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New Club World Cup gets go ahead for 2028 and 2032
By Owain Jones
Chairman of the EPCR (European Professional Club Rugby) Dominic McKay has confirmed to RugbyPass that plans for a Club World Cup in 2028 and 2032 have been ratified after a board meeting with the game’s stakeholders in the Welsh capital.
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Buoyed by 108,000 rugby fans descending on Cardiff over the weekend, McKay said: “We have been developing a plan over the last two years and we’re now in a place where we feel really comfortable about accelerating that project.”
McKay said that buy-in has been given by both hemispheres: “We’ve got alignment from our shareholders in Europe and South Africa and alignment with our stakeholders who partner with us in the Southern Hemisphere and we’re thrilled to say that we will launch a Club World Cup.”
While McKay said there is still work to do, he is thrilled with the direction of travel. “It’s a special moment for the history of professional rugby that our board and shareholders want to accelerate this project. Now it’s over to our teams to bring that magic to life.”
The Club World Cup will take place over four back-to-back weekends in June 2028 and 2032, in what McKay is calling “the greatest global competition in the world.”
In principle, the tournament will comprise 16 teams spanning two hemispheres, with games being played in Europe, in “box-office” cities and stadia that are yet to be announced.
Previous reports have indicated that the top eight Champions Cup sides, alongside six Super Rugby Pacific sides and two further sides—potentially from Japan—are set to battle it out for the bragging rights of calling themselves the world’s best team.
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McKay is keen to stress that the congested rugby calendar will not be impacted and that weekends have been found within the current structure. “The focus on these four weekends will be on professional club rugby, in the same way we enjoy the Rugby World Cup at international level. The clubs have been at the heart of all of our thinking. We’re keen to add something special into the mix once every four years that we know the fans, players and clubs want.”
Along with PRL (Premiership Rugby Limited), the URC (United Rugby Championship) and their French counterparts being aligned, McKay says “talks are well advanced” with broadcasters and sponsors. “We’re very pleased with the feedback from our sponsor family, new and old, and broadcasters, both the incumbents [Premier Sports] and new.”
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So anyone reading this put paid to any earlier series that had been previously tabled, which had been as early as 2026?
I really still hope the previous commitment to truncate the EPCR to host some Super Rugby teams can go ahead too!
Really hoping NZ just sends development teams over, leave it for the young fullas to get some experience.
I’d hate to see ABs getting injured in this BS comp.
Why would they get injured?
Won't this tournament mess with the summer International fixtures? The summer Internationals are to be ramped up from 2026 with the new Nations Championship.
If these guys are planning 4 week ends of global club Rugby, in June it will probably severely impact the teams who have a lot of Internationals in them. In effect, they will be fielding B teams.
How so? You mean like with France currently not being able to send a top squad to New Zealand?
That all comes down to how players are managed through the season, something every nation (top) has to deal with. For a country like France though I might mean they change the importance to the National team that year? I would view that as a positive.
But they are coming up with a new global season, yes, all dates you’d have to imagine are changing, otherwise what are they doing lol
Generally SHs teams have not played on the first weekend, with say England choosing to warm into the window and break up travel by playing in Japan before going to New Zealand. It would be very unusual for the EPCR to be the end of domestic football calendar, but if that’s what you were wondering, they’d both want a weekend leeway returning (heading south) yes. That wouldn’t be too much of a change for NZ players (who might have already been sent packing home weeks ago of course) for instance, but maybe the Nations Championship is going to make even their schedules “ramped up” and life won’t be so luxurious for them now? 🤣
What I’ve been musing though is that the international window its moved back to say August, but I’d read talks of it even being pushed forward. Who knows what the season is going to look like really.
That's good then it will force clubs to build depth in their squad and build depth around the their country I think that's a good thing
Should be CC winner vs SR winner.
Maybe throw in the winner of an MLR versus Japan playoff.
I’m a bit disappointed its so far away, I thought they were thinking far sooner. A more simple approach you’d think would have been easier to kick off.
Your idea is adding an extra week though huh, I guess they think using existing weekends is the only viable way?
Rotating neutral venue each year for the final.
Keeps with world rugby’s matra of growing the sport.
Agree. That would be so much simpler and could he done on one week end.
So much for player welfare.
An established, elite NH test player will be playing September to January at club level with 3/4 test matches in November.
Then 5 test matches (now across 6 weeks) between February and March. Then back to club rugby until late May. Now straight into a new club comp all of June.
Few weeks rest in July then into preseason in August for September season start.
Is there any need for test rugby anymore?!
The global season is changing man, as you can see by this article. Give yourself a slap.
There might be half a game more per season from this, if this Cup extends for like 5 weekends instead of 3 like normal.
URC might need to find a better model going forward, probably the Premiership has the right number of games. Well worth the squeezing in of the idea even if other comps don’t improve.
