Brown considers ‘bold’ bid to host World Cup in 2031

The Rugby Football Union has signalled that it is prepared to bid to host the Rugby World Cup again, possibly as early as 2031, on the back of the success of hosting the 2015 tournament.

France won the right to host the 2023 World Cup ahead of South Africa and Ireland after a controversial bidding process in November last year, while the 2027 tournament is expected to be awarded to a country for “development” reasons to grow the game.

However, Steve Brown, the RFU chief executive, said the governing body was prepared to make a “brave and bold” move to host the tournament again and “definitely in the next 20 years”.

“It wouldn’t be in the next five years because we need to get ourselves in a good steady place and I wouldn’t want to put the union under that much stress as it’s quite a stress,” said Brown. “It is all frontend cost and then you generate all of your income in a very short window.

“But I think there is a point in time as we get back into resetting our base and growing again and building again, we could easily do that. It would be a different model for us but what a great ambition.”

The RFU had to put down a host fee of £80million ahead of the 2015 World Cup, but with that figure rising to £120million for the 2023 tournament, Brown said a future bid would be likely to need help.

“I think it would require maybe some government support as well to do that, given the scale of that. But certainly, given the benefit that we had not just commercially across the game in England and the influence that it had, we should bid again in the future.

“Why wouldn’t we? It is a brave, bold move and France 2023 has shown it is a very big commitment now. We were the biggest and the best and now it has gone up a notch again. I think we would need to get wider backing, could we still do it all on our own now? I am not sure.”