INDIGO GROUP RESPONSE TO WRU STATEMENT

21 August 2026

Indigo Group welcomes the Welsh Rugby Union’s decision to provide further background regarding the Strategic Partnership Framework and welcomes the acknowledgement that there are significant areas of shared ambition between the two organisations.

Having considered the WRU’s statement carefully, however, we believe a number of characterisations of Indigo’s proposal require clarification.

The document submitted to the WRU was expressly a discussion draft. It was intended to provide a basis for collaborative development, not to present a fixed or final operating model. Its central purpose was to strengthen Welsh rugby through partnership with the WRU, community clubs and schools.

The Strategic Partnership Framework did not propose replacing the existing Welsh rugby pathway. Its guiding principle was explicit: “One National Pathway. Delivered Locally.”

Community clubs and schools were to remain the foundation of participation. Indigo academies were proposed as an additional development layer, with players progressing into existing regional, professional and national structures where appropriate.

This point also needs to be understood in the context of an issue Indigo raised at its initial meeting with the WRU: there is currently a significant development gap between the DC Thomas U11s programme and the U15 EPP and U15 Dewar Shield pathways.

There is therefore no continuous, nationally structured development pathway covering those intervening age groups. It was precisely this gap that Indigo’s proposal sought to help address.

The proposed network of 26 academies is not an arbitrary new structure. It is designed to replicate the current Dewar Shield district footprint, using a geography, heritage and rugby identity that players, families, clubs and communities already recognise and can identify with.

Rather than create a disconnected layer, the opportunity was designed to provide clear alignment with existing Welsh rugby pathways and connect one recognised stage of development to the next.

The Framework itself expressly stated that Indigo was not seeking to replace existing structures or create a parallel pathway. We therefore do not recognise the proposal as an attempt to establish an alternative national pathway.

The proposed delivery model was deliberately structured to minimise any impact on community clubs.

Academy training would take place once a week, with approximately one development fixture per month, played on a Friday. That schedule was specifically intended to avoid conflict with normal club rugby and to allow young players to continue representing and developing within their community clubs.

Fixtures would principally be played within the current regional structure, limiting unnecessary travel, cost and time commitments for players and families.

Games would be hosted at Super Rygbi Cymru grounds and other appropriate local rugby venues, strengthening the connection between pathway rugby and the existing club game and creating additional match-day activity and commercial opportunity for host clubs.

Indigo has never sought to assume the role of governing body for Welsh rugby.

The Framework specifically proposed that the WRU would retain responsibility for governance, safeguarding standards, player welfare, coach accreditation, competition regulations and the national performance pathway.

Indigo’s proposed role was operational: supporting local academy delivery, commercial development, digital infrastructure, coach development and community investment within standards agreed with the WRU.

The proposal also included a Joint Steering Group involving the WRU, Indigo, clubs, schools and appropriate independent safeguarding expertise so that strategic oversight, quality assurance and player welfare remained embedded in the partnership.

We understand the WRU’s concern about families potentially being asked to contribute £30-£40 per month towards additional academy development. Indigo shares the principle that financial circumstances should not determine whether a talented young person receives an opportunity.

However, there is an important practical question which also needs to be addressed: what does it actually cost to provide that development properly, and who is expected to pay for it?

A conventional employment-based calculation for a network of 26 academies across three age grades, supporting approximately 1,950 young players, could produce an annual operating cost in the region of £3.8 million once coaching payroll, employment costs, kit, training facilities, gym hire, medical and match-day provision, safeguarding, administration, travel and fixtures are included.

But that is not the operating model Indigo proposed.

A significant proportion of a conventional academy budget is the cost of employing coaches. If four coaches are required across each age grade, a traditional centrally operated model has to account for hourly coaching rates together with employer payroll costs, pension contributions, holiday entitlement, payroll administration and other employment overheads.

