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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Gerry Thornley: Talk of a breakaway rugby competition odd at such a perilous time for the sport
Rarely a season or two seems to go by without some talk, or not so idle threat, of a breakaway rugby club competition to lure the best players with vastly increased riches. But while the odds remain against the latest grandiose concept, namely the R360, well-placed sources do give it some chance where previously they would have given it none whatsoever. The founders and people behind R360 are former England international Mike Tindall, Stuart Hooper, who spent seven years as the director of rugby at Bath, player agent Mark Spoors and John Loffhagen, who was the chief legal adviser for LIV golf for a year. Their proposal is to create two superclub competitions based on franchises, one between eight men's sides and one between four women's sides, which would compete initially in a seven-match season rising to 14 matches, to be run on consecutive weekends in two windows from April to June and then August to September. Rounds would take place in a different city each week, with São Paulo, Barcelona, New York and Los Angeles all mentioned as potential venues to weeklong events, involving concerts. They want to hire the best 360 players in the world by doubling their salaries and claim to have interested backers from Formula 1 and the NFL, with eight franchises already agreed in principle at €55 million apiece. READ MORE They have conducted several meetings with player agents and representatives, and also the game's governing body, World Rugby. Players from countries, including Ireland, have signed non-binding heads of agreement and, potentially in some cases, contracts which are predicated on the premise that the R360 starts up by next September. For players in their late 20s or more, promises of doubling salaries would be an attractive end-of-career segue. While the R360 has been in the planning for a while, and is reasonably well advanced, next September is a tight timeline and must count against the project taking off. It seems unlikely the unions and federations will give the R360 the green light, in which case World Rugby won't do either. In that scenario, it's harder to envisage players sacrificing their international careers. It's also puzzling to see how the project could even begin to make a profit any time soon. Comparisons with the hugely lucrative, franchise-based Indian Premier League in cricket and LIV golf hardly seem remotely apt. The IPL had a ready-made fan base in a country of one billion people, which dwarfs cricket's global popularity. It's hard to conceive of a major sport where its popularity is so concentrated in one country. The Indian Premier League has been a massive success, but it takes place in a country where cricket dominates the sporting interests among the population of over a billion people. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images LIV golf is backed by a trillion‑dollar petrochemical fund. Furthermore, when golfers on the LIV circuit pitch up at golf's Majors, they've tended to be less competitive and this would inevitably be the same were players to take a detour into a franchise-based mini league. Imagine, say, franchises with amalgamated squads rolling into Dublin for a week, even ones with some leading Irish players, complete with new names and new strips, and tens of thousands of supporters buying into these teams as the R360 claims is the potential for this venture? Rugby has tried something like this. They're called the Barbarians. They've held their place or worked, to a degree, thanks in large part to their longevity but they're not the attraction of yore for spectators. That's just not the way rugby works. Supporters' loyalties have been generated over time, through family heritage and a strong sense of identity, be that local, provincial or national. It's hard to see R360 filling out Energia Park, much less the Aviva or Croke Park, and is even less likely to do so in the aforementioned cities in non-rugby territory. Television money would also seem critical, but since the pandemic that has been a shrinking market, which is partly why rugby is facing such a perilous time. There is talk of the R360 initially being televised by Premier Sports, but they are not big spenders. At best, this latest concept will not be a breakaway per se, but will be World Rugby-approved and somehow be squeezed into an already overcrowded calendar. At worst, it will cause a huge schism in the game which will do untold damage. Most likely, it won't happen and will serve as a working template for the next breakaway-type concept. Because the drivers behind R360 are right about one thing, namely that the rugby keeps drawing from the same well, the international game, to fund pretty much everything else, including the club/provincial game, which save for the French Championship, is unsustainable. There are too many self-serving, competing parts in rugby which are pulling in different directions. It seems ridiculous that every competition does its own deals, with no leverage from the World Cup down. The sport is ripe for the plucking, perhaps even by this R360, which is not entirely out of the question. And if not this one ...
