URC and English Premiership Merger Rumours

But I never said 'all french teams', I suggested Castre and Stad F as examples of disinterested clubs while agreed that there's really only buy in from the handful that have won it.

copied & pasted from Robert Kitson in The Breakdown (The Guardian)

There were tears at the final whistle at Stade de la Rabine last weekend. And with good reason. RC Vannes had never played in the French Top 14 before this season, which made their 30-20 inaugural win against Lyon on Saturday a genuinely historic moment. Rugby has not traditionally been a big deal in Brittany but, all of a sudden, the Breton public have become oval‑ball connoisseurs.

There were 11,792 crammed into the stadium and the hometown heroes in blue – even Mako Vunipola is a Vannes man these days – looked anything but a side happy to make up the top‑flight numbers for a season. No surprise there. The second‑tier league of French rugby, the Pro D2, is rising in quality and competitiveness each year, assisted by the latest huge broadcasting deal struck between Canal+ and the Ligue Nationale de Rugby.

From the 2027 season, the Pro D2 clubs will receive €10.7m (£8.9m) every season in broadcast revenue for the next five years, roughly a tenth of the sum received by the Top 14 sides but more than enough to encourage a healthy, vibrant league whose leading teams can aspire to join the elite. All will be looking currently at Vannes and thinking: “That could be us.”

Just across the Channel in England, the vibe is very different. Newcastle, who have finished bottom of the Premiership for the previous two seasons, attracted just 5,116 supporters to their first game of the new campaign at home against Bristol Bears. They lost 24-3, a result that sadly did little to signal a radical change in luck this season. Crowd‑wise, Manchester City v Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium attracted more paying fans – 52,846 – than all five Premiership rugby games combined. Even Notts County v Gillingham in League Two attracted more than the rerun of last season’s Premiership final between Bath and Northampton.

Hopefully the Falcons and the crowds will both perk up soon. And, sooner rather than later, those at the sharp end in England also want to know whether a promotion playoff is a realistic possibility this season. As things stand, clubs in the second-tier English Championship are still awaiting clarity around the all-important finer details, not least more equitable future funding, that were meant to be settled before the season kicked off at the weekend.

In theory the goalposts shifted slightly this summer, with a capacity of 5,000 now acceptable providing a wannabe promoted side has proper plans in place to increase that to 7,500 by year two and to 10,001 by year four. Eligible sides also have to pass a facilities audit that will not be completed until January. Even if they clear that hurdle, the funding gap between the leagues effectively makes “doing a Vannes” from a standing start all but impossible.

It is a situation the Championship clubs want properly resolved, one way or another, for everybody’s sake. On the one hand, there is a wealth of evidence in American and Australian sport to suggest promotion and relegation is not compulsory for a healthy league assuming other key prerequisites – a salary cap linked to club revenue, a collective bargaining agreement, a player draft, etc – are in place.

On the other, there is British team sport’s rich tradition of promotion and relegation, neatly summed up by none other than Newcastle’s director of rugby, Steve Diamond. “I’ve always coached and played with relegation and think it’s a magnificent thing,” he told the Times last week. “I know it’s not like this in the States and other places, but the jeopardy is all about promotion and relegation. It’s difficult to motivate my lot here in dead-rubber games.”

That uneasy situation is further magnified now the Premiership consists of just 10 teams. If eight are going to qualify for Europe – and no one is realistically going down because a sly subclause can always be found to slam the trapdoor shut – where is the feelgood oxygen every good league needs? The Rugby Football Union is still talking to people behind the scenes about the possibility of resurrecting Worcester and Wasps, but the ongoing logistical hurdles, particularly in the latter case, remain enormous.

Either way, the need for a “whole‑game solution” is as vital as ever. The RFU surely cannot simply turn its back – or be seen to be doing so – on sides such as Coventry, Ealing Trailfinders and Doncaster Knights who would be competitive, at the very least, if a promotion-relegation playoff did happen. And how will it look if the RFU, having trumpeted the reintroduction of a playoff, ends up not permitting it amid a blizzard of red tape and financial chicanery? “I don’t think the game will accept that,” says Simon Halliday, the former England centre who acts as Ealing’s public representative. “A playoff has to happen or it’s a joke.”

The Championship clubs have also voted in favour, going forward, of second-tier teams being allowed to field a maximum of just six Premiership loanees. This is significant because where else, aside from a few Premiership Cup games, are up‑and‑coming Premiership squad members going to enjoy game time if they do not instantly make the first team at elite level?