I think that we are moving towards national squads with limited exposure at franchise level and extended squads that compete at club/franchise level with the national players making “marquee” appearances in knock out games.
unions can just limit playing time though, as the RFU cap game involvements at 30 per season (with some exceptions)
But agree that there should be less rugby, mainly in order to preserve the prestige of test matches and the big club games.
Lots of questions.
Firstly, there are 40 clubs competing for the Champions Cup, and 12 in Super Rugby Pacific. So we have 8 of the former (20%) and 6 of the latter (50%) qualifying. It should be more like 10 from Champions Cup and 3 from Super Rugby Pacific.
They should have a wildcard qualifying tournament to allow teams outside of the major club leagues to take part. Wimbledon tennis does this, with 16 of the 128 entrants coming from the Roehampton qualification tournament. We would want teams from South America, and North America to have a shot at it, not to mention teams that are currently excluded from the major club leagues (eg up and coming European teams, teams like the Cheetahs, etc).
How do they plan to manage scheduling, logistics and player workload? URC teams are already overloaded with URC, Champions/Challenge Cup, Currie Cup (for SA teams), and player commitments to test rugby. What will the clubs not be doing in those years, to allow this to be feasible?
How will this be funded? Is the assumption that the fans will sign up for incrementally more spend on rugby, when many clubs are struggling to sell tickets for existing competitions? Isn’t there a risk that this would just cannibalize existing revenues? And how are the proceeds allocated / distributed? If you don’t get that right the whole thing is dead in the water.
The plan to have 16 teams in a tournament that runs over 4 weekends suggests that it is a pure knockout format (no pool stages). So how do they plan to do the seeding? There is no world ranking mechanism (as for test sides). Is there some formula for calibrating success in Champions Cup vs SRP?
Overall it’s hard to tell if this is a great idea without a lot more information.
1) it really involves all EU teams, you don’t just count the succesful ones that made the cut, that’s like say %100 of Super Rugby’s teams that make the cut get through (assuming SR keeps its 6 team finals. But it’s already a weird dilemma EU rugby has to deal with, with countries like Ireland and SA running similar regional models to Super Rugby, where they can bring massively stacked sides up north. An interesting debate whether a) SR type sides should count as a club, and b) whether you simple want the best of them and SR therefor has such a high proportion.
Sounds like that’s what the last two entrants would be. I can imagine something like the JRLO winner and it’s runner up in a playoff with the playoff winner between MRL and SRA. They both of course get trounced. As per above other EU clubs aren’t excluded from the CC8, they can all qualify through there.
It’s only one more weekend added to EPCR, where it would have gone down from the round of 16 to 8 quarter finalists, it will be back to the 16 again. What is more interesting is are they going to cut a weekend from EPCR to find the 8 instead? Can they actually find a more engaging way to come up with 8, than the 8 you get left with when trying to simply find the last two if you know what I mean? And of course theres there understanding of how the global season is being designed to change, and this being the first insight into how. What can we take from June being an available window to not interrupt domestic schedules? July is now the final month on a domestic calendar, and the two international windows are going to be closer together (August/Nov?) to align with higher value from the Nations Championships matchs that will be held in the same years?
The whole concept is that there is no tail to the EPCR Cup season, it’s just a straight replacement. What will be interesting is whether they also make the Challenge cup better and extend that, reshuffling the Cup teams that get knocked out in it so it can extend it’s length to match the World Cup?
I can’t see that working Flankly, the format will have to be the one thing they get right over the 2 events if its going to prove popular enough for more, even more frequently. I could see it being pools of 3 and 3 final rounds, so the final on the 5th weekend, or using the existing seeding 1v1, 2v2 etc just have a double elimination series, or say where a low seed is simply trying to win to raise they seed, so some jumbling around until its time for whoever the now top 4 seeds are (again, means that teams aren’t flying immediately home with their first loss) to finally play knockout. Theres hundreds of different type of competition formats so yes, very critical to choose the right one. It can’t succeed if 8 teams were on their way home, some hundres of thousands of miles, after the first week imo. It needs to be a real showcase even festival type event.
When they finally have to settle the class lawsuit for brain injury, I think a lot of these proposals will sink.
It also assumes player buy in. Personally, if I was still playing I wouldn't be touching it. A doubled workload and travel without increased financial reward.
They need to weaponize their player unions.
Cant argue with your arithmetic and when you take into account the number of teams that will come from each NH league, no doubt whatsoever that the SRP number is ridiculous. They’ve clearly looked at this from an NH vs SH split perspective and it’s resulted in a very lopsided set up across the 4 big pro leagues of world rugby.
Yet another bowler hat wearing, cigar smoking, three humped camel of the kind that only committee consensus decision making produces!