[This article was written was in December 2022, so all facts and figures are correct as of that time]
With long-standing English Clubs Wasps and Worcester Warriors entering administration just a few weeks into the 2022-23 Gallagher Premiership season, it sends an urgent warning to a sport facing further financial headwinds and player welfare issues threatening the existence of the entire sport.
It was just seven years ago that Wasps were declared as the ‘richest rugby club in the world’,[1] bringing marquee signings into their new £21 million stadium, the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. Today, the club are in administration after owing a staggering £112.3 million in debt.[2] Whilst in hindsight it is clear that Wasps RFC overspent and took a commercial gamble with other people’s money, at the time they could not have accounted for the financial hit of Covid-19 or the reputational damage they were to receive off the back of regularly losing more than £8 million a year.[3]
Wasps are by no means the first, or most likely the last, to suffer this fate. Worcester Warriors was put into administration just a month before Wasps, also suffering with the accumulated debts that had been exacerbated by Covid and dwindling match attendances, and there is not a single English club from the remaining eleven in the league that is not currently in debt.
There is a key correlation emerging from the collection of English rugby clubs that have suffered these fates. Most major English rugby clubs have existed since the mid-1800’s, yet since the game turned professional in 1996, a whole host of these clubs have been forced into administration. Worcester Warriors (founded 1871), Wasps (1866), London Welsh (1885), West Hartlepool (1881), Richmond (1861), London Scottish (1878), among many others, are all casualties of the last 25 years since the game turned professional. There is little doubt that the system is inherently flawed and in desperate need of an overhaul to prevent any further clubs from falling to the same fate.
The issue lies in the sport attempting, unsuccessfully, to follow a system similar to that of football. Offering huge contracts to the best players, splashing out on high tech and new stadiums and clubs building up debts in the “race to be the best, win European Cups, [and] compete at the highest level”, as former England centre Will Greenwood explains.[4] The number of clubs where this debt needs to be paid back is growing, with the remaining debt between the eleven clubs left in the league totalling £360 million.
A necessary wakeup call and time for change
Many governing bodies are pointing towards the Top14, the highest Rugby Union league in France, as a format to aspire towards. This would involve a complete revolution in the financial oversight of Premiership clubs, where clubs must keep at least 15 per cent of their cost projections in cash deposits in the bank, thus providing a fallback option for clubs in case they are not meeting their projections instead of accumulating further debt. Significantly, this concept has been advocated by RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney who said the Premiership needs a “complete review” of their business plans by an independent body.[5]
Sweeney has recently been accused by Julian Knight MP of “sleeping on the job” following the events at Wasps and Worcester and has been deeply criticised by the DCMS alongside the Premiership Rugby Chief, Simon Massie-Taylor.[6] Both rugby chiefs have faced numerous calls to resign by those in Parliament. There is little doubt that both Sweeney and Massie-Taylor are aware of the fragility of their positions and know that it is crucial they make rapid and widespread change to the broken English system. If any further clubs fall like Wasps and Worcester, they will know their time is up.
Evidently, Bill Sweeney has been awoken from his sleep in the ivory tower. In the last month he has announced that all remaining clubs in the Premiership have agreed to greater financial transparency, whilst also revealing discussions have been held over a cricket-style central contract system for England’s regular players. The latter proving a particularly necessary addition since a handful of England internationals were left with a contracted club in the last two months. One such example is the highly promising Jack Willis, who has since signed for Top14 French side, Toulouse. Normally, this would rule Willis out of England selection, however rules for Wasps and Worcester exiles have been relaxed.
How senior executives in the sport intend to go about radically improving the system in English rugby is yet to be seen, but there is little doubt there are numerous mountains to climb before rugby can be seen as a stable sport with governing structures that can be relied upon for the sport to resume its stagnating growth.
Calendar, Welfare, Broadcasting and Salary Caps…
The financial ruin of English rugby is not the only issue the sport currently faces. The sport’s desperate need for transformation offers an opportunity to improve and revolutionise other severely outdated aspects of the game. Not least the schedule with which the Premiership is being played. There is a strong growing feeling that ‘less is more’ when it comes to Premiership rugby. For the last two seasons, no relegation in the league had seen it expand to 13 teams, resulting in 24 league matches per team. That is in conjunction with the Premiership Rugby Cup and European tournaments. If a team were to reach the finals of all respective tournaments, they would play 36 competitive matches in a nine-month season, not to mention international fixtures that continue all year round.
Players and coaches have been very vocal about the number of fixtures in Rugby Union and the effect on player welfare this has. Former Wales Captain Sam Warburton explained that whilst you can’t change getting “30 big blokes running around a field”, you can change the “workload on the players”.[7] Many players also feel that they are pressured by coaches to play even when they are not fully fit as a result of the strain on squad depth within a season, with a survey finding that 45% of international Test players admitted to training and playing when not fully fit.[8] In the last month, the idea of a ten-team league has been strongly advocated as not only would it concentrate revenues, but it could also reduce clashes with international fixtures and improve player welfare. If rugby executives have their wits about them, they would not hesitate to approve this idea.
