The Stones Bitter Super League I was the official name for 1996's 102nd season of top-level rugby league football, and the first year of Europe's new championship: Super League. It is also the first season of rugby league to be played in summer. The competition featured all eleven teams from the 1995-96 RFL First Division plus one expansion club, Paris Saint-Germain.

Twelve teams were selected to play in the inaugural Super League season.

Although RFL chairman Maurice Lindsay had pushed for a more modern top-flight setup for some time, his previous efforts had only resulted in a tepid reform during the 1994 offseason. The more radical Super League came together over just ninety-six hours in early April 1995, following overtures by emissaries of Australian media conglomerate News Ltd., who were looking for international partners to sway the battle for the control of Australian rugby league in their favour. The first rumours transpiring from the talks mentioned a 1997 start. News' plan entailed moving the RFL season to summer to align it with the southern hemisphere, to which St Helens and Leeds were said to be the most reticent. In particular, Leeds feared scheduling conflicts with the Yorkshire County Cricket Club, but they were quickly won over by the financial opportunities promised by the Murdoch deal.

The English game's new era officially began on 8 April 1995, when RFL clubs voted to approve the £77 million package negotiated with News to help the transition. The initial plan for the European Super League (so named because it was then supposed to share the Super League moniker with an Australasian equivalent) included fourteen teams. Several of the twelve projected English teams were composites of existing small-town clubs. The initial plan was for the amalgamated teams to rotate between several stadiums, which would be replaced by a single, state-of-the-art venue in the future. Clubs could turn down the merger and be assigned to the second tier instead. Two French teams were added to give the competition the requisite European stature. Their management was entrusted to veteran coach Jacques Fouroux, who had recently founded a summer competition of his own called France Rugby League. Promotion and relegation would be frozen for the first two seasons.

A Cardiff side was also slated to begin play in the second tier with an eye on promotion (a hastily thrown together Welsh club did take the field, but never reached those heights). An agent claimed that three Wales union stars, Mike Hall, Tony Clement and Robert Jones had inquired via a third party about the salaries on offer in the Super League, which Hall angrily denied, accusing the younger code of using his name for publicity. More speculative were plans for a team in Dublin, as was Jacques Fouroux's dream of teams in Barcelona (made up of players from French Catalonia) and Milan, which even the progressive Maurice Lindsay called unlikely.

The reform immediately drew the opposition of the fanbases involved in the planned mergers, as well as a group of MPs and the Rugby League Professional Players' Association. Additionally, second-tier champions Keighley threatened to sue to get the promotion they had earned on the field prior to the reform. Maurice Lindsay suggested that they enter the Super League via a merger with Bradford, which the club strenuously refused. Halifax was also briefly in talks to merge with Bradford or Huddersfield due to their outdated stadium. Their board of director did vote to merge with the former, but met with strong hostility from the community and did not proceed. Wigan president Jack Robinson even threatened an unlikely merger with the sport's other powerhouse St Helens, although this was primarily a political powerplay to put pressure on the city as he was looking for subsidies to upgrade his club's ground. Widnes, for its part, refused to merge with Warrington and instead opted to take first place on the Super League waiting list, due to the likely cancellation of the second French team based in Toulouse, which was confirmed a few days later when Fouroux opted to focus his efforts on a single club.

However, following another meeting on May 1, 1995, Murdoch's financial contribution was increased to £87 million and a new format was agreed upon by a majority of clubs. The mergers were abandoned but, rather than enlarge the Superleague contingent as speculated, it was decided to trim it further to twelve teams: the capital cities of Paris and London, plus the top ten of the 1994–95 First Division campaign. This was supposed to amount to £1.1 million for each Super League club, although these projections were later lowered to £830,000 after the RFL took its share of it to finance central operating costs. Half of the Murdoch money was set aside for ground improvements.

Salford, who did not make the cut, put in a bid to convince the RFL to let them represent Manchester in place of higher ranked Oldham, but ultimately chose to accept the new plan for the good of the game. However, Widnes, which had just been reinstated thanks to Toulouse's withdrawal, found itself out of the league once more, on the basis of its uncharacteristically poor 1994–95 ranking. The club launched a lawsuit of its own against the RFL. It was summarily dismissed at the end of May, but Widnes and Keighley kept dragging their feet to sign the Super League agreement, demanding formal guarantees that a promotion and relegation system be preserved. In mid-July, the RFL voted in favour of a "one up, one down" scheme with immediate effect. Keighley dropped their lawsuit shortly after.