If Scottish rugby gets its way, the Rugby World Cup Sevens will be returning to its birthplace when it is staged for the final time in 2013. But before the Scottish Rugby Union is prepared to confirm its bid for the competition, it is demanding guarantees of a lucrative television deal.

The tournament is to be phased out when the Olympics takes over as the pinnacle of the abbreviated form of the sport in 2016, making the 2013 World Cup event the final one. The following year, Glasgow will be hosting the Commonwealth Games, where rugby sevens is also a core sport, and two years later England will be hosting the XV-a-side World Cup, which could be the climax to a trio of high-profile rugby tournaments in Britain.

However, Gordon McKie, the SRU chief executive, issued a stark warning. “We cannot advance a bid if it were to compromise the overall financial stability of the game in Scotland,” he said. “Hosting such a tournament would be about much more than the event itself. It would be vital that the legacy included greater access to quality facilities for the youth of our country and a consequential increase in participation in rugby. As part of the exposure for the event we would need to attract a host broadcaster on appropriate commercial terms.”

If they were to go ahead with a bid, Scotland’s case would be a strong one, thanks to their historic links with the sport, the quality of the facilities at Murrayfield and the experience of hosting the final leg of the IRB World Series for the past three years. The pitfalls would be the cost, the apathy of the TV broadcasters — only two out of the possible 36 Magners League games are being shown live on Scottish television channels this season — and poor attendances at the last World Series event. The union has until December 15 to decide whether to submit a tender.

The finances of the union did, however, take a turn for the better yesterday when it was able to announce that seven years after it invested heavily in Netherdale in Galashiels, it has hammered out an agreement with the town’s main club to hand back responsibility for looking after the pitch. It was improved for the Borders professional club but when that folded two years ago, the union was stuck with a 20-year deal to look after it.