The rules in rugby are changed regularly in efforts to increase player welfare, particularly given that a group of more than 200 former players have begun legal proceedings against World Rugby, the RFU and Welsh Rugby Union for their negligence towards taking action to protect players, resulting in permanent injuries. One in two professional players will have a neurological impairment according to Richard Boardman, the leading lawyer of the action.[9]
All these issues within rugby have a knock-on effect, pun intended. With increased fixtures, there are more injuries and a reduced player welfare. The now-highly-reported player welfare issues have seen a sizeable drop in people participating in rugby across the country at all levels, particularly among children where parents are concerned about the long-term health of their child’s brain.[10]
Not only are less people playing the game, but less people are watching it too. Attendances at Premiership games are dwindling, with just 54% of seats filled at Premiership matches in the first round of 2022-23 fixtures.[11] This leads to another financial concern, not only from match tickets, but broadcasting.
Ironically, the sport played by big men is being dwarfed by the deep pockets of football, cricket, and Formula 1. Broadcasting revenues from BT Sport for the rights to Premiership rugby generates around 50 times less the amount than that of Premier League football.[12] Yet despite this, the irresponsibility of Premiership rugby clubs prevails as they believe they can match the scales of salaries of some footballers for the star rugby players. Bristol Bears star Charles Piutau earns around £20,000 a week,[13] which is a bizarre amount of money given both the salary cap and the level of debt that every club faces. Many within the game believe that the salary cap in the Premiership is far too high for what clubs should be giving to players, but in the fight to become the best, clubs have even breached the limits of this cap… naughty Saracens. In another confusing and detrimental recent decision, it was announced this salary cap was being increased in 2024 from £5 million to £6.4 million. I fear for the long-term future of many clubs that simply won’t be able to compete with the rising costs of survival.
This year has been a harsh awakening for English rugby, but also a demonstration of what needs to be done at a rapid rate to save the sport from falling further into a diabolical financial and administrative mess. Whether the right people are in the jobs to help steer the ship back on course is doubtful, and in the meantime, debts are continuing to stack up, players are continuing to be diagnosed with long term welfare issues and the popularity of the sport continues to fall away. Dark days are ahead for English club rugby.
Just a reminder, this piece was written in December 2022, so is slightly outdated and of course does not include the devastating loss of yet another Premiership club, London Irish. In June 2023, it was announced the side would enter administration, just days after falling agonisingly short of reaching the top four play offs in the Premiership. The disintegration of yet another well established club in the league is a damning reminder that severe changes are need from those in charge. The game is drowning in debt with many other clubs teetering on the edge of collapse.
[1] Chris Jones, “Wasps to become richest rugby club in the world, says chief”, BBC Sport, 6 May 2015, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/32476299 [2] House of Commons Library, “Gallagher Premiership: How are rugby clubs regulated?”, UK Parliament, 7 October 2022, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/gallagher-premiership-how-are-rugby-clubs-regulated/ [3] Paul Smith, “Where it went wrong for Wasps”, Rugby Pass, 18 October 2022, https://www.rugbypass.com/news/where-it-went-wrong-wasps/ [4] Will Greenwood, Sky Sports News Interview, 17 October 2022 [5] Samuel Agini & Josh Noble, “Rugby Union’s existential crisis”, Financial Times, 23 October 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/0d5a8346-876d-42f1-9276-97d0c794fe9d [6] Sky Sports News, “RFU Chief Bill Sweeney criticised by DCMS select committee over financial collapse of Wasps and Worcester”, Sky Sports, 24 November 2022, https://www.skysports.com/rugby union/news/12321/12754631/rfu-chief-bill-sweeney-criticised-by-dcms-select-committee-over-financial-collapse-of-wasps-and-worcester [7] Sarah Mockford, “What the players think about Rugby’s biggest issues”, Rugby World, 10 January 2019, https://www.rugbyworld.com/in-the-mag/what-players-think-rugbys-biggest-issues-96653 [8] 2019 World Cup player survey, Rugby World & International Rugby Players, https://www.rugbyplayers.org [9] Richard Boardman, “Dementia in Sport: Rugby players launch legal action against governing bodies”, Progressive Rugby, 24 July 2022, https://www.progressiverugby.com/media/dementia-and-sport-rugby-players-launch-legal-action-against-governing-bodies [10] Drake Foundation Survey, “The Drake Foundation survey reveals health concerns in grass-roots football and rugby: calls for laws to make the sports safer”, The Drake Foundation, 19 February 2021, https://www.drakefoundation.org/the-drake-foundation-survey-reveals-health-concerns-in-grass-roots-football-rugby-calls-for-law-changes-to-make-the-sports-safer/ [11] Cameron Stephens, “The trickle-down effect of rugby union attendance struggles”, SW Londoner, 7 October 2022, https://www.swlondoner.co.uk/sport/07102022-the-trickle-down-effect-of-rugby-union-attendance-struggles [12] Samuel Agini & Josh Noble, “Rugby Union’s existential crisis”, Financial Times, 23 October 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/0d5a8346-876d-42f1-9276-97d0c794fe9d [13] Ruck, “The 20 highest-paid players in the Premiership for 2022/23”, Ruck.co.uk, 26 August 2022, https://www.ruck.co.uk/the-20-highest-paid-players-in-the-premiership-for-2022-23/4/
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