Premiership Rugby executives have been picking the brains of their counterparts at World Wrestling Entertainment of late. The bad news is that rugby union’s version of the Royal Rumble is not in the pipeline, the good is that there is no better organisation when it comes to selling its stars and the Premiership has evidently been doing its homework over how to follow suit.
The findings were instructive. Better to encourage profiles to develop organically than force growth and it was interesting to hear the Rugby Football Union (RFU) chief executive, Bill Sweeney, suggest recently that Netflix might have mis-stepped by opening this year’s Six Nations documentary with an episode all about Marcus Smith, Twickenham’s golden boy, buying a car. Rugby is not football was the gist of Sweeney’s argument in his latest podcast appearance.
