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The British Irish Lions celebrates with his teammates after their win at the third test.
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Alamy
The British and Irish Lions are looking at options to expand their tours to France, the Americas and Japan, according to reports.
If approved, the move would see the first alteration in the team’s schedule in 37 years.
The Lions currently rotate between tours of New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia every four years but the new destinations are being explored by bosses as part of their new “Beyond29 project, The Telegraph reports.
The existing four-year rotation has been in place since 1989, when Australia was added as a standalone tour for the first time.
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The Lions are looking to expand their tour options.
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Getty
New Zealand are set to continue that rotation and host the next men’s tour in 2029, but the Lions have launched their project with a “request for proposal” distributed to agencies last month.
Bosses are wishing to engage a consultancy firm to “ideate, validate and confirm the preferred operating model and approach for the period beyond 2029”, documents seen by the newspaper show.
It outlines that the Lions wish “to learn how it can expand its value and awareness further into new audiences, potentially in new territories”.
It adds that the current format “might be coming close to maximising the return from the current model”.
The Lions are currently exploring feedback on the proposals based upon geography, timings and potential match schedules of the new tours.
British and Irish Lions chief executive Ben Calveley.
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Alamy
The document states: “There is an ambition to understand how the model could evolve to maximise future return, with some fundamental assumptions within the Lions Tour Framework potentially shifting.”
Following last summer’s Test series win Down Under, Lions chief executive Ben Calveley said he did not envisage a world where the touring side would not return to the country, but refused to guarantee that would come in 12 years.
He said: “I would absolutely envisage returning to Australia.
“Just to be very clear, I know there’s been loads of speculation about whether that would be the case or not, but we’ve had a wonderful tour here, and it is 100 per cent our ambition to return and we would want the next one to be bigger and better than this one.”
AloJapan.com