Rugby’s ‘Champions League’: Super 8 series aimed at highest bidder

Rugby Australia has released details of a Super 8 competition in its ‘show bag’ to broadcasters.

Rugby Australia interim CEO Rob Clarke: ‘We are looking at it on an annualised basis.’

Rugby Australia has released details of the Super 8 competition it has signed off on with its SANZAAR partners and included in its “show bag” to broadcasters, with the tournament to be sold off each year to the highest-bidding, time-zone friendly city in the Australasian region.

RA has put two distinct models of the series to broadcasters.

Option 1 envisages a four-week, 13-match competition in which eight sides – made up of the leading two “Super Rugby” teams from Australia, NZ and South Africa, along with teams from Japan and South America — are divided into two pools. Each side will play three pool matches before the two winners come together for the final.

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Option 2, a three-week, seven-match alternative, would see the sides seeded 1-8, with four quarter-finals, semi-finals and final to be played over three weekends. If the seedings held true, based on where the Super Rugby competition was at before the Covid pandemic struck, the Brumbies would play the Sharks of South Africa in the final, although logic suggests that the Crusaders or other NZ sides would muscle their way to the championship decider.

The tournament will be played next year in the late-May, June time frame at the end of the domestic “Super Rugby” competition. But from 2022 it would shift to June-July. Theoretically, Super 8 could all funnel into a July showdown between the southern hemisphere champion and the European’s Champions Cup winner, although the window for such a match before the start of Test rugby is narrow indeed.

The intention is to “auction” the tournament off, with Japan showing keen interest, along with other cities in Asia, New Zealand and Australian state capitals. Everything, of course, will be governed by the COVID-19 health situation and regulations around the Australasian region. For that reason, the series would be played at a central hub, with all eight competing teams being based there for the duration of competition.

“We are looking at it on an annualised basis where we might move it around, but it will be a hub-based concept again, like a mini-World Cup where we play it all in one destination,” said RA interim chief executive Rob Clarke.

“Ideally, that destination would be in a time-friendly zone and it would be a short, punchy competition with international representation from our SANZAAR partners and a little bit of new blood, potentially, from Japan (and South America).

“It is very much mirrored on the northern hemisphere’s Champions Leagues that take place. We are starting to head down that path ourselves because we believe that there is a lot of interest and upside in potential value in shorter-form, meaningful competitions.”

 

As Andrew Forrest discovered with his Global Rapid Rugby, there is always strong interest from isolated but still strong rugby cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong, but SANZAAR is keen to build on the platform of Japan’s enormous World Cup success last year. And Japan shares that enthusiasm.

“Japan is wanting to actively engage in SANZAAR competition, whether it be the TRC or Super Rugby iterations and anything in between,” said Clarke. “They really are keen to remain connected.”

There is little doubt that the Super 8 concept will be one of the main selling points in the package that Clarke presented to Australian broadcasters last week.

“When it was put forward as part of the “show bag” of content, there has been a lot of genuine inquiry around what it meant and what it was and I think if you look at some of the scuttlebutt feedback that we have received, it seems to have piqued a lot of interest,” he said.