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
R360 makes correct diagnosis but proposed cure is unproven
There is one passage in the sales pitch for R360, rugby union's new breakaway league, everyone ought to be able to agree on. 'Clubs around the world are feeling the strain, and are being propped up by the international game,' the proposal goes, and it is true there is not a single team in the Premiership making a profit, seven of the 10 owe more than they own. Worldwide, at least 12 professional sides have gone out of business in recent years. It is just a shame about the rest of it, which has more holes than Newcastle's defence. R360 is brought to us by the team of Mike Tindall, Stuart Hooper, whose management career at Bath was one seven-year lesson in the Peter Principle that organisation's tend to promote people to the point of their incompetence, player agent Mark Spoors and John Loffhagen, who had a 13-month spell as the chief legal adviser for LIV golf. Their idea is to create two new superclub competitions, one between eight male sides, one between four female sides, which would sit above the club structure. They would compete in a 16-match season in two windows from April to June and then August to September, with rounds taking place in a different city each week. The words are cheap, but what they are promising sounds very expensive. They say they want to hire the 360 best players in the world on double their salaries, mention São Paulo, Barcelona, New York and Los Angeles as potential venues and plan to run 'a week of live events', including gigs before every game. Investors from the Premier League, F1 and NFL are said to have 'expressed interest', and 'dozens' of players have apparently signed letters of intent. All of which will be good for nothing but hamster bedding unless the organisers can fulfil their end of the deal and raise all the necessary capital by September. There is (there always is) a lot of ready talk about emulating the runaway success of the Indian Premier League, which is built on the support of the largest single-sport market on the planet, and LIV golf, a competition launched by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund as a screw-you to the PGA Tour after they refused to allow their players to compete in the existing tournaments. It is amazing what you can do when you have a billion fans with no worthwhile domestic competition to watch or the backing of a trillion-dollar petrochemical fund run by a man with a grudge. What rugby does have, according to a Nielsen report from 2021, is 800m supporters worldwide. That is 800m supporters who like the game more or less the way it is and don't necessarily want to tune in to a match between two newly minted teams designed by committee, see their favourite players creamed off from club rugby by a rival competition or ruled out of the next Test because they are playing in a domestic game that clashes with southern hemisphere internationals scheduled to take place in the August-September window. That is if anyone who makes the hop across to the new competition is even allowed to carry on playing for their country. Right now, anyone who signs up would probably be ineligible to play for England unless the 'exceptional circumstances' clause was triggered. That won't happen unless World Rugby votes in favour of the enterprise and that won't happen unless the unions are on board and all the anti-doping and insurance regulation issues are resolved (all of which, you can be sure, would happen surprisingly quickly if R360 can persuade PIF to spend a few of their spare billions on all this). Sign up to The Breakdown The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewed after newsletter promotion Unless that happens, it seems the large part of the money is supposed to come from, well, us, the paying public. Last May, Tindall talked it all through with his former Gloucester teammate Mark Foster, who went on to become an executive at LIV, on an episode of his podcast, The Good, the Bad and the Rugby. Tindall's main complaint is that rugby is not extracting enough money from its fans. Foster explains that a new business model could conceivably involve charging £75 a ticket, and '£100 a day easy on food and beverages' so by the time you have bought your new team jersey 'everyone there is spending three-to-five hundred pounds' at the match. It's worth a listen, not least because they say so much right about what is wrong with the game. Tindall absolutely has a point when he says that piecemeal change, when repeated tweaks are made to the existing game, have not worked and that something more radical than the Club World Cup is needed. But he has a long way to go, and a lot of money to find, to begin to persuade anyone this is it. You do not need to be a medical expert to know someone is sick, but it sure helps to be one when you're trying to find a cure.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Mike Tindall the driving force behind rugby breakaway league
