£20m CVC deal is ray of light for SRU
Chief executive says partnership with new investor will maintain Pro14’s growth
SRU chief executive Mark Dodson insists that CVC is a partner Scottish rugby can trust despite a shaky reputation following its controversial brush with Formula 1 a few years ago.
At a time of great uncertainty due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the BT Murrayfield boss was keen to stress that the 27 per cent stakehold deal struck by the Guinness Pro14, which is believed to be worth around £120 million over an unspecified time frame, in which the SRU will rake in “north of £20m”, is a shaft of light in gloomy skies.
The private equity firm has been circling rugby union for some years now, since its involvement with Formula 1 came to a somewhat acrimonious end amid accusations of extracting profit more than it contributed. “Whatever deal they struck with Formula 1 and how that worked is another issue. On this deal they have committed a significant amount of money to the league and the ambition is that everyone would earn more,” said Dodson.
“The whole purpose of inviting an investor into the league is that can supercharge revenues. The idea is that we can bring extra money into the league for everybody, them included, so our whole purpose is to make sure this is how we maintain Pro14’s growth. The growth has been pretty substantial but we believe it has been the key to unlocking even further growth.”
Dodson insisted that the deal showed that, while the short to mid-term future was in flux due to the current situation, the private equity firm, which has a 27 per cent share in England’s Premiership Rugby Ltd and has been wooing both World Rugby and the Six Nations, had faith in the competition’s long-term viable future in the face of current issues regarding its cross-border, pan-hemisphere nature involving teams from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Italy and South Africa.
As part of the re-organisation the Italian federation has now been welcomed into the fold as a member of Celtic Rugby and Dodson stressed that, while not shareholders, the South African clubs Cheetahs and Southern Kings, who joined in 2017, are seen as part of the future of the competition.
It’s pretty clear that the broadcasting and commercial sphere is what attracts a firm like CVC to these kind of partnerships, but Dodson insisted that was not a pressing concern at the moment despite the fact that the Pro14’s current TV deal with Premier Sports is up next year.
“I think at the moment Covid-19 has paused everybody’s ideas about negotiating broadcasting deals. We’ll go back and consult with the other unions and our partners. I expect to see a host of broadcasters queuing up,” he said.
Of course, before that there is the issue of the current Pro14 season which is currently “temporarily suspended” but, according to reports last week, looking to finish off with a behind-closed-doors play-off stage, which would definitely involve Conference B leaders Edinburgh and, potentially, third-placed in Conference A Glasgow in late August/early September.
“It’s going to be guided by government and medical advice and CVC will not be involved with that,” insisted Dodson. “They just want to help stabilise our future and know we’ll do what’s right.
“The safety of our players and the safety of our people will be the determining factor.”
When the SRU struck a £20m sponsorship deal with BT back in 2015, which involved naming rights of Murrayfield, it was seen as a massive boon. This CVC investment may be of a similar amount but comes at a very different time.
“We’ve got to understand the new future,” said Dodson. “We’ve been expanding for the past ten years and now you’re going to see a period of retraction.
“Nobody knows the future for rugby, be it grassroots, professional or international. We’ll be looking closely at how we get over this bridge from where we are now to when the pandemic subsides.
“This money is safeguarded, it’s ring-fenced. It’s not designated for the professional game, grassroots, or Murrayfield expansion. We need to work out how we get across this bridge as appropriately as we can.
“This deal sees a long-term sustainable league. We understand that there is going to be disruption for up to nine, ten months through coronavirus. They [CVC] are looking way beyond that, it’s a commitment to our league in the longer term. In real terms it’s going to take a good number of years to supercharge.”
“The purpose of inviting an investor into the league is that can supercharge revenues. The idea is we can bring extra money into the league for everybody”
MARK DODSON
Scottish Rugby chief executive Mark Dodson has welcomed a £20 million-plus injection into Murrayfield coffers thanks to a significant investment in the Guinness Pro14 by equity firm CVC, but warned that tough times lie ahead for rugby in this country.
In a frank media briefing yesterday, Dodson admitted there was a prospect that Scotland could play no international matches in front of paying spectators for the rest of the year and through to next year’s Six Nations, which he estimated would cost the union at least £40 million in lost revenue.
He said the CVC deal was worth “north of £20 million” to the SRU and is valued at around £120m to the Pro14 in total.
The private equity company has been actively pursuing shareholdings in rugby union for the past couple of years. They now hold a 28 per cent stake in the Pro14, which involves Scottish pro-teams Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh, and teams from Wales, Ireland, Italy and South Africa.
The company, which had a tumultuous involvement with Formula 1 in 2016 and 2017, struck a deal for a 27 per cent holding in England’s Premiership Rugby Ltd in 2018.
