Rugby league clubs have overwhelmingly approved global media company IMG’s proposals to replace conventional promotion and relegation with a grading system from the 2025 season.
The sport’s long-term strategic partner has suggested rating each club on a variety of on and off-field metrics, with the highest-ranking 12 competing Super League from 2025.
At a special council meeting in Huddersfield on Wednesday, 26 of the 34 professional clubs in attendance, including every Super League club bar Catalans, who are not entitled to vote, opted for the proposals. That means this will be the final season of conventional promotion and relegation before the professional structure undergoes its most radical overhaul in decades.
The vote means that, from the end of the 2024 season, participation in the game’s top flight will be dependent on a range of factors, including attendance, catchment area and facilities, with on-field performance accounting for just one quarter.
Working gradings will be revealed this summer before a full roll-out in 2024. At that point, the 12 clubs who scored the highest out of a maximum 20 points will play in Super League in 2025, with 15 points required for an A licence. The next 14 will play in the Championship while the rest will comprise the lowest professional tier, League 1.
Clubs will be re-evaluated every season. Promotion to Super League will be attained should a Championship club with a B licence score more than a B-graded top-flight club, though IMG has not ru;ed out Super League being extended beyond 12 teams should enough clubs achieve high gradings.
Lower-league clubs Featherstone, Batley, Barrow, Keighley, Dewsbury and Hunslet opposed the plans, though all Super League clubs voted for them, a major boost for the validity of IMG’s overhaul.
“We’ve done a lot of work in the last six weeks,” the managing director of Rugby League Commercial, Rhodri Jones, said. “That result is a testament to that. It’s really important to get all the Super League clubs on board. Not just from within the game, but for an external look, too. We’re going into bat on a new broadcast deal so to have a top division with differing views wouldn’t be a great look.”
Clubs will now hold detailed consultation with the Rugby Football League and IMG over the summer before being graded. The most vocal critic of the system were Championship club Keighley Cougars, who said in a strongly worded statement: “If this proposal goes ahead, it will be the death of Championship, League One and other heartland clubs. Simple and straightforward.”
Others believe the plans are a rehash of the licensing system seen a decade ago and that it creates a closed shop for existing Super League clubs.
But Jones said: “It’s different to that because it’s a live system. Licensing was worked three years at a time, you could write a business plan now, get accepted for the next three years and not do anything.
“This is live, it’ll get re-evaluated on an annual basis so if you’re not changing, your score will be reflected. It’s important for us all it was a strong majority: it’s a big and a positive development for the game.”
