The Super League that threatens to overturn world rugby

The idea of ​​the Super League also arrives in rugby. The project is called Rugby360 (more or less ironically renamed “Rebel League” by British newspapers) and in fact involves the creation of 8 teams made up of the strongest in the world (plus 4 women, with the same criteria) who will play a series of tournaments around the globe, in a sort of calendar in stages (like that of Formula 1) parallel to the canonical rugby season. Simply put, it would mean taking away their champions from clubs and championships to create a private super league, with the risk of excluding them from international rugby too: a real attack on the already fragile current rugby ecosystem. The teams should follow the franchise model and would be located in large cities: London, Tokyo, Dubai, Cape Town, Boston and Miami are among the possible ones. The tournaments would all be concentrated on weekends, each in a different venue: the main ones are the new Camp Nou (home of football club Barcelona) and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as well as obviously the United Arab Emirates and the USA. In total, the “stages” should be 12 in the first year and 16 in the second. The project was born from the idea of ​​Mike Tindall, winner of the 2003 World Cup with England, involves investments from the United Kingdom, the United States and above all the Middle East, and should start from the end of 2026. Yann Roubert, President of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby and of the French Top 14, currently the most important and followed national championship in the world, defined it as “a total abomination: private investors who they appropriate the work built by clubs and federations for a destructive project, with a short-term vision. Bringing together players who are now part of a community or region, only to have them play at the mercy of corporations or billionaires, represents incalculable damage. This super league would kill national championships but also international competitions such as the Nations Cup. Finally, I find it difficult to understand how all these players can be paid more than 500,000 euros, plus to the rental of stadiums, where clubs usually do not play, and logistical costs”.

monstrous figures

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The British newspapers speak of at least 10 players of the English national team contacted by R360, including Henry Slade, George Ford and Jamie George, as well as the former All Blacks (and before that Rugby League star) Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, the New Zealand star Ardie Savea and 4 Springboks players who, however, were not named and who were stopped by the federation South African. For now, therefore, everything is still very unclear from this point of view, but the figures are really important. The average offers for contacted players ranges from half a million dollars to 1.5 million per year. Considering that the highest paid player of the moment, the Scot Finn Russell, earns a million pounds a year, for many other mid-level players these are monstrous sums, difficult to refuse. From the reconstructions of New Zealand and Australian newspapers, an All Blacks player (whose name was not mentioned) even refused a three-year contract worth 4 million per year. According to the Guardian, the R360 project, as it is currently presented, foresees revenues of 275 million pounds in the first year with the aim of reaching 540 million by the fifth. Each of the eight franchises will be sold to a private individual for around £25 million. R360 has raised over $100 million to fund the project through multiple investors. The main one, needless to say, comes from Dubai: 885 capital, already linked to projects such as the Professional Fighters League (which organizes mixed martial arts tournaments, with kickboxing legend Ray Sefo as president). Among others, the Oakvale group (which already deals with the European T20 Premier League of cricket) has structured the financial organization of the league, while Martin Gilbert is closely linked to several British golf tournaments. There was also talk of Red Bull, who instead bought the Newcastle Falcons in England and thus entered the world of rugby through the front door.

THE DANGERS

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The main problem is already in the project itself: R360 guarantees sustainability for 3 years, maximum 5. And then? The risk is that if some of the investors get tired or the toy breaks the whole project will implode instantly, as has already happened in tennis: in 2014 Mahesh Bhupathi gave birth to the International Premier Tennis League, the IPTL: an annual league with mixed teams and traveling events in various Asian cities, which was supposed to include great stars such as Roger Federer and Serena Williams, who however they quickly backed out once they realized the project wouldn’t work. After the stop in 2016, several companies that had provided services (television production, staff, technical suppliers) claim not to have received payments, for a total of 5 million dollars in debt. Furthermore, the rugby ecosystem is very delicate and based mainly on international rugby: taking away space from the national teams, the Six Nations, the test matches, would mean demolishing all the foundations on which this sport remains balanced, albeit precariously. Stadiums fill up mainly at the Six Nations, the World Cup, the Rugby Championship and big test matches. Already with the clubs it is more difficult: it happens especially in France, where rugby has now put itself on a par with football, in the finals of the English championship, in the great Irish derbies (Leinster-Munster in 2024 in Croke Park recorded 80 thousand spectators) but it is not a given. If R360 took all of this away, no one knows how the rugby ecosystem might react.

the war with the federations

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Already in football, the Super League had triggered vehement reactions from FIFA, UEFA, national federations and clubs. And we are talking about a sport where clubs currently have a preponderant role compared to national teams, excluding major events such as the European Championships and World Cups. The economy of rugby, on the other hand, is mainly based on international rugby: 3 or 4 “sellouts” in home test matches can save the budgets of a federation. Ireland, in 2023, pointed out that by having to play in the World Cup and therefore skipping the 3 autumn test matches, they had ended the year with a net loss, precisely due to the lack of revenue from those matches. This alone makes it clear how a private and hyper-exclusive super league (it would involve around 200 players, leaving crumbs to the rest) could make the rugby system implode. World Rugby (the world Federation) has no intention of officially recognizing the R360 super league, and the International Players Association and above all the individual nations have done the same: 8 of the 10 “Tier 1”, the first level federations (including Italy, as well as New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, France, Scotland and Ireland) have united in a very harsh joint statement which fact “prohibits” its players from accepting offers from R360, under penalty of exclusion from the national team: “The R360 model is designed to generate profits intended for a very limited elite, risking emptying the investments that the national federations and existing championships dedicate to grassroots rugby, player training and growth paths. International rugby and our main competitions remain the economic and cultural engine that supports every level of the game. Weakening this ecosystem could do enormous damage to the health of our sport. All these issues should have been discussed collaboratively, but the competition promoters did not involve or meet with the federations to explain and better understand their business and management model. Each of the national federations will therefore inform players that participation in R360 would make them ineligible for selection in the respective national teams” reads the press release. It is no coincidence that the only ones to remain outside the “pact” were Wales and Argentina. The Welsh, who are experiencing an unprecedented sporting and financial crisis, do not have the contractual and economic power to retain the players (considering that the average salary of the Welsh professional teams is around 8000 pounds per month, beyond the champions) while for the Argentines it changes little, considering that the Pumas already all play in Europe and around the world.