Prem rugby in talks to sell 51% share in the league for £275 million

[Tigersman]

CVC former F1 owners are interested.

Times go into detail more but it's paywall
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/spor ... -zq76nc6bp

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/45417946

Bye bye the national team.

When will the clubs learn that the club game won't grow until the National team starts getting more success in the world cups.

But looking at this
Sports’ domestic TV rights:

Premiership Rugby (BT Sport) - £45 million per year
Premier League football (Sky, BT Sport, Amazon) - £1.5 billion per year
English cricket including internationals (Sky, BBC) - £220 million per year
Super League rugby league (Sky) - £40 million per year
NFL American football US TV rights - £5.5billion per year

Prem Rugby could get a lot more money from it's TV deals which is what CVC would do.


Guess it depends on the details, but it could mean financial stability for most of the clubs.

[Raggs]

I think a big issue isn't really the national game, that gets a lot of interest, it's transferring it down to the club game. More marketing of the clubs, during the internationals would be a smart move I reckon. There's floating support that may well be interested in seeing their local team play more often with those internationals involved.

As for the sale, I've no idea what it would lead to.

[Stom]

It's quite embarrassing that league get just 5million less...

[Scrumhead]

Exactly what I thought.

Those figures are unbelievable.

Even putting league to one side, how can cricket be worth 5 times Premiership rugby? I know that includes internationals but in terms of relative popularity, I can’t see any way that cricket can justify being so expensive by comparison?

Having said that, Raggs point is spot on. The club game is nowhere near as popular with causal fans as test matches. I would be surprised if the average ‘England fan’ could tell you which clubs our starting XV play for, let alone the wider squad. It’s almost the inverse of football where clubs are king.

[Stom]

Exactly what I thought.

Those figures are unbelievable.

Even putting league to one side, how can cricket be worth 5 times Premiership rugby? I know that includes internationals but in terms of relative popularity, I can’t see any way that cricket can justify being so expensive by comparison?

Having said that, Raggs point is spot on. The club game is nowhere near as popular with causal fans as test matches. I would be surprised if the average ‘England fan’ could tell you which clubs our starting XV play for, let alone the wider squad. It’s almost the inverse of football where clubs are king.

I think it's really important to strike a balance between the two extremes - Football and Cricket. Millions watch the Premier league and take no interest in England. Hundreds of thousands watch England cricket but no-one knows what goes on at county level except 2 men and a dog.

And, unfortunately for the sport, the way to do this is TAKE A HIT! You need to get the game out there and in order to do that you need to make it accessible. That means showing matches on terrestrial tv for less money, holding events that make a loss, and so on. Don't bloody spend millions on taking the game to the US when we haven't nailed down the core support in the UK!!!

[Oakboy]

One lesson rugby should learn from football at this stage is that 'clubs fielding teams with 70% foreign players' is a dangerous way to go. It is about world-wide marketing interests as against the interests of the sport. England's football side would lose to any of the top club teams.

Rugby is right to keep the national team as top priority and needs to be careful going forward.

[Stom]

One lesson rugby should learn from football at this stage is that 'clubs fielding teams with 70% foreign players' is a dangerous way to go. It is about world-wide marketing interests as against the interests of the sport. England's football side would lose to any of the top club teams.

Rugby is right to keep the national team as top priority and needs to be careful going forward.

As I said, it's about balance. While we don't want a situation like football, we equally don't want a situation like cricket.

Any dilution of the regs around squad EQP payments and academy salary credits would be dangerous. Instead, focus needs to be given to growing the brand and part of that has to be in making the game a little easier to understand and follow.

Yet it is essential that the lawmakers don't take that to mean dumbing down. It means that scrums don't take 15 minutes out of each game. It means that decisions are not made that fans don't understand - the breakdown, etc. Which probably means ensuring all refs referee to the laws of the game unlike the current situation. And we all know the Kiwis won't do that. So we'll need to bribe them, too.

[twitchy]

I think english rugby is sort of fucked now anyway. Ideally we would central contract the internationals and manage their game time like ireland are but that won't happen now. On the other hand we don't have the financial backing of the french clubs so we can't just try and make our league the best.

So we are left with a sort of jack of all trades situation where every one has conflicting interests

[Raggs]

I honestly think something as simple as pushing the players clubs info during the internationals, and having some BT sport rugby advertising during the breaks etc. "Don't want the rugby to stop? Watch This Lad (picture of him in his England shirt), What's His Name (again, picture in the England shirt), Fat Bastard (prop running surprisingly fast), and Angry Face (Angry Face being angry) all on BT Sport tomorrow (well, their teams anyway).

[Digby]

I think english rugby is sort of fucked now anyway.

And yet if we look back to the start of rugby going pro and compare the stadia, training facilities, wages, crowds, tv deals, sponsors and the like then you've an unashamed success story

[Stom]

Yeah, CVC wouldn't be hovering if they didn't think they could make money. But it would be a terrible decision for the sport. F1 is reaping what CVC sowed now, with diminishing viewing figures and lack of interest.

[Puja]

Seems like a short-sighted idea. Yes, it'd be a great windfall at a time when the clubs could do with money, but it would then mean 51% of the future income would disappear. It's jam today by selling the jam of tomorrow.

