They move any thread about Newcastle to the members only area because they are worried about losing sponsors due to too much criticism of the Saudi's, right?
That's the line, isn't it? They have to obscure those threads for fear of sponsors reacting poorly to the brave Sunderland fans calling out the oppressive regime.
Now, surely they wouldn't want to take any money from anyone who would be offended by criticism of that regime, right? Wouldn't accepting that money be a form of tolerance?
They are the largest Sunderland board out there, couldn't they self-fund the site? How much money does it really take to keep a site like that ticking over? I asked our good friend Chat GPT;
To estimate how much it would cost each member of Sunderland’s Ready to Go (RTG) Message Board per month to keep the site running, we need to make a few educated assumptions or obtain some actual figures.
🔍 Assumptions and Estimations:
1. Monthly Running Costs of RTG
Includes:
Server hosting
Domain registration
Software (forum platform)
Admin/moderation effort (usually volunteered)
Typical cost for a large, active message board:
~ £50–£200/month, depending on traffic, features, and hosting type (shared, VPS, or dedicated server).
Let’s assume:
£100/month as a reasonable midpoint.
2. Number of Members
RTG is one of the more active UK football forums. Let's estimate:
Tier
Registered Users
Active Monthly Users
Conservative
5,000
1,000
Likely
10,000
2,000
High
20,000
5,000
Let’s go with 2,000 active monthly users, a realistic ballpark for a forum like RTG.
📊 Per Member Cost Calculation
Total Cost
Active Users
Monthly Per Member
£100
2,000
£0.05
£100
1,000
£0.10
£100
500
£0.20
✅ Final Estimate:
If RTG costs ~£100/month to operate and has around 2,000 active monthly members,
each member would only need to contribute ~£0.05 per month (or 60p/year) to keep it running.
Even with a lower user count or higher cost, you're still looking at well under £1 per person per month.
Surely that's better than cowing to the pressure from the Saudi's?
