken place over a number of months, with a further summit planned for today (Friday) in which the clubs, senior officials from the Rugby Football League and RL Commercial will continue to discuss terms on a deal with the Australian governing body.<\/p>\n
It has been stressed to Love Rugby League by clubs who will be in the meeting that a deal is now nearing a conclusion, with hopes high that it can be concluded in the coming days and weeks.<\/p>\n
NRL deal nears conclusion<\/p>\n
It is understood most of the key detail in the agreement are now all-but complete, leaving just minor details between the two governing bodies left to be agreed.<\/p>\n
As revealed by Love Rugby League earlier this summer, the NRL have agreed to take less of a stake in Super League for their initial investment of around \u00a335million, which will be distributed to the clubs over a five-year period.<\/p>\n
But there will be much more investment routed into rugby league in the United Kingdom and France through commercial opportunities and money to help strengthen the sport on a wider scale.<\/p>\n
The big sticking point in recent weeks has been whether or not Super League expands to 15 teams \u2013 but that now also appears to be nearing a conclusion too.<\/p>\n
London Broncos near Super League return<\/p>\n
The NRL have insisted that London in Super League is conditional to any deal between the two parties, something Super League and its clubs were initially hesitant about when it became clear they would not be in the top of the IMG gradings, which were officially released on Thursday.<\/p>\n
That meant Super League had to go to 15 teams if the NRL\u2019s condition was to be honoured \u2013 and many top-flight clubs have now accepted that is the likely direction of travel.<\/p>\n
It will be discussed again on Friday but plans have been drawn up behind the scenes for what a 15-team Super League competition could look like.<\/p>\n
That would include a rethink of scheduling and even events like Magic Weekend due to the competition having an odd-numbered amount of teams.<\/p>\n
But all the signs point to an historic deal being agreed long before the end of the upcoming Rugby League World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Super League clubs will once again hold a meeting on Friday about finalising the details of an agreement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}