Bristol heading to Cardiff for one home fixture

BRISTOL Bears will play a home Premiership fixture at Cardiff's Principality Stadium next season.

The match on May 10 will be against an as-yet unnamed opponent and will feature in round 16 of the league campaign.

Branded as the ‘Big Day Out' by the Bears, the match will see them swap their 27,000 capacity Ashton Gate for the 75,000-seater south Wales venue for the first time in a bid to “reach new audiences and grow our commercial revenue”. The Premiership fixtures for the 2024-25 campaign will be released on Tuesday, July 23. Harlequins and Saracens have played an annual showpiece Premiership match each at Twickenham and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in recent campaigns, a template Bristol say they want to replicate.

“It's massive for us to take a game to a stadium like the Principality Stadium,” Gavin Marshall, chief executive of Bristol Sport said.

“We've made some headway in recent years but we are still posting significant losses and we need to find ways to drive revenue streams and we believe this is one of the ways we can do that.”

Bristol have explored the possibility of playing at the Principality Stadium previously, with a fixture between the Bears and West Country rivals Gloucester floated last season.

Welsh Rugby Union boss Nigel Walker said at the time that Welsh rugby needed to “look at ways of increasing revenues without harming any of the existing infrastructure and fabric of the game”.

Former Gloucester centre Billy Twelvetrees has joined Hartpury as a coach following his retirement from playing.

The 35-year-old, who won 22 caps for England, has taken up the role of backs and attack coach.

“It's a fantastic opportunity to be part of an unbelievable rugby programme across the men's and women's pathway,” Twelvetrees said.