2016–17 European Rugby Champions Cup
| 2016–17 European Rugby Champions Cup | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tournament details | |||
| Countries |
 England France Ireland Italy Scotland Wales
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| Tournament format(s) | Round-robin and Knockout | ||
| Date | 14 October 2016 – 13 May 2017 | ||
| Tournament statistics | |||
| Teams | 20 | ||
| Matches played | 67 | ||
| Attendance | 1,018,026 (15,194 per match) | ||
| Highest Attendance | 55,272 (The Final: Saracens v Clermont) |
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| Lowest Attendance | 2,500 (Zebre v Wasps) |
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| Tries scored | 363 (5.42 per match) | ||
| Top point scorer(s) |
Owen Farrell (Saracens) (126 points) |
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| Top try scorer(s) |
Isa Nacewa (Leinster) (7 tries) |
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| Final | |||
| Venue | Murrayfield, Edinburgh | ||
| Champions | Saracens (2nd title) | ||
| Runner-up | Clermont | ||
| Official website | http://www.epcrugby.com | ||
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The 2016–17 European Rugby Champions Cup is the third European Rugby Champions Cup championship, the annual rugby union club competition for teams from the top six nations in European rugby. The competition replaced the Heineken Cup, which was Europe's top-tier competition for rugby clubs for the first nineteen years of professional European rugby union.
English side Saracens are the reigning champions, having beaten Racing 92 of France in the 2016 final in Lyon.
The opening round of the tournament took place on the weekend of 14/15/16 October 2016. The final will take place on 13 May 2017 at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.
Twenty clubs from the three major European domestic and regional leagues will compete in the Champions Cup. Nineteen of these will qualify directly as a result of their league performance.
The distribution of teams is:
Due to the 2015 Rugby World Cup, it was decided that the play-off system that had previously decided the final team would be suspended, and that this year the winner of the 2015–16 European Rugby Challenge Cup would automatically qualify for the tournament. In the event this team had already qualified, the team's domestic league would be allocated an extra qualifying place.
The following teams qualified for the 2016–17 tournament.
This is the first time all four Irish provinces have qualified for Europe's top club competition on their own merits, as Connacht's two previous appearances in the former Heineken Cup had been as a result of Leinster winning that cup the previous season.
Below is the list of coaches, captain and stadiums with their method of qualification for each team.
Note: Placing shown in brackets, denotes standing at the end of the regular season for their respective leagues, with their end of season positioning shown through CH for Champions, RU for Runner-up, SF for losing Semi-finalist and QF for losing Quarter-finalist.
The 20 competing teams are seeded and split into four tiers, each containing 5 teams.
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