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Message: [QUOTE="Foordy, post: 3677888, member: 1769"] The Bears bid chief has broken his silence. and some of what he says is interesting if true... for example, it was revealed that the NRL expected the Bears to pay a licence fee of $20 million, but didn't charge the Dolphins anything to enter the comp. [B]Western Bears bid chief Peter Cumins said:[/B] “I’m gutted. That’s the best description,” Cumins told Sydney’s 2GB radio on Thursday morning. “Peter Beattie (ARLC board member and expansion taskforce chief) did put to us that a licence fee would be required but to be fair, in the actual bid document, the request was for us to proffer a licence fee. “We chose to say zero. “We said zero and that sounds ridiculous, but to put it in context, the last new club, which was the Dolphins, they paid a zero licence fee and they are a club that has been going for 75 years and has $130 million in assets. “They already have all the facilities needed for an NRL team.” “You compare that (the Dolphins’ infrastructure) to our situation where we are a start-up in an AFL state,” he explained. “We don’t have the facilities for an NRL team. “In our bid case, we had to provide $10 million in capital expenditure to make temporary facilities until the government was able to build us something long term. “You can imagine the start-up costs for a new team, just the relocation expense for 40 players and their families. “With the licence fee stipulation, there was no amount given by the NRL. “Whether we made it a licence fee of say $1 million, our view was that it was not significant enough to make a commercial difference to the bid. “If the NRL required a $20 million licence fee, that would have changed the entire nature of our ability to fund that. “We would have had to have raised a considerably more amount of money ... our view was that the licence fee was going to be so significant that we couldn’t justify it.” [/QUOTE]

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