New Japanese club competition planned post-World Cup, test stars set to be targeted

Plans for a new domestic league in Japan following on from this year's World Cup could force current Super Rugby and Southern Hemisphere test stars to choose between the international arena and the riches on offer in the Far East.

Japanese Rugby Football Union vice-president Katsuyuki Kiyomiya told Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei that he wants to ride the coattails of the Brave Blossoms' unprecedented success at their home World Cup by forming a new 12-team club competition in the second half of 2021.

Interest in rugby has surged in Japan throughout the tournament as Jamie Joseph's side remains unbeaten after having dispatched the likes of Ireland and Scotland to finish atop of Pool A and qualify for the knockout stages for the first time in their history.

“This World Cup is a big event Japanese rugby has not experienced before and we are tested on how we take the excitement and enthusiasm created by this event to the next level," Kiyomiya said.

"Now is the chance to start a professional league, which enables Japanese spectators to see star players in the World Cup 2019 playing at first hand, right in front of their eyes."

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Kiyomiya said he will hold a news conference in Tokyo on November 18, where he will lay out plans for the new competition, which would launch in August 2021.

The league would run through to January, thus avoiding a schedule clash with SANZAAR's Super Rugby, which is set to run from January to July next year.

That would allow for the Southern Hemisphere's premier players to be recruited for the new Japanese club competition during the Super Rugby off-season.

Having such star power in the new competition would help tee up a significant broadcasting deal with streaming giant DAZN, which already holds the rights to Japan's J-League football competition.

Kiyomiya told Nikkei the league would aim to generate annual revenue of about 50 billion yen (US$460m/€420m) from the sale of media and sponsorship rights, which would be enough "to be on a par with the European market".

Japan already has a club competition in place in the form of the Top League, but the tournament - whose 16 participating teams are mostly owned by large corporations as per Japan’s industry-led sports model - is smaller in scale than the league proposed by Kiyomiya and doesn't generate a profit.

News of this new league will add another layer of scrutiny for unions such as New Zealand Rugby, Rugby Australia and South Africa Rugby.

All three unions have struggled to retain their key players in recent years as the lure of the yen, pound and Euro has proven to be more and more difficult for the sport's marquee players to turn down in place of a test career.

"When we started talking to Brodie the expectation was that he'd play two competitions for Kobe and they would fall in a 12-13 month period," NZR head of professional rugby Chris Lendrum told Stuff in June.

In securing the services of Retallick through to the 2023 World Cup, NZR had to provide plenty of flexibility in allowing the 28-year-old to head offshore, with Lendrum admitting that the deal will keep the 2014 World Player of the Year away from the Chiefs for longer than the two-time Super Rugby champions would have liked.

It seems as though the JRFU want to avoid a scheduling conflict with Super Rugby as they aim to attract SANZAAR's star men into their new league, but that will come at a cost for the Southern Hemisphere's national sides, whose key players may have to put their test careers on hold if they want to pursue the financial riches that comes with domestic rugby in Japan.

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