Rob Baxter: New World Club Cup could cripple clubs financially

Exeter Director of Rugby Rob Baxter insists that all the numbers must add up before the notion of a World Club Cup can be properly entertained.

It has been reported widely during the week that a memorandum of interest has been signed between the respective stakeholders to enable the best club sides in the north and south to battle it out for the right to be crowned world club champions every four years.

A 16-team global tournament from June 2028 is the aim, with that season’s Champions Cup knockout rounds replaced by a 16-team tournament over four weeks.

But with Premiership clubs collectively posting combined losses of £25 million for the last financial year, Baxter says a robust business plan must be in place first.

“It is something that seems to have been mooted for three or four years,” Baxter said on this week’s media call.

“If someone says to me in four years they have got the finances in place, they will cover everyone’s travel costs, and there is a TV deal and all the clubs involved in it will get millions of pounds, and it helps all the clubs be viable businesses, I would say it is exactly what the game needs.

“If as what normally happens, and it’s (a case of) let’s try and give it a go, let’s see if we can make this work and get some interest, I would be very hesitant about it because you can very easily create bigger issues in the game trying to solve issues as we have seen numerous times. Let’s make sure it is genuinely viable before we start adding more competitions, games, and travel costs etc. etc.

“Clubs in this country can’t take the approach that, if we do it, it will grow.”

The 16 teams would comprise that season’s eight qualifiers out of the Champions Cup pool stage and the top six teams from Super Rugby Pacific plus two from Japan’s League One.

Whilst the thought of the Chiefs taking on the Crusaders, for example, might sound great on paper, Baxter’s 14 years in the Premiership have made him a realist.

Exeter fly to France this weekend for their Champions Cup quarter-final, at no small cost to the Chiefs, and Baxter is worried that a global tournament could cripple clubs financially.

“The desire to try it and see what it is like – and there is nothing negative about interesting games of rugby – is completely different to trying to make it a realistic situation,” he said.

“If you look at things now, we’re in a European competition, and the costs for us, literally overnight, from Sunday knowing the result (in the Round of 16 against Bath) to trying to book a plane to get over there to France, and we are only taking the smallest plane we can, our costs are going to be in the 10s of thousands of pounds.

“Take the reality of that and make it a world competition and you go, as much as we all might want to do it, you have to have to be able to afford to do it.”