Fans at next year's World Cup will have to pay the highest admission prices the game has seen. The best seats for the final at the New Millennium Stadium in Cardiff will cost £150, pool matches involving seeded nations will set supporters back £50 and games between unranked nations £25.
Rugby World Cup has adopted a price structure loosely based on football's World Cup finals in France. A seat will cost £100 for a semi-final, £60 for a quarter-final and £80 for the third- and fourth-place play-off, which has yet to fill a stadium.
RWC's price hike represents a 200 per cent increase on the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, which produced a £30 million profit. There will be discounts for less attractive seats and standing places, but the high prices are likely to deter less affluent supporters as well as schoolchildren and pensioners.
RWC has hitched its wagon to corporate hospitality and the burgeoning overseas market. The new price structure, jointly agreed by RWC and the Welsh Rugby Union hosts, gives each body 50 per cent of the tickets.
Official sponsors, overseas unions and supporters of the two finalists will receive a substantial allocation from RWC. Any tickets that RWC fails to allocate before the tournament begins will be returned to the WRU. Some of those tickets would be distributed among the English, French, Irish and Scottish unions.
English Premiership clubs have played down their decision not to attend yesterday's first meeting of the British and Irish League working party.
The group, comprising Six Nations' representatives, assembled in Manchester, with English First Division Rugby (EFDR) conspicuous by its absence.
Last night though, EFDR chief executive Doug Ash refuted any suggestion that his organisation had boycotted the meeting amid claims they might be working towards a separate British League agenda.
Rugby Football Union chairman Brian Baister, exasperated by an apparent shifting of goalposts, has said he will write to all 28 Premiership One and Two clubs to gauge opinion on their commitment towards the revolutionary new competition.
But Ash countered: "EFDR has a good dialogue with Brian Baister, which we wish to preserve.
"We will look at all the options, including domestic, British and European competitions, agree a policy, and then nominate a representative to enter discussions with the unions."
EFDR were bitterly frustrated by the failure to launch a British League in time for this current season.
When time constraints, and opposition from the Welsh Rugby Union, rendered such an ambitious project a non-starter, EFDR submitted a Premiership fixture list which Twickenham still hasn't approved.
