{"id":508257,"date":"2026-02-27T20:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/508257\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T20:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:42:07","slug":"mens-pro-rugby-union-in-england-dumps-relegation-and-promotion-in-major-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/508257\/","title":{"rendered":"Men&#8217;s pro rugby union in England dumps relegation and promotion in major overhaul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"FA7DM2EOYVDB3GGCJWM4DTGN6M\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">LONDON \u2014 England\u2019s top-tier professional rugby union competition is scrapping relegation and promotion to move toward a U.S.-style franchise system in a bid to attract long-term investment.<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"5W2GGJPARFEWVDERL3MU76NIXM\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Starting next season, automatic promotion and relegation between the men\u2019s Premiership and second-tier Championship will be replaced by a criteria-based expansion and demotion model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 England\u2019s top-tier professional rugby union competition is scrapping relegation and promotion to move toward a U.S.-style&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,254969,760,85],"class_list":["post-508257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rgu-england-premiership-overhaul","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}