PRO14 CLUBS ANXIOUSLY AWAIT VITAL DECISION OF PROSPECTIVE INVESTORS

THE future financial stability of the Pro14 competition will be on the line this week when the investment committee of the private equity company CVC meets to re-evaluate the risk of buying a 27-per-cent stake in the competition.

While it is understood Luxembourg-based CVC Capital Partners has agreed in principle a £120million stake in the five-nation tournament, the deal has yet to be completed — and the coronavirus crisis, as well as CVC’s return on investment in Premier Rugby in England, could lead to second thoughts.

Glasgow and Edinburgh are among the participants banking on their share of the proposed deal. Without the investment, there could be serious repercussions.

The same will go for the Pro14 tournament as a whole. They could face crippling clawbacks from sponsors and TV partners if they cannot finish the current season.

And, given the clamour to play international matches ahead of anything else when rugby eventually returns, the shape of next season remains very much up in the air.

Wales Rugby Union chief executive Martyn Phillips, who oversees the Principality’s four Pro14 participants, admitted last week that the current goal is ‘to try and come out of the other side of this crisis with all the people we went into it with’.

Phillips continued: ‘The regions are tough models to run and the unions are being challenged financially across the world.

‘Nobody has ever seen anything like this before, where your revenues disappear overnight and you don’t know when they are going to come back.’