The Crusaders could take Super Rugby to a completely new market by playing one of their matches in London England.
The Crusaders cannot use their home ground at AMI Stadium in Christchurch and are said to be considering playing a Super rugby match in Auckland or even London, England.
Engineers are assessing the damage to see if AMI Stadium stadium can be fixed during the Crusaders campaign and if it is not they will have to look at other alternatives.
Crusaders CEO Hamish Riach told Newstalk ZB that they have some potentially exciting commercial opportunities but also need to include their own franchise partners.
The Crusaders have moved this weekend’s match on Friday against the Brumbies to Nelson and hope to play a match in Timaru.
Both Nelson and Timaru’s grounds can hold about half the size of the average attendance that the Crusaders enjoyed last year (20,000) so every match they play at a smaller capacity ground will cost them a considerable amount at the gate.
Holding a Super Rugby match in London makes more sense than one would expect.
Twickenham is now the world’s biggest rugby stadium and London has an enormous number of New Zealand, Australian and South African expats.
Twickenham has also been used in the past as a venue for fund raising matches and South African Super Rugby teams have played warm up matches in England in the past.
Moving domestic rugby matches abroad is not unheard of and in January this year London Wasps moved an Anglo Welsh cup match against Harlequins to Abu Dhabi.