Premiership Rugby has announced talks regarding the future of the Heineken Cup "have now ended" and has put in place plans for a new tournament for the 2014-15 season which features English and French sides.
This season's battle for European club rugby supremacy looks set to be the last with the row over the future structure of the competition and revenue distribution seemingly at an impasse. The leading English clubs and their French counterparts have previously vowed to quit both the Heineken Cup and the second tier Amlin Challenge Cup after this season if their proposals for a re-vamp are not accepted. On Tuesday, Premiership Rugby has said these discussions "have now ended".
The English and French clubs wanted to see the Heineken Cup reduced from a 24 to a 20-team competition, and also a change to the qualification criteria that they insisted favoured the PRO12 by guaranteeing places to the Scottish and Italian sides regardless of their league position at the end of the season and to three out of the four Welsh and Irish teams.
The intensity of the row increased following the Premiership club's decision to incorporate European games in their recently-signed £152 million broadcast rights deal with BT. European Rugby Cup Ltd, the organisers of both the Heineken Cup and the Amlin Challenge Cup competitions, have a long-term broadcast partnership with Sky Sports that they recently extended.
A succession of meetings over the last year between European rugby's stakeholders have failed to break the deadlock and Tuesday's announcement from PRL seems to signal the end of the Heineken Cup as we know it.
PRL has announced that it will now work alongside French clubs to form a new tournament for the 2014-15 season which will be "open to teams from other countries". It remains to be seen if the clubs from the PRO12 buy into this new competition.
"Despite numerous meetings between the stakeholders over the last year, the last of which was in May, discussions have been unsuccessful and the clubs can only conclude that negotiations on any new European agreement have now ended," the statement from PRL read.
"The English and French clubs have proposed the formation of two new, stronger competitions of 20 teams each, based on the principles of qualification on merit from each league, the inclusion of teams from all six existing countries and the expansion into new markets. These proposals could form the basis of future competitions.
"However, given the importance and urgency of the current position, and the reconfirmation that the French clubs will not participate in any competition unless it includes the English clubs, the clubs have now asked Premiership Rugby to take immediate action to put in place a competition for 2014/15 to include the French and English clubs but which will also be open to teams from other countries."
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