The Indigo model is structurally different. The academies are proposed as locally owned and operated franchise businesses, with appropriately qualified coaches becoming self-employed business owners and owner-operators rather than forming part of a large centrally employed coaching workforce.

As a result, Indigo would not simply employ hundreds of coaches centrally and pay them by the hour every time they coach, prepare, administer or travel. Instead, the franchise owner operates the local academy as a business.

That distinction has the potential to produce a very significant reduction in the central cost base. The traditional hourly coaching payroll line does not sit within the model in the same way.

It does not mean that coaching has no economic value or that coaches work without reward. It means that their remuneration is generated through the economics of the academy business they own and operate, rather than being treated entirely as a fixed central payroll expense.

A franchise owner is building an asset and a business of their own, with a direct interest in the quality, reputation, participation and long-term success of their academy. The model also significantly reduces the requirement for a large central employment structure covering payroll, HR, pensions and the management of hundreds of individual coaching arrangements.

The purpose of franchising is therefore not simply administrative. It is designed to create a lower-fixed-cost, locally accountable and commercially sustainable delivery model, while giving experienced coaches an opportunity to become business owners within Welsh rugby development.

Any franchise structure would, of course, need to be established with appropriate legal, tax, safeguarding, qualification and governance arrangements.

A family paying £30 per month would contribute £360 per year. At £40 per month, that would be £480 per year.

Those figures should not be characterised as families purchasing a place within the Welsh representative pathway. Nor should they be viewed as covering the full economic cost of providing high-quality additional development.

They are a contribution towards a much wider development environment that includes professional coaching, training facilities, gym access, kit, medical provision, fixtures and administration.

The franchise structure is specifically intended to reduce the amount of central funding required to deliver that environment by removing the assumption that every hour of local coaching has to be purchased through a centrally funded employment model.

There are already development and pathway environments operating within structures governed or recognised by the WRU where families are required to make financial contributions. If affordability and pay-to-play are legitimate concerns – and Indigo agrees that they are – then those principles should be considered consistently across the whole development landscape.

The Framework also proposed the Indigo Rugby Benevolent Trust specifically to help remove financial barriers, with potential support including membership fees, kit, equipment, travel and representative costs.

The relevant question should therefore not simply be whether a development programme involves a cost, but whether there are robust mechanisms to ensure that talented young people are never excluded because their families cannot afford to participate.

We also want to address the suggestion that the proposal was predominantly focused on boys.

Indigo recognises that the delivery model for girls’ rugby is more complex. Current player numbers and the geographic distribution of players mean that simply replicating a boys’ academy structure area by area would not necessarily be the right solution. A girls’ model may require broader hubs, different age-group clustering, more flexible geography and close coordination with the existing club and school game.

That practical challenge should not be confused with a lack of commitment. Indigo has been a long-term supporter and sponsor of girls’ rugby, and our intention was to develop the appropriate girls’ pathway collaboratively with the WRU as the partnership moved from discussion framework to detailed delivery. The indicative £3.8 million conventional cost comparison above makes no provision for a dedicated girls’ development structure. A comparable girls’ model based around approximately 10 academy hubs and 30 players per hub – around 300 players in total – would add further cost. On a conventional delivery basis, that could require approximately £1 million to £1.5 million annually depending on geography, age group structure and final delivery design.

The Framework’s own measures of success included participation growth across boys, girls and underserved communities.

If the WRU does not believe families should contribute £30-£40 per month towards enhanced development, how does it propose that high-quality coaching, facilities, gym access, kit, medical provision and player development should instead be funded?

That is not a criticism of the principle of affordability. We agree with it. It is a question about how that principle is delivered sustainably in practice.

The debate should therefore not simply be whether £30 or £40 per month is considered acceptable. It should be about the true cost of providing meaningful development, how the delivery model can be structured to reduce that cost, how families who cannot afford to contribute are fully supported, and where the balance of the funding will come from.

