A Six Nations spin-off that would see the home nations play in the United States could be in the pipeline, according to the tournament’s chief executive, John Feehan.
The American broadcaster NBC will show all 15 matches of this year’s competition live after a historic agreement was announced in October, and while Feehan ruled out taking any Six Nations matches to the US, a supplementary tournament has been mooted which could also involve games against American teams.
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“We don’t need to move a game out there as such, but, potentially you could end up playing games involving Six Nations teams in America, which would be an adjunct to the championship,” said Feehan. “There is more than one way to skin the cat, we could do it like that instead.”
Wales are set to play South Africa in Washington in June in a match expected to generate significant revenues with one of their main sponsors, Under Armour, based nearby. Premiership Rugby has also been attempting to crack the US market for years, with Saracens playing Newcastle in Philadelphia in September.
No time frame has been set for establishing a US-based competition but Feehan sees it as a possible consequence of the deal with NBC. “You could develop it into a structured set of games rather than one-offs, but I think it’s probably a little bit premature yet. It’s a big deal getting on to NBC’s network which means anything from 95m homes to 125m homes and that’s pretty impressive stuff. And we’re getting live exposure there as well as on the digital channels. We’re very happy that we will develop the American market.”
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Fitting any additional tournament into an already cluttered global calendar would be far from easy and it would raise further concerns over player welfare, but Wales’s recently-announced fixture against Scotland this November demonstrates the appetite among the unions to arrange more matches between the home nations. England also played Wales at Twickenham in May 2016 instead of their traditional match against the Barbarians.
Feehan also said that he would be in favour of the British & Irish Lions playing a tour match in the US, though he revealed it is unlikely to happen in 2021, when South Africa are the scheduled opponents. That tour is set to be reduced from 10 to eight games.
Feehan, who is also the chief executive of the British & Irish Lions, said: “If we’re being squeezed on the number of games we have, it’s very difficult to see how we could make space for an American game. The idea is a good one but for the moment it’s probably not achievable, certainly not in the next cycle.”