Sports have always been one of the nation’s favourite pastimes. The lowest point for sports fans has to be the break in between seasons. Of course, there are always fun ways to pass the time, but the urge comes when we’re hungry for sports again.
One of the nation’s favorite sports is rugby. It’s well known that you’re either a rugby fan or a football lover – there aren’t many people who straddle the two. Each sport is a fantastic spectacle and we have some of the best teams in the world.
But how are the rugby teams doing financially? That is a different story to the one you might anticipate. We’ll be looking at the current state of the rugby team’s finances, as well as where we think they might be able to improve their investments.
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Where are rugby clubs currently in terms of finances?
It may come as a surprise to know that the rugby clubs we know and love are in dire straits. Things are so bad that not a single Premiership club managed to turn a profit in 2023. This is a surprise to every rugby fanatic as well as anyone good with numbers – how can a sport that seems to make so much money not be profitable?
We look at other top sports such as football making millions of pounds and it seems bizarre that rugby isn’t doing the same. It’s a mixture of issues that are causing this lack of profit, but it’s mostly the fluctuating revenues and costs that are constantly skyrocketing.
This is something that impacts regular people, and businesses as well. Even a popular sport like rugby is having issues with its revenue stream and it’s having a negative impact on their finances.
Another issue that rugby clubs are facing is an agreement that has come to pass called the Professional Game Partnership (PGP) which has been agreed by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and Premiership Rugby (PRL).
This agreement is set to be in place for the next eight years and could have further detrimental impacts on the financial state of rugby clubs.
The RFU has agreed to pay clubs in the Premiership £33 million per season as a sort of encouragement to make English teams the best of the best.
This might seem like a strange aim given the level that the English teams are currently at, but more investment doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.
However, the issue arises for clubs in the Championship as they haven’t been included in this new deal. Their investment will be the lowest it’s ever been at a total of £133,000 this season.
This puts more pressure on Championship clubs financially. Even though this is to try and make teams ‘more competitive’, it’s difficult to improve a team if you take away the financial investment in them.
Strategies for rugby to attract investment?
Yet another surprising statistic is that only 7% of rugby’s UK adult fanbase is built up of people between 18–24 years old. That is a huge demographic that the sport is missing out on and they know it.
The current plan is to try and attract that audience and get people coming out to watch the sport. Sponsorships with other brands are usually a great way to raise awareness as they provide opportunities for networking in other sectors and provide platforms for businesses to highlight their products, whether it be sportswear or gaming brands, check here.
One of the biggest issues that rugby clubs have is getting a constant and reliable stream of people coming and watching the matches. When you watch a match, there’s merchandise available to purchase, there’s money spent on food and drink and all of this adds to the revenue from the sport.
By getting more young people to come and watch the sport, they’re going to be attracting a lot more money as well.
Rugby also makes a pittance in TV revenue compared to football, so they have to look at other ways of making money. One thing that is really ramping up is the number of sports documentaries that are being made at the moment. Investing in some kind of rugby documentary could do wonders for the sport’s finances.
Younger audiences also love learning about a topic through a documentary, so this could be two birds with one stone. You could not only make some money from the documentary, but you could also draw in more young audiences and get them interested in the sport.
There is also still hope from the RFU with them stating that their goal is to ultimately grow the sport and get more young people interested and involved. So, there is still hope yet that some groundwork can be made and some more money can come rolling in.
It seems like finances are a bit of a struggle for everyone at the moment – even those in jobs you wouldn’t anticipate. What are your hopes for the future of rugby?
