Questions over Champ playoffs with only two clubs applying for promotion
Arguments behind the scenes about the proposed transformation of the top tier of English club rugby into a franchise-based league are intensifying with just two Champ clubs seemingly now eligible for promotion this season.Only Ealing Trailfinders and Doncaster Knights have applied formally to be promoted to the Prem, with Worcester Warriors understood to have missed the deadline.A Rugby Football Union spokesperson suggested on Tuesday that the absence of Worcester’s name reflects the reality that the club is still “getting back on its feet” after its financial collapse in September 2022 with debts of more than £25m.But with Ealing unable to satisfy the Prem minimum standards for the past two seasons, and with Doncaster off the pace in 10th place, it raises fresh questions about the raison d’être of the scheduled new end‑of‑season Champ playoffs, unveiled this year amid much fanfare.Originally it had been intended that the playoff winner should qualify for a merit-based, two-leg showdown with the Prem’s bottom side, but other scenarios have since emerged.
One suggestion was that the Champ runners-up should be promoted in the event of the champions being ineligible,With Worcester out of that race this season and Ealing still awaiting the result of their application, that mooted loophole is set to be academic,It further complicates the endless debate around the future of the elite English club game,Following Red Bull’s takeover of the bottom-placed Newcastle the Prem owners are now firmly against relegation – described by the Prem’s head of growth, Rob Calder, as a “Victorian” concept,The formal removal of relegation for the next five years, however, still has to be ratified formally by the Rugby Football Union Council, potentially in February.
Prem Rugby remains intent on creating a closed franchise league along the lines of cricket’s Indian Premier League, which would centralise commercial operations and, crucially, remove the threat of relegation.There are doubts, though, whether a move to 11 or 12 Prem clubs will be logistically practicable in the busy period building up to the 2027 Rugby World Cup.Well-placed sources say there is still a desire, even so, to expand the Prem to 12 teams by 2030.“We’re all agreed on the need for expansion of the top 10,” one league insider said.The immediate stumbling block is Ealing’s suitability as a Prem side while they remain based at their Vallis Way ground.
“In the current state of affairs they can’t go up because they’re not prepared to ground share [elsewhere],” the same official said,“Either they decide to do that and meet the minimum standards, or they don’t and it’s the second team in the league who goes up,”That conclusion is fiercely disputed by Ealing, who said their ground can now potentially hold 6,000 spectators and is technically eligible to host Premier League football,“There cannot be a circumstance in which, if Ealing finish top, we would not be allowed into the Prem,” said Simon Halliday, the former Championship chair who is an adviser to Ealing,“That is still our position, otherwise we wouldn’t have applied.
If the RFU are serious about going from 10 to 12, the only way they’re going to do it is by bringing Ealing in and then bringing one more in.If they say no and say we’re going to stay at 10, you can’t take [expansion talk] seriously.”The west London club also insist that, as things stand, their multisport business model is more sustainable than that of many other Prem clubs.“It’s about the whole game and the message it gives to other aspirants,” Halliday said.“You could argue we have the perfect business model.
We don’t have our ground sitting fallow for two weeks.We don’t have an appalling deficit.Others do, which is why they’ve struggled so much and lose millions.”Sign up to The BreakdownThe latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewedafter newsletter promotionWhat is clear is that few other Champ sides have the financial clout to challenge the elite.The existing Prem owners would love Wasps or London Irish – or both – to be reborn professionally after their financial collapses but that could be years down the track, if ever.
Cornish Pirates may conceivably be another future candidate, given the RFU’s desire for a wider geographical spread of top clubs across the country.Interestingly, it is understood that the RFU has been approached about the possibility of a top team potentially being based in Birmingham in future as part of the new multipurpose Birmingham City stadium project.The city’s existing top club, Birmingham Moseley, sit third from bottom in National League One, the third tier of the English men’s game.Saracens, meanwhile, have confirmed the England forward George Martin will be joining them from Leicester before next season.
EU opens investigation into Google’s use of online content for AI models
The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.The commission said: “The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.”It said it was concerned that Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.The commission said it was also concerned as to whether Google had used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse
Australia launches a social media ban – and is AI a bubble about to pop?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from a New York City that feels much colder than last December. 🥶In a world first, Australia implemented a ban on social media use for people under 16. It’s the first country to take such a far-reaching measure. Starting on 10 December, children and teens under 16 will not be allowed to use social media in Australia
‘I feel it’s a friend’: quarter of teenagers turn to AI chatbots for mental health support
It was after one friend was shot and another stabbed, both fatally, that Shan asked ChatGPT for help. She had tried conventional mental health services but “chat”, as she came to know her AI “friend”, felt safer, less intimidating and, crucially, more available when it came to handling the trauma from the deaths of her young friends.As she started consulting the AI model, the Tottenham teenager joined about 40% of 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence who are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support, according to research among more than 11,000 young people.It found that both victims and perpetrators of violence were markedly more likely to be using AI for such support than other teenagers. The findings, from the Youth Endowment Fund, have sparked warnings from youth leaders that children at risk “need a human not a bot”
Social media use damages children’s ability to focus, say researchers
Increased use of social media by children damages their concentration levels and may be contributing to an increase in cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a study.The peer-reviewed report monitored the development of more than 8,300 US-based children from the age of 10 to 14 and linked social media use to “increased inattention symptoms”.Reseachers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Oregon Health & Science University in the US found that children spent an average of 2.3 hours a day watching television or online videos, 1.4 hours on social media and 1
‘It has to be genuine’: older influencers drive growth on social media
In 2022, Caroline Idiens was on holiday halfway up an Italian mountain when her brother called to tell her to check her Instagram account. “I said, ‘I haven’t got any wifi. And he said: ‘Every time you refresh, it’s adding 500 followers.’ So I had to try to get to the top of the hill with the phone to check for myself.”A personal trainer from Berkshire who began posting her fitness classes online at the start of lockdown in 2020, Idiens, 53, had already built a respectable following
Scores of UK parliamentarians join call to regulate most powerful AI systems
More than 100 UK parliamentarians are calling on the government to introduce binding regulations on the most powerful AI systems as concern grows that ministers are moving too slowly to create safeguards in the face of lobbying from the technology industry.A former AI minister and defence secretary are part of a cross-party group of Westminster MPs, peers and elected members of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislatures demanding stricter controls on frontier systems, citing fears superintelligent AI “would compromise national and global security”.The push for tougher regulation is being coordinated by a nonprofit organisation called Control AI whose backers include the co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn. It is calling on Keir Starmer to show independence from Donald Trump’s White House, which opposes the regulation of AI. One of the “godfathers” of the technology, Yoshua Bengio, recently said it was less regulated than a sandwich
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