Making the game pay is still the main challenge
>> PAUL REES CONSIDERS THE OPTIONS AS TEAMS FROM ACROSS EUROPE AND SOUTH AFRICA KICK OFF THE NEW SEASON
THE dawn of a new season tends to be accompanied by a fantasy league made up of the Premiership and some of the teams in the United Rugby Championship. Notions of a cross-border tournament that lasts the length of a campaign crop up annually but none has yet made the drawing board, a dream that would take some negotiating.
This month has been no exception. Administrators admit that the topic is regularly discussed but has yet to be acted on because of practical difficulties, concerns over how it would be organised, with clubs running the Premiership and unions the United Rugby Championship, and the potential impact it would have on the Champions Cup.
The URC is made up of sides from four of the Six Nations and South Africa, 16 in all. There is not enough room in the calendar for it to be played on a home and away basis, with play-offs to follow, and merging with the Premiership would, for the same reason, not lend itself to home or away fixtures.
There would be increased air miles, all the more so if it involved flights to South Africa, and so extra cost. From the start of the new year through to the end of the season, some players could find themselves spending more time in hotels than their own homes.
Travel fatigue was one of the reasons South Africa left Super Rugby for Europe. They still have to make long-haul flights but no longer flit between time zones and the extra travel in the URC has seen most teams regularly leave their leading players at home, something that would not go down well with broadcasters and sponsors if they were to invest in a new league.
The URC said in a statement following a report that there were renewed discussions over a British and Irish league, one that would exclude sides from South Africa and Italy, that it was not part of any talks.
“Since the introduction of the four South African teams in 2021, the league has enjoyed a sustained period of outstanding success, achieving record audiences, attendances, social media growth and new levels of competitiveness,” it said.
“This is due in great part to the efforts of all 16 teams across Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa and Wales which has elevated the league to new heights. We are committed to continue owning this pace of growth ahead of the new season and far into the future.”
“The two sides the Premiership would welcome tomorrow are Leinster and Munster”
What has changed this year to give impetus to a coming together of the leagues is the URC’s broadcaster, Premier Sports, securing the television deal for the Champions Cup. Getting the Premiership clubs on board would help elevate it to new heights as England is where the chimney pots are.
The Premiership is recovering from the trauma induced by the pandemic which saw three clubs collapse under a debt pile along with the Championship champions, Jersey Reds. The league was reduced to 10 clubs, which allowed for a period of retrenchment with fewer mouths to feed and minimal overlap between the club and international games.
Ten is a number for now as the aftershocks from Covid still rumble but not necessarily the future. The new television deal with TNT Sports saw a drop in income for the Premiership which had fewer matches to offer. It receives less than a third from broadcasting than the Top 14 and even with four more clubs in France, their average from its contract is worth more than £8m a club per year compared to £3.3m in England’s top flight.
There will soon come a point when the Premiership will need to expand, but no plans have been announced for strengthening the Championship, and even if Wasps, London Irish and Worcester were all to start trading again, what extra value would they bring to broadcasters and backers?
The two sides the Premiership would welcome tomorrow are Leinster and Munster who both draw crowds and have a throng of travelling supporters. They would not go anywhere without the consent of the Irish Rugby Football Union, which while accepting the need for the game to generate a lot more money, would be aghast at the prospect of two of its teams being part of a league run by clubs.
An alliance with Wales would restore traditional ties and not involve much extra travel, but there are four regions there and all are struggling financially. Four would be too many, requiring 26 weekends if matches were played on a home and away basis.
Would they add value, the prime reason for any change? It would count for far, far more than the resurrection of fixtures that have deep roots: Cardiff, for example, first played Gloucester in 1882 and Bristol six years later. It would work for the Welsh with the regions struggling to attract crowds for matches outside the derbies.
But, in a reversal of the amateur days when it was the Welsh clubs, or at least the major ones, that were the draw cards, it is the English sides that would provide the stimulus. When Cardiff took on Harlequins and Bath in the Champions Cup last season, they enjoyed sell-out crowds despite both matches kicking off at 8pm on a Saturday night.
It was a shorter trip for Bath supporters than most of the away fixtures in the Premiership and they will be going to Wales’s capital city this season with Bristol hiring the Principality Stadium for the league clash against their West Country rivals.
An Anglo-Welsh league would be more feasible than a British and Irish tournament, but if the Welsh Rugby Union agreed to the move it would attract the ire of its partners in the URC. A way out would be to have two sides in each league, swelling the one to 12 teams and reducing the other to 14.
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There is anothe is not to have a ne The Premiership would run as they the play-off stage The top four in each could then take part in quarter-finals to decide a last four and then the finalists.
