End of the line for Wolfpack
Bold gambit appears dead in the water after vote to deny reinstatement
In the end, the question wasn’t whether the financially troubled Toronto Wolfpack might get a reprieve from Super League.
It was: How did the transatlantic rugby league team ever get this far?
Wolfpack founder Eric Perez wrote down his blueprint for the sport in Canada on a fish-and-chips wrapper. Somehow his brainchild, years in the making, made it all the way to the top tier — although he was divorced from the project by then, focused on trying to avoid making the same mistakes with the Ottawa Aces when they start play in the lower leagues next year.
Thanks to the powers that be in English rugby league, the Wolfpack were built on a rotten foundation. Expansion to North America was fine as long as the U.K. contingent didn’t have to pay for it.
The Wolfpack paid for travel and accommodation for visiting teams from day one in 2017, but got none of the central distribution funding that fuels the 11 other sides. And salary-cap relief for teams with established academies was not available.
They signed the deal, so they knew what was coming. Under majority owner David Argyle, the plan was to spend money to make money, but only the first half of the equation happened.
“I was there two weeks and I thought, ‘This is never going to work,’ ” said Wolfpack CEO and chairman Bob Hunter, the former MLSE executive who never got a paycheque in15 months with the club. “Like I don’t even know how these guys have been operating for three years, because David had resources but he couldn’t sustain it. So I felt very sorry for him. He was putting so much effort in and (got) so little in return.”
The club was in limbo after standing down July 20, saying it could not afford to play the rest of the Super League season with the pandemic preventing games from being played in Canada. Players and staff have not been paid since June 10.
The league responded in July by tearing up Toronto’s participation agreement and expunging its points from the standing.
When Argyle agreed to step away, Toronto businessman Carlo LiVolsi stepped up and made a case to buy the team — as long as it remained in the top tier and got its fair share of the funds, plus a vote at the board table. Central distribution funding, drawn primarily from TV revenue with a portion from sponsorships, is worth about $3.9 million per team in a normal year. Sharing with the Wolfpack would, of course, reduce the amount other clubs got.
LiVolsi offered to play all of the Wolfpack’s games in the United Kingdom in 2021, buying time to solidify a new business plan for 2022 to 2025.
On Monday, however, the league rejected the Wolfpack’s bid for reinstatement by an 8-4 vote with one abstention.
Salt was rubbed into the wound with a report from a Super League-appointed committee that essentially concluded that having a team in North America “was non-strategic and added no material incremental revenue to Super League in the short- or medium-term.” Here was a final kick to the teeth with the comment that there wasn’t a proper assessment of North American expansion to begin with.
Barring a miracle, the Wolfpack are dead in the water.
They could try to start again in the lower leagues — the domain of the Rugby Football League, which is believed to have supported their efforts to win reinstatement. But who would want to take that on, given the team’s losses — the missed payroll alone is estimated to reach $1.7 million by year’s end, part of the franchise’s $6-million liability — and lack of interest from the rest of the Super League?
Argyle remains the club owner, still unable to fund it.
“I don’t think at the moment the club is anywhere,” said Hunter.
Fielding a small but full-time squad against part-timers in the third tier in 2017, they won promotion by winning 15 straight games and outscoring opponents 916-157.
They topped the regular-season table at 20-2-1 in 2018, but fell one win short of reaching the Super League, losing the Million Pound Game 4-2 to the London Broncos.
Under new coach Brian McDermott, the Wolfpack dominated the second-tier Championship in 2019, finishing 26-1-0. And this time, they sealed the deal by defeating the Featherstone Rovers 24-6 to earn promotion.
The Wolfpack made headlines worldwide by signing former All Black Sonny Bill Williams last November to a rich twoyear deal. Argyle hoped to take the team to European cities such as Madrid to showcase the brand and Williams, now 35, provided instant worldwide recognition. Toronto fans never got to see Williams on Canadian soil.
The team had been paying TV production costs to air home and away games on Sky Sports in Britain to raise its profile, but there were danger signs late in the 2019 season when broadcasts were cut back to save money. There were rumblings of unpaid bills and a late payroll.
While the club set lowerleague attendance records at 9,600-capacity Lamport Stadium, there were questions about how many tickets had been given away.
On the playing field, the top tier proved challenging. Toronto was 0-6-0 but coming off a Challenge Cup win over Super League’s Huddersfield when play was suspended in mid-March.