Puja

[Mellsblue]

It’s the old question of whether to own 100% of a small pie or 49% of a pie you hope will be three times the size. Why they can’t just employ a Scudamore or a Kenyon and turn it into a cash cow themselves, I don’t know. The only positive I could see from the article was that any cash from the sale would be ring fenced to avoid player wage inflation, and we know none of the clubs would ever ‘think outside the box’ in this regard.

[Timbo]

I think english rugby is sort of fucked now anyway. Ideally we would central contract the internationals and manage their game time like ireland are but that won't happen now. On the other hand we don't have the financial backing of the french clubs so we can't just try and make our league the best.

So we are left with a sort of jack of all trades situation where every one has conflicting interests

Anyone who watches the Top14 regularly would tell you that the Premiership is at least it’s equal. By what metric do you rate the Top14 as ‘best’?

And as a huge fan of domestic club rugby the absolute last thing I want to see is England adopting the Irish model. Imagine Daly, Itoje, Mako, Lawes, Slade, Lozowski, Launchbury, Cipriani etc playing 3 or 4 regular season Prem games a year. How miserable.

[Mellsblue]

I think english rugby is sort of fucked now anyway. Ideally we would central contract the internationals and manage their game time like ireland are but that won't happen now. On the other hand we don't have the financial backing of the french clubs so we can't just try and make our league the best.

So we are left with a sort of jack of all trades situation where every one has conflicting interests

Anyone who watches the Top14 regularly would tell you that the Premiership is at least it’s equal. By what metric do you rate the Top14 as ‘best’?

And as a huge fan of domestic club rugby the absolute last thing I want to see is England adopting the Irish model. Imagine Daly, Itoje, Mako, Lawes, Slade, Lozowski, Launchbury, Cipriani etc playing 3 or 4 regular season Prem games a year. How miserable.

This. I think we have the balance between domestic and international rugby just about right. For now.

[Timbo]

Nigel Wray has said any deal would be for a 50% stake, not a controlling 51% +.

[twitchy]

I don't watch the french league either I'm just saying they can pay the most money and have the most attractive lifestyle (beach in the south of france vs rainy power stations in leicester etc) . The reason why we have to force england internationals to play in england etc.

[Digby]

Nigel Wray has said any deal would be for a 50% stake, not a controlling 51% +.

There'd likely be a split between the wider business and the commercial side, whether on either Wray can convince CVC to go ahead without a controlling stake we're yet to see. We're also pending Craig being convinced he wants to sell a controlling stake for so little

[Which Tyler]

What's the going rate for a soul these days?

[Digby]

I'd be more interested in what the money would be spent on than whether they should take the money

[Lizard]

From down here it looks like the English rugby de facto consensus has for some time been that club profit is more important than national success. I don’t think it is any coincidence that the best two teams in the world are the ones that seem to have the most central control over their players. The fact that both Super Rugby and Pro14 are a bit Mickey Mouse doesn’t matter. The game can’t serve two masters, and if you don’t put country first you can’t be surprised when your national results are not great.

I saw that your man Barnes even thinks that some Premiership teams would struggle in our 2nd tier provincial comp. I haven’t seen enough Prem rugby lately to comment on the accuracy of that.

[Mellsblue]

It obviously depends what your priorities are but there are plenty of people who wouldn’t want to see England be the no1 team in the world and end up with the Welsh domestic scene or rarely see their best players play in the league for their club/region/province, as happens in Ireland, or watch their best players scatter across the world if they aren’t in the national set-up. England has a strong club scene and I wouldn’t want that bastardised for the sake of the national side. I say that as a supporter of a club that would be safe from any potential bastardisation.

[fivepointer]

More here from McCafferty, sounding quite bullish - “I can’t see it is in the interests of our shareholders to do anything other than protect the values of the game and support the England team. It doesn’t make sense to dismantle any of that. But clearly there are opportunities out there to attract significant amounts of capital that can accelerate growth and make us bigger, better and stronger. We’ve got a variety of options as to how to achieve that.”

“As has always been the case, the fortunes of the clubs and England will be linked. I don’t see us changing that particularly.”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... m-takeover

Something is going to happen. What, and what impact it will have on the game, remains to be seen. What should be obvious is that the success of the national side is the greatest driver in growing the sport in England.

[Raggs]

Growing the sport may be mostly impacted by the national side, but growing the clubs?

The clubs should certainly be piggybacking off the national team, and maybe a new significant voice could drive that.

[Scrumhead]

From down here it looks like the English rugby de facto consensus has for some time been that club profit is more important than national success. I don’t think it is any coincidence that the best two teams in the world are the ones that seem to have the most central control over their players. The fact that both Super Rugby and Pro14 are a bit Mickey Mouse doesn’t matter. The game can’t serve two masters, and if you don’t put country first you can’t be surprised when your national results are not great.

I saw that your man Barnes even thinks that some Premiership teams would struggle in our 2nd tier provincial comp. I haven’t seen enough Prem rugby lately to comment on the accuracy of that.

Spot on in your first paragraph. I wouldn’t listen to Stuart Barnes though. No one up here does!

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario though. Premiership clubs are almost all running at a loss which is obviously not sustainable unless more can be done to inject money in to the game. On the other hand, without a decent club competition, the England team will suffer.

It’s a lot easier creating a franchise/provincial system with fewer clubs but I can’t see the majority of English rugby fans being supportive of amalgamating clubs unless it’s a ‘merge or die’ scenario.