It would also mean that the teams that finished at the top of their tables would be crowned champions. When the Premiership introduced the play-offs 20 years ago, the main reason given was that the first-past-the-post system penalised teams who contributed generously to the England squad.
League matches were then played during international windows which meant that clubs could be without their international players for up to half a league campaign. The top four going into play-offs was, the argument went, a more likely way of seeing the best team in the league crowned champions.
“The Premiership needs to help make the Championship a meaningful second tier”
The play-off final has now become a fixture in the calendar, attracting sell-out crowds at Twickenham. There will be no going back as long as the Premiership remains a stand-alone tournament, but there will come a point when growth becomes an aim again.
The emphasis now is on retrenchment, reducing debt by trimming squad sizes and cutting costs after 20 years when the emphasis was on spending and paying for it by increasing turnover. All that went up was the amount owners had to subsidise their assets each year.
“One advantage of a 10-team league is that no one can say too many games are being played,” said George Skivington, above, Gloucester’s director of rugby. “There is a massive intensity around each fixture, which is good for the game.
“I quite liked it when there were 14 teams in the league and there was a longer schedule, but squads are smaller now because of what has happened in the last couple of years and finances are an issue. That said, the Premiership is more stable now and we have enough rugby with the Premiership Cup which has improved with the Championship clubs involved.
“There is talk about having this league or that one, but before anything changes we have to grow the game. If we do, we may look at things differently but for me the Premiership is a good league where the standard is high, the games are ruthless and the jeopardy is massive. The first priority has to be to maintain that.”
The trend in sport generally seems to be for an increase in elite fixtures. The attempt by clubs to set up a Super League run by themselves may have foundered on the opposition of fans, but UEFA’s response was to expand the Champions League and international football is going in the same direction.
Manchester City’s Spain midfielder Rodri last week warned that players are considering going on strike in protest at the increase in the number of matches. “If it keeps this way, it will be a moment that we have no other option, but let’s see,” said a player who in 2023-24 played 63 matches in 343 days.
A report on player workload said that the red line for player welfare was playing a maximum of 50-60 matches a season depending on age. There will be little sympathy for players who earn more in a couple of days than the average worker does in a year, but supporters pay high prices in the expectation of seeing their club’s headline players when they are operating at full capacity, or close to it, not worn down by fatigue or watching injured from the stands.
It is the same in rugby. The dash for cash is threatening the future of the Rugby Championship a couple of years after the decision of South Africa to desert Super Rugby for the URC, a passport to the Champions Cup. New Zealand and South Africa are organising old-style tours to be held every four years, leaving Australia and Argentina to get on with it.
A new tournament is scheduled to start in 2026 that will give the two tour windows a competitive hue: it will add another fixture to the international calendar and test the new clause concerning player workload that was enshrined in the new agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU.
“Number one, we have to have a Premiership,” said Bath’s head coach Johann van Graan, left. “Number two, we have to have international rugby. It will always be club versus country. I have been on both sides of the fence and you need both. How well can we work together and when the tension comes, come to the right decision? There is alignment as to what the process is. The challenge will come once a call has been made.” The agreement, which took longer to hammer out than expected, was a nod to the greater financial muscle of the international game after the pandemic exposed a sorry financial picture with little saved for a rainy day never mind a stormy one.
Clubs talk now about the drive for sustainability but the test of that will be when revenues start to rise. In the past, increases in broadcasting and sponsorship deals tended to be sucked up by pay rises; clubs had more money but were no better off, stuck on a hamster wheel where the faster they tried to go, the less progress they made.
To Exeter’s outside-half Harvey Skinner, below, the ideal is not a cross-border league but the French system which sees the Top 14 bolstered by a strong second tier where the wages of some players are on a par with the central funding for the whole of the Championship.
“Ten teams is right for the Premiership now because with finances tight, teams are limited in squad depth and as you go into the season, you do not want them to be wearing thin and being less competitive,” he said. “More matches would increase the likelihood of that happening.
“Relegation is back and that is good because it adds pressure. Games are going to be really competitive this season and (rather than looking to other countries) I would like to see the second tier here get the support that would help drive standards at the top.
“Money is a massive factor. I like the French model where the Top 14 is backed up by the ProD2, a league which attracts big crowds and matches are televised. Plug that into the English game and you would not need cross-border leagues. The atmosphere in France is something to experience and, to me, that is the way forward.”
Nothing will change for now but, as football continues to show, clubs are not in charge of their own destiny. Broadcasters determine when matches are played and a private equity company, which has stakes in the Premiership, URC and the Six Nations, will be looking for bigger returns on its investments.
The flat television market, where the withdrawal of Sky to the margins of rugby has dampened competition, will only be stimulated by better tournaments. But England and France, with their large playing populations, have leagues worth investing in and the way forward for the Premiership is to help make the Championship a meaningful second tier.
