The leading world rugby nations will be offered a deal worth £5M-£10M ($6.6M-$13.2M) each to join "a new world competition that may risk devaluing the Guinness Six Nations and the World Cup," according to Owen Slot of the LONDON TIMES. The CEOs of the tier-one and tier-two nations were called to a meeting in L.A. on Monday by World Rugby, where Vice-Chair Agustín Pichot will "lead the presentations for the new plan, which has been called the League of Nations." Pichot’s plan is to "tie all the different parts" of the global int'l game into "one big annual league." This would bring the summer tours and the autumn internationals "under one umbrella along with the Six Nations and the annual Rugby Championship," the summer competition contested by New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina. The League of Nations is a project that was established in September to "bring more revenue" into the int'l game, particularly in the southern hemisphere, where the rugby economies "are facing severe struggles." The clubs in England and France "have not been invited to join the conference but they will be watching closely" because if the schedule required for the League of Nations "were to spill over into weekends previously set aside for domestic competitions," Premiership and Top14 clubs would "move quickly to take legal action against World Rugby" (LONDON TIMES, 1/28).
'KIT AND CABOODLE': In Sydney, Wayne Smith reported a TV rights agency or a major broadcaster is reportedly "looking to pay a massive amount of money for a single deal that will cover both The Rugby Championship and the Six Nations." A source said, "The worry is someone is lining up a big deal to take the whole kit and caboodle. We don’t know if it’s a rights agency or a broadcaster or a rights agency working with a broadcaster. What we are potentially looking at is someone buying international rugby and taking it off free-to-air television (in Britain). That would be a great shame but rugby is vulnerable to this kind of change" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 1/29).
