Club World Cup takes step forward after URC support
Plans for a Club World Cup received a major boost when the United Rugby Championship confirmed its formal backing.
A blueprint for a tournament, involving the top 16 sides from the northern and southern hemispheres, has been agreed in principle.
It is understood that discussions between the European leagues, including the Premiership and French Top 14, and the southern hemisphere unions are at an advanced stage, focusing on the start date and season structure.
The plan is for eight northern hemisphere clubs and seven from the southern hemisphere, plus a Japanese side, to be placed in four pools, each playing two matches against teams from the other hemisphere.
The winner of each pool would progress to the semi-finals ahead of a final to crown the best club side in the world.
The competition, which would take place instead of the knockout rounds of the Champions Cup and mean the Preworcester miership final was brought forward to early May, would happen once every four years, and is expected to start in 2025 ahead of the British and Irish Lions tour to Australia.
Martin Anayi, the chief executive of the URC and representative on the European Professional Club Rugby board, said that his league was fully behind the proposal, and revealed an aspiration to expand the tournament to the United States.
Anayi said he hoped that the URC, which is made up of professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales, could work with the English Premiership to create a “festival of rugby” featuring a double-header involving a match from both leagues played back-to-back in the same stadium.
Mark Mccafferty, the former chief executive of Premiership Rugby and EPCR board member, as well as a longtime advocate of a world club championship, has been leading the talks with the key stakeholders.
It is hoped a deal will be struck before the end of the year. “We want to make it happen,” Anayi said. “It’s about being joined up enough to have a vision for the Club World Cup, but we’re all on the same page.
“Everybody’s largely agreed in principle, and we just need to figure out dates. We do like the idea of a Japanese team in there as well.
“I think that’s quite an interesting conversation we’re having, to see what quality or standard that team will be. But it adds quite a flavour to it.
“In the future, we need to try and help the domestic leagues in America and in South America and the rest of continental Europe, for example Spain and Germany, to bring teams through.
“I’ve always thought, maybe the Challenge Cup was a good route for that. But the long-term vision for a Club World Cup, and I’m not saying the first cycle, must be that we get competitive US teams in there as well.
“Especially now we’ve got a men’s Rugby World Cup there in 2031.”
As for greater collaboration between the URC and the Premiership, who now share an office in London in order to pool administrative resources, Anayi said that while there were no long-term merger plans, both leagues could benefit from greater synergy.
“I like the idea of creating big events, and maybe we could do a double-header together in one stadium to create a festival of rugby, maybe in our territory,” Anayi added.
“If the English teams want to play in one of the fantastic stadiums in one of our territories, for example the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, or vice-versa, there has got to be a way we can talk to one another and our audiences and be more collaborative.
“It just happens that there’s two different leagues operating, but it’s still the same game with a similar fan base.
“The question is, can you make it even bigger by doing it together?”
Anayi is also working on establishing a new cup competition involving URC clubs, and is exploring the possibility of whether the leading English clubs might be interested as a successor to the Premiership Cup.
The growing commercial strength of the URC was recently underscored by two significant sponsorship deals with Qatar Airways and Indian tyre company BKT.
“I have to convince Simon [Massietaylor, the Premiership chief executive], but I would love to see it,” he added.