The British and Irish Lions are formally investigating a significant restructuring of their touring model, with a project titled 'Beyond29' launched to assess potential destinations and commercial frameworks beyond the confirmed 2029 tour to New Zealand.
Requests for proposals were sent to consultancies last month, asking firms to evaluate the viability of hosting Lions tours in territories outside the traditional South Africa, Australia and New Zealand rotation. France, Japan and the Americas have been specifically identified as markets of interest.
The core commercial driver is explicit in the Beyond29 documentation, which states the current tour format commercially "might be coming close to maximising the return" from the three existing host nations. The Lions are seeking research that will "evolve the current operating model to significantly increase revenue, margin and profit from each tour, to future-proof the business within the wider rugby union ecosystem."
Consultancies have been challenged to "ideate, validate and confirm the preferred operating model and approach for the period beyond 2029" and to advise on geography, host nation allocation, timing and match schedules. The documentation explicitly references an ambition to "expand their value and awareness further into new audiences, potentially in new territories."
Among the structural questions being put to agencies is whether to maintain the current 12-year rotation, abandon rotation entirely, or shift to a 16-year cycle — with the Lions asking for a "recommended optimum host nation allocation model" and guidance on how to "drive increased value by potentially resetting the host allocation model."
The last time the Lions toured outside their three established destinations as a standalone tour was 1936, when Argentina hosted them — a trip that was itself the third such visit, following tours there in 1910 and 1927. One-off matches against France and Fiji have occurred in the intervening decades, but no standalone tour to an alternative nation has taken place since Australia was added to the rotation in 1989.
The commercial weight of the Lions brand was underscored last week when Rugby Australia reported a record AU$70.6 million surplus in its 2025 financial accounts, a turnaround driven substantially by Andy Farrell's tour. That result erased a record deficit of AU$36.8 million from the previous year, leaving Rugby Australia debt-free ahead of next year's Rugby World Cup.