THE 2023 Challenge Cup Final date and format are set to be changed for next season as IMG puts its stamp on rugby league.
The sport’s new stakeholders have set out to ‘re-imagine’ rugby league and already set forward their plans to revamp promotion and relegation and the general three-tier structure to all 36 professional clubs last month.
As part of their revamp, IMG have also targeted the Magic Weekend and Challenge Cup, with the latter set to be moved to an earlier date in the year – around the time when the former is usually held.
That does mean that Magic Weekend is under threat, with a great deal of discussions taking place about the financial validity and availability of the event moving forward.
For the Challenge Cup, however, the format and date of rugby league’s most prestigious competition will change in 2023 as questions and debates about the Magic Weekend’s future venue and city continue to be raised.
“Magic Weekend is part of the calendar so we can’t just look at the event as an individual event – we have to look at it as a whole. The IMG recommendation was creating a calendar that had peaks and flows,” Rugby League Commercial Managing Director Rhodri Jones said.
“We have done the work on the Challenge Cup, that format and date will change which might mean that it goes from later in the summer to earlier in the summer which sits in the same timeframe of where we are now. So where does Magic sit in our calendar?
“The biggest challenge we might have is availability of city and stadium. A stadium in June or July doesn’t have a pitch. Having it in August here, Newcastle are a Champions League club now.”
What the new Challenge Cup format will look like remains to be seen, but it is certainly set to be an interesting period of time in rugby league.