Only three clubs remain committed to the Super League project, with nine of the other 12 founding members having pulled out. That includes Manchester City, whose CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak has apologised to the club's fans for the Sky Blues' initial involvement.

Even though Manchester City were one of the first to consider pulling out of the project, Al Mubarak still wanted to say sorry to the club's supporters.

"I want to start with apologising to the fans," he said in an official club statement.

"[Joining the Super League] was a mistake. I think in hindsight, the decision should have been from the beginning: a decision not to participate in this league.

"I absolutely regret it. The benefit of hindsight is easy right now. I regret it and you can see it: our reluctance.

"It was very difficult. It was not an easy decision to say 'yes, no' and 'we're in' or 'we're out.'

"I think you can see in terms of the timing of when we actually did commit, it tells you a lot in terms of how challenging a decision it was and how much we struggled with that decision.

"But you can also see that once we recognise there was a mistake, that's it. We needed to go out immediately.

"I'm not going to sit here and defend the reason why we did it. What I will do is: I will own it. I took a decision ultimately on this and I take full responsibility, and it was a mistake."