{"id":171537,"date":"2025-06-09T23:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T23:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/171537\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T23:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T23:54:09","slug":"r360-rugby-event-flawed-say-premiership-bosses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/171537\/","title":{"rendered":"R360 rugby event flawed, say Premiership bosses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following in the footsteps of Harlequins’ well-established ‘Big Game’ concept, Bristol played their home game against West Country rivals Bath at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium last month, drawing more than 51,000<\/a> to the Welsh capital.<\/p>\n

Another club is considering the possibility of shifting a regular-season home game to a bigger stage for the 2025-26 season, with Massie-Taylor saying the league might test the waters across the Atlantic in the run-up to the Rugby World Cup in the United States in 2031.<\/p>\n

Newcastle staged a home game against Saracens in Philadelphia in 2017, but the fixture fell well short of the hoped-for sellout, with the 18,500-capacity Talen Energy Stadium less than a third full.<\/a><\/p>\n

Saracens, who were also the ‘away’ team for London Irish’s more successful St Patrick’s Day fixture in New Jersey in 2016,<\/a> have shown interest in taking a game stateside previously, with then chief executive Mark Thompson saying in September they would “certainly” consider it, external<\/a> if the circumstances were right.<\/p>\n

The 2025-26 Premiership season will begin on a Thursday evening, with the opening round reconfigured to avoid any clash with the Women’s Rugby World Cup final.<\/p>\n

The Red Roses are hot favourites to advance to Saturday, 27 September’s showpiece at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n

The first matches of the season will be spread across Thursday 25, Friday 26 and Sunday, 28 September, with a number of clubs interested in testing out the timeslot on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n

Next year’s Six Nations will also begin on a Thursday evening, with French broadcasters keen to maximise audiences and avoid a clash with the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics<\/a> the following day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following in the footsteps of Harlequins’ well-established ‘Big Game’ concept, Bristol played their home game against West Country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-171537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114656107744204528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}