Chase on to sponsor the £10m Champions Cup
Anglo-French organisers of the new European tournament are understood to have opened negotiations with all five prospective backers, among them the German financial services giant, Allianz, leading backers of European football champions, Bayern Munich.
Sources on both sides of the Channel claim they can double the commercial value of the Heineken Cup, a belief based on what they describe as the prospect of several ‘quite significant sponsorship deals arising from serious levels of interest.’
A lack of serious commercial clout from the current competition as run by European Rugby Cup Ltd has been a major motivating factor behind the English and French giving joint notice to quit ERC in June last year.
“There is now a recognition that ERC didn’t do a really good job in selling the competition,” a club chief executive told The Rugby Paper. “We have reason to believe that we could make the Champions Cup worth twice as much.”
While the English and French clubs acknowledge that they do not yet have a pan-European to sell, their bargaining power has been strengthened by the decision of the four Welsh regions nailing their colours to the Anglo-French mast. A Premiership Rugby Ltd board meeting this week will consider claims that at least two of the four Irish provinces are ‘keen’ to join the Champions Cup.
Allianz, owner of football stadia in Brazil and France, has already dipped its toes into rugby, paying Saracens a reported £8m over six years for naming rights at their headquarters in Barnet.
The company widened its rugby connection earlier this month when Toulon switched their home Top 14 match against Clermont to the new £200m Allianz Riviera Stadium in Nice. More than 30,000 watched the teams rip it up, literally so in the case of the playing surface.
More steps on the rocky road towards a peace deal, as revealed in The Rugby Paper last week, are expected this week. Significant concessions by the six Unions running the current tournament have removed almost every obstacle bar the most formidable one of all.
Premiership Rugby Ltd in England and the Lique Nationale de Rugby (LNR) in France are adamant that they must be given control over their own commercial destiny.
They have been emboldened by the Unions’ belated acceptance of their demands on an equal redistribution of the cash (one third to each of the three Leagues instead of more than half to the RaboDirect Pro 12) and on a top-six qualification.
The top six from each of the three leagues will make up 18 of the 20 teams. The two remaining places will be decided in single play-offs between the seventh English and French clubs and the seventh and eighth in the Pro 12.
In a joint statement, the English and French say they are “pleased” all parties have reached agreement on the competition formats and financial distribution principles.”
The Rugby Champions’ Cup would be under the overall regulatory responsibility of the Unions of Six Nations, responsible for compliance with IRB regulations, match official appointments, the disciplinary process, anti-doping and integrity.
The Champions Cup organisation will be run by the three European leagues, responsible for competition management and promotion, sale of commercial rights and financial distributions.
PETER JACKSON
