Steve Lansdown has a dream. Bristol’s billionaire majority shareholder believes the club, who last tasted Premiership rugby in 2009, have the potential to emulate another club that used promotion as a springboard, Toulon, and conquer Europe.
More than that, Lansdown wants to establish the city as a centre of sporting excellence having set up the Bristol Sports group, which includes Bristol City FC, who have been promoted to the Championship, the Bristol Flyers basketball team and an academy women’s football team.
His dream has cost him “a reasonable amount” but he has secured the backing of local businesses, and when redevelopment work is completed at Ashton Gate, the ground which is home to Bristol City and Bristol rugby club, Lansdown expects the two clubs to start paying for themselves. Ambition is expensive but despite his financial long reach, his aim is for self-sufficiency rather than endless largesse.
For the rugby club, that means getting back into the Premiership by defeating Worcester in the two-leg Championship play-off final, the first leg of which is in Bristol on Wednesday. A year ago Bristol were confident of overcoming London Welsh to reach the top flight and signed a number of players on significant wages. They lost and their conquerors have gone through the season without a victory in any competition.
“It hurt then and it still does,” said Lansdown, who has not put pressure on the players and coaches by saying he will withdraw his backing if Championship rugby is again on the menu next season. “The first thing to say is that while we were the best team in the league throughout the season, London Welsh deserved to win the play-off. I am not sure that, at this level, the system is right: the team that finishes at the top of the league should be promoted, if they meet the entry criteria, because, unlike the Premiership, clubs have their players available throughout the campaign.
“We have beaten Worcester twice already and that should be enough. It isn’t and we have to get on with it. Being in the Premiership is essential to what we want to achieve here: I am not saying the play-off matches are make-or-break or that we have to do it this time, but to be a successful club Bristol has to be in the top flight. You will not fill 27,000 seats in the Championship.”
Lansdown became Bristol’s majority shareholder in 2012, ending years of financial strife for a club who had spent nine seasons in the Premiership. Failure to go up this year may not be as costly as before with plans being put forward to expand the top division from 12 to 14, but the club’s backer is interested in certainty rather than talk.
“The expansion plan plays no part in my thinking,” he said. “I am focused on getting up this year and that means beating Worcester, who will have exactly the same motivation. It is not about what may happen in 12 months and we know what we have to do. I think we would have made a far greater impact this season than London Welsh and the play-off system cost us the Premiership. We have to get it right this time.
“The potential for rugby in Bristol is considerable. I see no reason why, within five years, we cannot be challenging for the Champions Cup and making the same impact Toulon have done in recent years. We have the support and the infrastructure is there. It is all about building upwards, getting the academy set-up right, and building success and revenues each year.
“Exeter have done well since beating us in the play-off [in 2010], showing what can be achieved. I do not see this as me pouring in money all the time to make good losses: it has had to be so in the Championship, but if we win promotion I would like to think that within a couple of years the club will be in a position to spend what it earns.”
Lansdown, who made his fortune in the finance industry, gained the idea of creating a sporting hub in Bristol when he visited Barcelona’s Camp Nou in 2000, becoming Bristol City’s chairman two years later. “What struck me was that it was not just about football there but a number of other sports,” he said. “Sport supported the city and the city supported sport. Sir John Hall had the same idea in Newcastle at the end of the 1990s, but there was not the passion for rugby there that we have in Bristol.
“I have got a number of local businesses involved – there were 30 at a meeting the other day – and this has to be driven by the private sector because while local authorities like to take credit for sporting success, they do nothing to help achieve it. That is why I am in this for the long haul. Sport benefits the community and a key part of our strategy is to get the city back into rugby’s Premiership, and stay there.”
