Diminished rugby Premiership battles for attention as season begins

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The biggest contest in English rugby union returns on Friday when the Bristol Bears host the Leicester Tigers, kicking off a weekend of Premiership matches that will serve as a reminder of the league’s fragile state.

Only 10 teams will compete this year after three collapsed under mounting debts following a brutal pandemic, while many of the game’s stars are still in France for the Rugby World Cup so cannot represent their clubs in early games.

“They don’t have international breaks like with football, which is a big issue,” said Christina Philippou, an expert on the business of sport at the University of Portsmouth. “It hampers the value of the broadcast deals because you’re staging matches without your full squad.”

Calendar overlaps and fixture congestion have long forced Premiership clubs to give up their best players to their national teams, leaving fans torn over which games to watch.

The battle for attention adds to the pressures on a sport that has been forced to rethink the way it operates after a financial crisis exacerbated by the pandemic pushed Worcester Warriors, Wasps and London Irish into administration and ejection from the top flight.

The collapse of the teams, all founded in the 19th century, underlines the strains on a game trying to compete for commercial revenues in a sports landscape increasingly dominated by football.

Even Leicester Tigers, which won the Premiership in 2021-22, was forced to raise funds from shareholders this year after warning that administration was likely without a cash injection. 

Lower leagues are also in crisis. Second-tier side Jersey Reds said this month it had been forced to stop trading after failing to raise funds, despite finishing last season as league champions. The club blamed a “continuing backdrop of uncertainty”.

The Premiership and Rugby Football Union, the game’s governing body, are seeking to get on the front foot. The two are in the latter stages of thrashing out a new “professional game partnership” that will underpin the future of the sport by reducing the conflicts between club and country. 

Hampered by anaemic revenues, high wage bills amid overseas competition for players and over-dependence on rich owners to plug budget shortfalls, English rugby clubs have never been far from financial trouble since the game turned professional in 1995.

“The financial situation is really bad for clubs,” said Philippou. “They were one of the last sports to professionalise so they came to the market much later than everybody else. The sporting broadcast calendar had already been filled.”

In 2018-19, Premiership clubs lost about £40mn on revenues of about £220mn, leaving them particularly vulnerable when Covid-19 hit in early 2020. Heavily reliant on ticket sales and other match-day revenue, they were pushed further into debt during the pandemic, taking out a combined £124mn in taxpayer-backed loans by March 2022.

As matches resumed and fans returned to stadiums, clubs discovered a tougher business environment.

“A slow return of regular event attendees, rising cost of living, high inflation and a depressed sponsorship and broadcast market will all extend the runway to profitability by a number of years,” the RFU and the Premiership warned last year.

Even as billionaires, private equity firms and other wealthy investors have piled cash into sport in recent years, rugby clubs have struggled to raise money. When professional investors have taken an interest in the game, they have typically prioritised deals with leagues and governing bodies.

CVC Capital Partners invested more than £200mn in 2018 for 27 per cent of the Premiership, a move that was meant to supercharge the league’s commercial growth. The private equity firm agreed in 2021 to pay up to £365mn for one-seventh of the Six Nations tournament and also struck a £120mn deal for international club contest Pro14 Rugby, which has since been rebranded the United Rugby Championship.

Fans still prefer international rugby, with only a fraction of the UK’s estimated 10mn rugby fans tuning into the Premiership.

Meanwhile, the sport’s global governing body World Rugby expects to bring in €457mn from the World Cup through media rights and sponsorship, and has sold 2.5mn tickets.

“While the tournament provides a boost to the sport generally, it also presents an opportunity for fans to stay at home and watch matches for free,” said Catherine Forshaw, an associate in the sports sector team at law firm Brabners. “That’s to the potential detriment of Premiership attendance and revenues.”

The RFU and the Premiership hope their new road map can put the game back on track. The UK government has appointed two independent advisers to assist them, having highlighted that the “inability of rugby clubs to raise capital” means there is a “need for urgent work to help secure rugby union’s immediate future and advise on its future direction”. 

As well as highlighting the need for a deeper strategic partnership between the RFU and the Premiership, the RFU and the league have underlined the need to improve financial oversight and regulation, implement tougher tests for would-be owners and directors of clubs, and introduce better protections for players and staff in the event of club collapses.

RFU chief Bill Sweeney has also highlighted the need to establish a “One Entity” approach, including a new board for professional rugby that would include representatives from the RFU and the club game.

This month, he said: “We are on the cusp of something quite spectacular.”