NIK SIMON - RUGBY CONFIDENTIAL: Ambitious promoters are hunting some of the game's biggest stars for the competition that will be staged around the world like a touring circus.
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The organisers of rugby's rebel league have set a target of September 2025 to activate millions of pounds worth of player contracts for a competition that could upend the sport.
Ambitious promoters are hunting some of the game's biggest stars for the competition that will be staged around the world like a touring circus.
Pre-contracts have already been offered to headline players, which will involve complicated buyouts from their existing club deals.
Mail Sport understands that three conditions must be met by next September in order for the pre-contracts to kick in.
The conditions are to have eight franchises sold in the fundraising process, an international TV deal and 200 players signed up.
If successful, the first competition could be staged in the summer of 2026. Organisers are hoping to secure funds from the USA and the Middle East, with hundreds of millions of pounds required to recruit the sport's front-line stars.
Former England international and 2003 World Cup winner Mike Tindall is understood to have been consulted during the concept-planning stage.
Tindall has been critical of rugby's existing structures, recently talking up the value of franchise systems on his The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast.
'I know you can't change the past but the problem is that no one went to the NFL in 1995 and said, "We're thinking of doing this, how would you do it?"
'They'd have probably said your main body has to run everything, selling all its franchising and all its sponsorship under one thing and it distributes it evenly throughout the clubs. Now we're just trying to patch up.
'We've been here (since rugby went professional) because it was never set up properly in the first place. It was a lot of shuffling of decks and people going, "Oh my god, I can make money off this". If you look back now, the only way it would have really worked is having that central league type of thing, where you sell the rights to the whole league.'
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