By James Orpin
With the exciting start to the Gallagher Premiership, the new Leonard Curtis finance report showed the dark side to the game that rugby had tried it’s best to hide.
Fans of the premiership know of the struggles clubs have faced after losing three clubs in the past seasons in Wasps, Worcester Warriors and London Irish.
The facts though that not a single club made a profit in the 2022/23 season and in the same season seven of the ten clubs could be classed as a balance sheet insolvent, meaning they were heavily reliant on the financial support of their owners.
Report Findings
Harlequins have been named as England’s best-performing rugby club on and off the pitch by the reports first ever comprehensive index that ranks clubs based on their financial and sporting performance from the 2018/19 season to 2022/23, with 1 being a perfect score.
With a score of 3.24 Quins came out on top, followed by Northampton Saints in second and Leicester Tigers in second place.
Then Newcastle Falcons with a score of 7.55. Harlequins also led in terms of revenue in the 22/23 season with a total of £26.8 million with their London rivals Saracens following closely behind with £23.2 million.
On Field vs Off Field
Director at Leonard Curtis, Alex Cadwallader said: “On the field, Premiership rugby in England is dramatic and entertaining as ever, and with five different winners in the past five seasons, it’s a league with a great competitive balance too.”
“Unfortunately, as this report reveals, the business of rugby in England is not performing nearly as well, with a worrying loss-making trend having persisted for several years now.”
Former England and Wasps player James Haskell who provides the foreword in the report said, “Having read the report I can’t say I am shocked as that is what I was led to believe.”
Haskell is one of the former rugby stars who has built himself a social following in his later playing days and in retirement and has never been shy of saying what he thinks.
Too much old school thinking
The ex- Wasps man said, “Old school thinking has held rugby back, and without some drastic and profound change is needed and the next 18 months will be the most important in rugby, as if we don’t get it right more teams are going to go, and the game is going to die.”
He agreed with the statements made by Cadwallader on the product on the pitch but also added, “There is a massive drop off in the ability to sell this product and the ability to make it a sustainable business”
“A lot of the voices in rugby are negative and naysaying because of tradition, just because it’s the way we’ve always done it, doesn’t mean it’s the right way”.
Evolution Needed
Rugby in this country does need to evolve if it is indeed to survive and modernise to catch up with other Rugby nations such as Ireland with how their central contracting is run, or the French, who have a lucrative TV deal compared to the English game with it being reported at 139 million euros per year.
Haskell himself had suggestions for rugby to evolve such as following models from US sports or attempting to do things similar that we’ve already seen such as Rugby X at the O2 a few years ago.
Attempts such as these though haven’t gone to plan, as the problem being once again there hasn’t been enough money for them to succeed.
This problem is one many teams worry could lead to their own demises in the future with this report highlighting the debt many are in.
With the worst cases being Bristol topping the pile with £60 million and then Newcastle with the second most with debts of £39 million.
Highlighting the importance even more of the next eighteen-month period that Haskell spoke about.