Mike Tindall, the Rugby World Cup winner and member of the royal family, is one of the driving forces behind rugby's new breakaway global league which has been branded as 'R360, driving generational change in rugby'. Telegraph Sport can reveal the full details of the revolutionary blueprint for the first time, which includes: The architects are Tindall, former Bath director of rugby Stuart Hooper, and the lawyer behind the creation of IPL and LIV Golf There will be April-June and August-September windows as part of a promise to make players available for internationals. A 'grand prix' model of 12 franchises visiting 16 glamorous venues including Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the Nou Camp and Sao Paulo. There have been multiple bids for franchises from team owners in other sports, including the NFL and Formula 1. Heads of agreement signed with dozens of players with top-300 male and female players targeted. Ilona Maher featuring in promotional material with a heavy focus on giving the female game the prominence it deserves. No relegation and laws to 'minimise dead time, maximising fast-paced and non-stop action'. R360 is unapologetically attempting to recruit 'the best of the best' and crucially, have promised that its players will remain available for all international fixtures, allowing stars to continue to represent their countries. With windows from April to June and then August to September, R360 explicitly wants to turn rugby into a summer sport and to give the game 'its Super Bowl moment'. It is hoping to launch the competition next year and expand to 10 male franchises in its second year. Tindall – a member of the royal family by his marriage to Zara Tindall, the late Queen's eldest granddaughter – is listed as R360's co-founder and sporting director. In a brochure sent to investors seen by Telegraph Sport, Tindall writes: 'Rugby is feeling the fallout of the last few years with financial mismanagement, declining investment in the club game and a product that is struggling to evolve. Clubs around the world are feeling the strain and are being propped up by the international game. Rugby's lack of innovation and ability to change risks losing its appeal to new audiences and its younger market.' The other co-founders are Hooper, the former Bath director of rugby, and Mark Spoors, a former leading rugby agent, while John Loffhagen, the lawyer who played a key role in the launch of LIV Golf, is the competition's legal counsel. The competition proposes initially launching 12 franchises, eight for men and four female teams. They would compete in a grand prix model in what it claims would be a full city takeover which would transform into 'festival hubs with live music shows, fan zones and celebrity appearances.' Organisers also want to secure venues such as the Nou Camp, Tottenham Stadium and Croke Park to deliver a 'groundbreaking live rugby experience'. More exotic locations include Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, New York and Buenos Aires. This is not the first attempt at launching a breakaway league. The World 12s, a competition backed by former England head coach Eddie Jones and Steve Hansen, the ex-All Blacks coach, died a quick death following its public launch in 2021. More substantively, Kerry Packer's World Rugby Corporation only just failed to get off the ground in 1995, which could have changed the face of the professional game. Thirty years on, R360 is attempting to launch a similarly groundbreaking competition in what it is billing as a competition built for the players and fans first. Massive obstacles await, not least in securing sponsors, supporters and most importantly its stars. 'They don't know the storm that is coming' At present, England head coach Steve Borthwick cannot select any players outside the domestic structure and fresh from signing an eight-year partnership with Premiership Rugby, there would appear to be little wiggle room for the Rugby Football Union to abandon that longstanding principle. Figures within R360 believe that policy could change if they secured a cadre of leading England internationals. However, they believe rather than breaking the club game they can invigorate it by putting players and fans at the front of their new vision. Already R360 claims to have attracted multiple bids from team owners across other sports, including the NFL and Formula 1, and from individuals in four different continents. The project had already attracted significant financial investment from several parties in both the US and the UK. 'This is a project that has gone from this is a concept to this is a good idea to being capitalised to this is happening,' an insider said. Since Telegraph Sport first reported on the proposed breakaway league in November, there have been few public developments, leading figures within Premiership Rugby to believe the threat has gone away. However, an independent third party says 'they don't know the storm that is coming'. R360 has held productive talks with World Rugby, which appeared to have softened its initially sceptical attitude towards the rebels who have promised to abide by the international release enshrined in regulation nine, although it is unclear how the Rugby Championship and women's international windows fit into their proposed calendar. For any new competition to be launched, it would need to be backed by a national union and then passed in a vote by the World Rugby Council. Salaries on offer are thought to be around double what the traditional club game can offer while the organisers are also using a shorter calendar of 16 games and the ability to leverage their personal brands on a global basis as a means of attracting stars from all over the world. It is understood that dozens of players have already signed heads of agreement, which are contingent on R360 proving it has sufficient funds to launch the competition by September. In total, R360 wants to attract the top 300 players, both male and female. A key part of the R360's vision is to launch four female teams offering 'competitive salaries' with Maher, the American social media star, featuring heavily in promotional material. In the third season, they hope to expand to eight franchises. In its pitch to potential franchise owners, R360 has guaranteed that there will be no relegation to 'ensure long-term security' and a cost cap to build in parity. Organisers also believe that they can attract global broadcast deals by changing laws to 'minimise dead time, maximising fast-paced and non-stop action'. It claims it will be the first league designed for long-term financial success, a nirvana that has so far eluded the club game in the 30 years since professionalism.
