Tony Rowe: Exeter Chiefs chairman targets new investment as club posts £10.3m loss

Rowe is hopeful a proposed new franchise model for English rugby’s top flight will increase interest in investing in the rugby club.

The 77-year-old businessman has been at the helm at Sandy Park since 1998 and financing, thanks in part to his business success, has helped Exeter rise from the lower leagues to the pinnacle of the domestic game.

The club moved to Sandy Park in 2006 and subsequently expand the stadium as the Chiefs won two Premiership titles and lifted the 2020 European Champions Cup.

But having sold many of his other business interests, Rowe says it is time for someone else to take up the reins.

“I’ve enjoyed my 30 years running the club and doing what I’ve done, and I made no bones about it, I used the the association with Exeter Chiefs to promote my businesses and that’s how I could afford to put the money into the club,” Rowe said,

“But we’re at a stage now where we’ve got to move on, the club’s got to move on, we’re looking for an investor.

“If I was 20, 30 years younger and offered the opportunity I’d jump at it.

“It will need a bit of money over the next two or three years until we get to franchise which is likely to be probably be in the next four years, it’s going to still need financially supporting.

“I’m talking to people and we’ve got a a London company that’s dealing with it for us and we’re just having a look round with a number of interested people and then we can hopefully in first or second quarter make some decisions on where we’re going to go.”