Keithwarriors1
Juniors
- Messages
- 14
Hi all,
Recent interview with Danny Kazandijan on the Everything Rugby League podcast. From a business point of view, here are some interesting points:
- The tough decision was made to reduce the mens world cup from 16 teams to 10. This was done partially to break up the duopoly of hosts that are England and Australia. Other nations simply can't afford to host a world cup containing 16 teams.
France 2025 was planned with a budget of €50m and still fell over. There's very few nations who have an appetite to spend this kind of money on a rugby league world cup. This was also why the women's, men's and wheelchair world cups were broken up. Now we're seeing bid proposals from countries like South Africa and Kenya.
- A new era of professionalism has begun at the IRL. Up until (and including) the 2017 world cup, the tender to host documents were only 1,200 words. Now they're 20,000 words, backed with source documents.
- The introduction of the world series tournament is hoped to create a second profitable product and one that doesn't involve the big 3 nations (Australia, England and NZ).
- The strengthening of standards and criteria to become a full IRL member which may have seemed like a setback for countries like Ireland and Scotland, who had their membership downgraded.
The above move will hopefully reward countries who are putting a big effort into the domestic development of the game and not relying on heritage players every 4 years in a world cup.
By my observations, there was a fair amount of backlash from developing rugby league nations, which I understand. Ultimately only time will tell if these moves were for the best. If substantially more money is generated for members off the back of a reduced world cup, then these decisions will be largely vindicated.
