THE Scottish Rugby Union is ready to launch a global search for new investors in Edinburgh and Glasgow, according to its chief executive, Mark Dodson, provided approval is given by member clubs at a special general meeting next Friday. While the governing body is committed to maintaining its current level of investment in its two professional teams, it hopes that fresh funds will help both to remain competitive with the leading clubs in England and France, where there is already substantial external investment.
“We want to take this proposition, if we get it through our membership, to market in January,” Dodson said yesterday. “We’ve got a very good idea of what the market’s like out there at the moment in terms of the appetite globally for sports franchises.
“We’ve got to look at tailoring a package to see if the same people who are looking at sports franchises across the world are interested in rugby.
“We’ve not done anything specific. Nobody is in the wings waiting to do this. But we do understand that market and we do see the appetite for sports franchises from global players.”
The only previous franchising of one of the teams, when businessman Bob Carruthers took over Edinburgh in 2006, was short-lived and ended in acrimony. But Dodson, who has been in post for five years, is confident that his organisation has since built up a good reputation for working with outside businesses.
The SRU will need the support of two-thirds of voting clubs for the single motion which will be debated at the meeting, and it also requires at least 106 voters to attend for the meeting to be quorate. The motion, to be proposed by SRU President Rob Flockhart and chairman of the board Sir Moir Lockhead, states: “Subject always to the prior approval of the board of directors of Scottish Rugby Union plc (the ‘company’) and on such terms as the board of directors shall consider appropriate, that the company be and is authorised to dispose to a third party or parties, whether by sale of or subscription for equity, assignment, sale, transfer or otherwise, of any part, or if thought fit or arising through a series of transaction, all of the business, undertaking, assets or interests of the company comprised from time to time within its professional and performance rugby operations.
“This authority shall not extend to the disposal of the whole or any substantial part of the company’s heritable property at BT Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, notwithstanding its use to support professional and performance rugby activity.”
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