European Professional Club Rugby - who run the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup - have revealed plans for a brand new competition
The long-held dream of a competition to declare the best rugby union club side in the world has moved a significant step closer with a proposal drawn up between European Professional Club Rugby and Super Rugby Pacific.It is a format first aired four years ago but a key development occurred last November when an EPCR clubs conference held in Toulouse saw the powerful French clubs push hard for the new competition to go ahead.
The 16 teams would comprise that season’s eight qualifiers out of the Champions Cup pool stage and the top six teams from Super Rugby Pacific. One of the big stumbling blocks has been finding a date in the year when the teams from both hemispheres would be at their strongest. The painstaking, slow-moving harmonisation of the global rugby calendar has brought the idea closer.
In February 2002, the BBC were on standby to televise European champs Leicester Tigers against the then Super 12 champions ACT Brumbies, but the Super Rugby draw prevented it. And while the Champions Cup has many fans, and there are four scintillating quarter-finals in store this weekend, it does not make loads of cash for the competing clubs.understands Investec’s current sponsorship is worth around £7m a year, compared with £5m a year from Heineken way back in 2002.
But the three main club leagues in Europe and South Africa – the Premiership, Top 14 and URC – speak through EPCR, who run the Investec Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup.
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