If Australia's Super Rugby franchises face challenges ahead of next year's expanded competition, involving additional teams from South Africa and Argentina, consider the plight of the other new entrant, Japan. It has signed only two players of the required 23 to 25 for a competition beginning in February.
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Japan has been included in one of the South African conferences where it will have flight times of just under 24 hours. The SANZAR solution has been to insist the Japanese play half their home games in Singapore to a stadium, near empty other than the western businessmen who don't fly home to Australia and New Zealand each weekend.
Clearly SANZAR has not learned the lesson from the failure of the Singapore Slingers who played in Australia's National Basketball League. The Slingers lasted two years .
The SANZAR solution, endorsed by the ARU, will mean that for 75 per cent of the Super Rugby season the Japanese team will be on the road. How can the Japanese team build a new sports franchise when they will be offshore for most of the season and, when in South Africa, playing at an unattractive TV time slot?
Furthermore, Japan's Super Rugby team is not owned by the rich corporations, such as Sony, which fund its domestic competition. It is the property of a comparatively poor JRU.
With Japan hosting the 2019 Rugby World Cup, a failure by its team to be competitive will thwart the growth of the code in the country.
The Japanese and Argentine teams have been added to the two South African conferences to effectively stop it being a duplicate of the country's successful domestic Currie Cup competition.
With Australia and New Zealand also playing in two conferences, the overall structure is also challenging to fans, particularly with teams playing across conferences.
It also means the abolition of the two local derbies, such as Waratahs versus Reds, with teams now playing each other once.
This will impact on gates and ratings, with attendance and viewer numbers highest in Australia when local teams play each other..
SANZAR's chief executive Greg Peters has resigned to take charge of the Argentine team, raising the question of who is in charge of the umbrella body.