CVC’S £300m bid for a stake in the Six Nations, which could threaten terrestrial TV coverage of the tournament, is on hold.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Dodson welcomed Scotland’s share of £20m-plus over an unspecified number of years, with the first slice already banked, but gave an honest assessment of the perils that lie ahead for the Scottish game.
He said: “We have to plan for the future the best we can. The less rugby played for a paid audience, not in front of our broadcasters puts us in a real bind.
“It’s going to be a difficult time if we don’t get the autumn games. It’s going to be very tough through the summer. We
will have to work with a whole raft of people to try to make sure we are sustainable and in good shape when this is over and this investment helps.”
Scotland are due to host New Zealand, Japan and Argentina at BT Murrayfield in November. Dodson added: “By no means is it [CVC deal] the cure
but it is a massive help in terms of confidence and cash.”
He re-iterated that the SRU
Watching the 1989 Scotlandireland match, an entertaining harum-scarum game, one couldn’t fail to be struck by the difference between then and now. A computer analysis would, I’m sure, reveal that the ball was in play for fewer minutes than is normal today. Yet the game looked much faster than it is now, partly because genuine rucking, which was still permitted, meant that the ball was cleared from the breakdown much more quickly, and partly because there were no, or at last very few, successions of one-pass, take the tackle, recycle, repetitive multi-phase rugby.
Amateur players didn’t handle nearly as securely as professional ones do almost unfailingly now, and so neither side retained possession for long periods. Instead, stray or dropped passes and knock-ons in the tackle were often snapped up by opponents. Lineouts were also a bit of a lottery when today, with lifting legalised, they aren’t.
One consequence of all this was that there were many more set scrums, even three or four times as many as is usual today. (It was, I should say, a very windy day, with some rain and a slimy ball). But if there were many more scrums, almost every scrum was completed quickly. There was no role for the referee in setting up the scrum by stages, and, if a scrum collapsed it was immediately reset without a tutorial from the referee. I would guess that 30 scrums took no more time than ten do today. There were several strikes against the head, because hookers were still hookers, and I don’t recall one scrum in which the stronger pack advanced, with no intention of releasing the ball, in order to win a penalty.
Place-kicks at goal took less time, too, even though, it being a windy day, the kicker had sometimes to summon someone to hold the ball steady. But there was no waiting for an assistant coach to bring on a kicking tee, and both the kickers, Peter Dods and Michael Kiernan, seemed able to kick a goal without first refreshing themselves with a swig of water or some energy drink. There being no TMO, we were spared the lengthy confabulations that often seem to stretch out to the crack of doom, and the referee had to trust his own judgment, just as referees in amateur club rugby do every week.
Consequently, I would judge that the match lasted for no more than 85 minutes, including injury time rather than the hundred minutes that is now quite usual.
Finally, Bill Mclaren’s commentary reminded one of something many commentators today often forget – or perhaps have never known: that the first duty of a commentator is to identify players. This matters much more to television viewers than the commentator’s opinions. Perhaps, I thought, watching this replay, every commentator should serve an apprenticeship on radio, as Bill did, before being allowed on television. Then I recalled Scotland’s World Cup warm-up game in Nice at which the radio commentary was so inept that one rarely knew who had the ball, who made a tackle, or even in which part of the field the play was. There was, however, no shortage of opinion.
I was thinking of the amateur days when the news came of Ruaridh Jackson’s retirement. His has been a distinguished career, even if he never quite established himself as Scotland’s first-choice stand-off as, first watching him in age-group rugby, I expected him to do; and now I found myself wondering if, as someone who often gave the
“There was no waiting for an assistant coach to bring on a kicking tee, and both the kickers, Peter Dods and Michael Kiernan, seemed able to kick a goal without first refreshing themselves with a swig of water or some energy drink”
impression of playing instinctively rather than according to plan, he might have been better suited to the amateur than the professional game. I daresay some coaches thought he went too often off-message. Nevertheless, he was always a pleasure to watch and on his return to Glasgow after spells with Harlequins and Wasps where he never quite seemed to have the confidence of coaches that his talent deserved, he re-invented himself very successfully as a full-back, a position in which his flair, intelligent reading of the flow of a game, and support play led to some brilliant tries, some scored by himself, others by a team-mate for whom he contrived space. Perhaps it was a mistake to have gone to England; his talents might have been better appreciated in France. Still, more than 30 caps for Scotland is pretty good, even if a number were as a replacement, and even if there is so much more international rugby now than in the amateur days. To put things in perspective, Melrose’s David Chisholm, the best Scottish stand-off of the 1960s, won only 14 caps, John Rutherford, supreme and unchallenged from 1979 to 1987, won 44, and Dan Parks, whom Jackson replaced late in the match for his first cap against New Zealand in the autumn of 2010, played 67 times for Scotland between 2004 and 2012. Parks was a very good player, but certainly not more than four times better than Davie Chisholm.