TNT Sports brands rugby rebel league ‘delusional'
Telegraph Sport revealed last week how Mike Tindall, the Rugby World Cup winner and member of the Royal family, was one of the driving forces behind rugby's new breakaway global league, pitched as 'driving generational change in rugby', which is scheduled to launch later this year with a number of players reportedly having signed pre-contractual agreements which are valid until September.
But the concept has been derided by both TNT Sports and Premiership Rugby, the two bodies who agreed a new television deal until the end of the 2030-31 season last month.
'I'm going to take my TNT Sports hat off just for the moment,' said Andrew Georgiou, president and managing director of Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, which owns TNT. 'I've been involved in sport for 25 years. I can't tell you how many of these PowerPoint presentations have come across my desk with people who were absolutely certain that what they had on that page was going to be the new thing. It was going to be absolutely the new thing.
'I don't know the details of what's happening, no one's come to us and made a presentation, no one's told us what the new format is, no one told us what the new schedule is. I mean, I actually don't know much about it. But the one question that I think you guys should be asking is, 'how are they going to grow the revenue by putting this event on?' Where's the money coming from? The media industry is going through a massive generational change. There's been more change in the media industry in the last five years than there has been since the invention of cable television in the late 70s and early 80s.
'So, if these folks believe that they are going to grow the revenue by putting this thing on, I think they're delusional. I really do. What it will do is further complicate what is already a well-functioning rugby ecosystem. And so I would just ask some pretty fundamental questions around whether this is a commercially sustainable model. The fact that it's being likened to LIV Golf, I think is a perfect analogy. It's a perfect comparator to what this is really going to be. Commercially unsustainable.'
When it was suggested that TNT Sports, therefore, would not be interested in bidding for broadcast rights on the new league, Georgiou replied: 'You bet.'
Both TNT and the Premiership have experienced unprecedented growth this season. The league has seen 30 sold-out match days up from 18 last season and 13 the season before. This weekend's final, between Bath and Leicester, sold out in record time – with last season's show-piece also a full house – while growth among fans aged between 18 and 34 increased by 30 per cent in one year. Furthermore, Bath's play-off victory over Bristol last week was the most-viewed Friday night match ever on TNT.
Red Bull's investment in Newcastle is understood to be nearing completion and Simon Massie-Taylor, Premiership Rugby's chief executive, believes that the league's previous financial woes are behind them and a new chapter is beginning. At board level, the Premiership will not allow itself to become distracted by R360 and Massie-Taylor has said that 'there has not been any engagement' with the breakaway league.
'It's not a threat per se,' said Massie-Taylor. 'But we have no idea how it could ever work full stop. But definitely for the club game. In England, in France, URC, southern hemisphere, how would it actually work and help develop the club game?
'But rugby needs roots, it doesn't need pop-ups. Rugby needs roots. The complicated thing about rugby is there's an international game, there's a club game that relies on, there's a community game. The whole thing's linked, the community game's inspired by both. Funding comes down to help the community game and there's this whole sort of connectedness to it. And that sometimes is an inhibitor to growth because you have to find a solution that compromises all these types of things.
'But without those roots, it's very difficult to understand how a system could ever work. The whole phrase [is] 'it takes a village', right? That one person who's going to turn up and go out on the field, there's a whole system, a whole team, a whole grass-roots network that needs to develop that person beyond just rocking up.
'I'd be worried if players are counting on that because they may miss out on genuine opportunities that exist within their club. Things need sanctioning for a start and things need money coming through the door before these people can actually get paid.'
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