Indigo’s franchise model was designed specifically to address those questions by reducing fixed central costs, empowering local coaches as business owners and creating a model capable of delivering additional development on a more sustainable basis.

We understand and respect the WRU’s responsibility for representative rugby in Wales.

The proposed East v West Wales programme was expressly described as an additional development opportunity, not a replacement for existing representative structures.

The Framework proposed WRU recognition, governance oversight and alignment with the national pathway. It was an idea submitted for collaborative development – not an attempt to claim independent national governing authority.

Indigo’s proposed commitment to Welsh rugby extended far beyond an academy network or conventional sponsorship arrangement.

Our intention was to return as a WRU commercial sponsor and to explore becoming a partner around the currently vacant Super Rygbi Cymru (SRC) commercial opportunity. Alongside that, Indigo was developing a wider member economy proposition designed to create recurring income for Welsh rugby from the economic value of its own community.

The scale of that proposition is important. In the illustrative Welsh rugby scenario presented for discussion, a community of 250,000 users paying £10 per month would generate £30 million of annual subscription income. The concept model illustrated a 50% governing-body share – £15 million per year – before considering other potential sponsorship, marketplace, referral or commercial revenues.

Those figures were explicitly illustrative. They were not forecasts, guarantees or agreed commercial terms. But they demonstrate the scale of opportunity Indigo wanted to explore with the WRU: not hundreds of thousands of pounds at the margins, but potentially several million pounds of new recurring income for Welsh rugby each year.

Even at a materially lower level of adoption than the illustration, Indigo believed the model had the potential to generate revenue of sufficient scale to support major strategic investment in the game. That could include, subject to WRU priorities and actual commercial performance, investment on the scale required to help sustain an additional professional regional structure – including the possibility of supporting the economics of a fourth region.

That was the strategic significance of the proposal. Indigo was not simply asking the WRU to recognise an academy programme. It was seeking to build a long-term partnership in which commercial growth, sponsorship, community development and player development reinforced one another.

The Strategic Partnership Framework proposed a commercial ecosystem spanning sponsorship, membership, digital engagement, rewards, events, partnerships and fundraising, with income reinvested into player development, club support, coach education, participation initiatives and community programmes.

The wider member-economy concept went further by illustrating how a governing body could receive recurring income and potentially participate in long-term capital value.

If the WRU’s reference to there being no direct investment means that the Framework did not contain an unconditional one-off capital payment to the Union, that is correct. That was not the model being proposed.

The proposition was potentially much more significant: to create sustainable new commercial income for Welsh rugby, return Indigo to the WRU sponsorship family, explore an SRC partnership, support grassroots delivery and develop a revenue engine capable – if successfully adopted – of contributing materially to the future structure and sustainability of the professional game.

The WRU has identified principles it believes should underpin future partnerships: accessibility, safeguarding, support for clubs and schools, alignment with the national pathway and appropriate governance.

We agree with those principles. Indeed, they sit at the heart of the Framework we submitted.

There will inevitably be areas requiring further discussion and refinement. The document itself recognised that. It was deliberately presented as a working framework because we believed the strongest model would be developed collaboratively with the WRU.

Our preference remains partnership rather than conflict.

We therefore renew our invitation to the Welsh Rugby Union to meet with Indigo and work through these issues constructively, point by point.

Where there are concerns, we are willing to address them.

Where there are misunderstandings, we are willing to clarify them.

Where there is common ground, we believe Welsh rugby deserves that we explore it fully.

Indigo’s objective remains unchanged: stronger clubs, better-supported schools, improved development opportunities for young people, sustainable new income for the game and a long-term partnership that strengthens Welsh rugby at every level.

Commercial note: The member-economy scenarios referred to above were illustrative concept assumptions only. Member numbers, subscription prices, revenue shares, equity or exit participation and other economics were not forecasts, guarantees, offers or agreed commercial terms and would remain subject to validation, due diligence, negotiation and final documentation

~ENDS~