Hefty parachute payments to sides coming down (effectively guaranteeing they bounce straight back up) are also apparently on borrowed time. But there is a far bigger picture here and it needs resolving urgently: how does English rugby ideally see itself in 10 or 20 years’ time? Meanwhile mighty Vannes are off to Toulon this Saturday, flying a Breton flag for rugby dreamers everywhere.

Clearly a huge gap emerging between French rugby and all others.

Is there anything to be said for replicating their model, which seems to allow for the National side, Top 14 & Pro D2 clubs to prosper, or at the very least to remain in existence ?.

Rather than chase the idea of a 'Lions' B&I league, we might all be better off with the FFR model.

Realistically speaking if the URC and English Premiership merge you would need to bring the T14 into the same league and ditch the Champions Cup altogether. Having a cup competition contributed to by 2 leagues would stink of annual repetition of matches and generally be quite pointless. As it stands only having 3 leagues contributing is not ideal

The URC and Premiership have up to 21 weeks of games, the T14 has up to 29 and the champions cup has up to 8 matches. That's up to 37 weeks of club rugby that the players have at the moment.

It would technically be feasible on that figure to have a pan-european league of up to 19 teams playing a home + away series, how you would divide them between the countries would be questionable. There's 40 teams across the 3 competitions as well to make matters worse

Yes, no doubt it would need to be a very good deal to get the French to give up the Top14

The French have displayed a fairly strategic ambition in their domestic development, including T14 clubs foregoing income to give a bigger share to the D2. It's not just about money for them. They would be insane to abandon a system that ensures that the T14 has its own professional development league.

And there we have it.

"Even Notts County v Gillingham in League Two attracted more than the rerun of last season’s Premiership final between Bath and Northampton"

This is the most important part of the whole article.

The first thing Premiership rugby needs to do is cop on to itself and realise it's a small sport masked by the success of the 6 Nations.

Time to put sustainability over big contracts and stupid moves to far away soccer stadiums.

You have to purchase the debt as well and rfu have cut back hugely in club and community game and would get big backlash if instead of reinstating the funds to those areas they invested into pro clubs.

South Africa not being able to have their own league just shows how utterly warped and unrealistic the rugby economy is.

If rugby just stops trying desperately to be the new soccer and lives within its means it's easily possible. Ya it will lose some players who are chasing the money to other sports but it won't be that many. Loads of other sports survive just fine as smaller sports confined to their heartlands.

It isn't pretty and is pretty much impractical as it would divert money from amateur game to do so and that should never happen. The pro game isn't going totally or even near 50% under union control in England as rfu can't and won't be able to finance it.

You wonder sometimes how the French got it so right, between the T14 and the Pro D2 they have 29 professional teams. Their most successful club, Toulouse, play in a stadium with less than 20,000 capacity so they probably aren't making more money than us on ticket sales

It’s a popular sport in a very big country. They have a sizeable Tv deal, and plenty of clubs have wealthy benefactors too on top of that.

They've been incredibly consistent. Canal Plus has had the tv rights for almost 30 years, it's free to air and attendences and audiences are growing every year. The T14 final had almost 5M viewers last season and I think they broadcast something like 60 games a season. It's much harder to do if rugby is spread among different broadcasters and some or all of it is paywalled. Its a bit like industrial development planning, its a long game and requires sophisticated joined up thinking. Nothing lasts forever but rugby in France is in rude health compared to the vast majority of other territories, and success in the WC is not a decisive component for it.

Actually Ireland is in pretty good shape, largely because the union calls the shots which allows a strategy for the game rather than a strategy for the club, which is what's happening in England and Wales.

Yeah, the big picture is not great. SA moving to the URC is good for the URC, as we've seen, but it's brutal for NZ. And it's nice to see Fiji and Japan come up the ranks but you could look at that as just more evidence of the terminal decline of the game in Wales and Australia, and stagnation in Italy and Scotland. That's a grim reading of it as there's a valid argument to say that the game has flattened as the rest have caught up with the likes of NZ but the storm clouds are gathering.

Back on topic, I really don't see any appeal of linking up with the Premiership. They have reasonable attendances (av 12k) and TV audiences (300k+) are nothing to get excited about plus their ownership model is fragile. No wonder several clubs are barely treading water. For Wales the answer lies closer to home but moving the furniture around would suit some of the decision makers more than really identifying problems and addressing them. Yeah, we're fucked.

At the end of the day, they're all the IRFU.