NRL COACHES IN WAITING: Ben and Shane Walker will be front-runners to coach any Western Corridor side in the future, with the Ipswich Jets set to become a feeder team.

NRL COACHES IN WAITING: Ben and Shane Walker will be front-runners to coach any Western Corridor side in the future, with the Ipswich Jets set to become a feeder team. David Nielsen

THE WESTERN Corridor NRL bid will be a commercial and viable operation if it wins a licence.

That is the word from bid chairman Steve Johnson, who was responding to critics of the bid who say that a community-owned not-for-profit team won't work in the NRL and that it must be a "commercial" outfit with the support of the big end of town.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

"Any rugby league club to succeed must be committed to the community, and the Gold Coast have proven that as a for-profit model," Johnson said.

"If you disengage yourself from your fans you disengage yourself from success. So our model is quite simple.

"We are going to be selling genuine ownership shares to the community and we can attract the same commercial investors as any for-profit bid.

"It is just that in our model you don't get any dividends and you don't get any return on your investment. It is a genuine investment in your community."

Before any new NRL club gets a licence it needs to fund its start-up year before playing as a club.

For instance if the Western Corridor got a licence for 2018 it would get NRL salary cap funding from November 1, 2017.

But in the year leading into that it would have operating expenses.

Johnson highlights how if the bid had been accepted in 2015, as was hoped, it was ready to rock.

"In the old financial we had we needed $2.2 million to start the club and we had three ways of doing that," Johnson said.

"One was with shares, one was sponsorship and one was benefactors.

"If was had started in 2015 as we could have, we had two sponsors that were worth almost that.

"We had a front of jumper sponsor prepared to put in $1.5 million and another $350,000 sponsor which included a lot of other benefits.

"There was almost the amount of money you needed immediately.

"In your establishment year you have to hire your coach, some staff and do some marketing and start looking at your model and recruiting players.

"You start paying players from November of the following year. Once you are up and running you get $7 million from the NRL, and the rest depends on your own budget.

"With our budget we needed 15,000 fans each game at Suncorp Stadium to break even.

"The worst case prediction by key people in the game at the time was that we would average 22,500."

"You have to have a product that is attractive to the commercial marketplace which includes your sponsors and your fans," he said.

Johnson said "just because you are a not for profit bid doesn't mean you are not commercial".