SCOTTISH professional rugby teams could find find themselves playing regular league fixtures in America or Canada if ambitious plans revealed over the weekend work out. That is one avenue being explored as Mark Dodson, the chief executive, warned there have to be changes if Scotland is to remain competitive in the 21st century sports market.
Despite a record breaking year in turnover, the Scottish Rugby Union know they need more income if they are to live with competition from billionaire-backed clubs In England and France. Dodson is prepared to see the current governing structure of the SRU torn up if it will bring in outside investors but accepts there are numerous hurdles.
The biggest problem for Dodson and his partners in the Guinness PRO12 is that they are operating in a small market – the combined populations of Scotland, both parts of Ireland, and Wales comes to less than 15 million – which rules out the megabucks television deals that underpin the games in France and England.
"What we have to do is break into new markets that matter," said Dodson. "Hence the kind of conversations that are going on around North America and other territories. North America is something we have to look at, not necessarily individually but across the PRO12. We are already working on certain key issues, we are researching that market to see how much interest there is.
"The idea is to have franchises there as part of a joint league – I don't think there is any profit in having the odd game have there, I don't think Americans will respond to that. They want regular competition that they understand and that they can get behind."
In his speech to the union's Annual General Meeting, Dodson spelled out exactly what is at stake unless the union can find new ways to bring in even more money. Despite reporting a £47.4 million turnover, and another year of being run at a small profit while debt is being brought down, that is not enough to stay healthy at any level.
"The fact is that 90 percent of our income comes from high performance rugby and this is the area of activity that underpins the grassroots game," he told club delegates. "Any strategy that does not protect high performance rugby will also fail the domestic grassroots game. We have to come up with a sustainable model that protects the professional and amateur games.
"It is increasingly clear that we need to restructure our organisation to attract external private investment. If we agree that outside investment is required – and required quickly – we may need to restructure our business to accommodate
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here