Just reading this and its pretty grim reading for Union?

Even with the bigger sponsorship deals and TV deals compared to SuperLeague the English Premiership Clubs are not sustainable. Without the central money from the RFU clubs would be going bust.


The Guardian analysis, backed up with interviews from the majority of the Premiership’s chief executives, shows clubs are still struggling to become sustainable 21 years after the league came into existence. With insiders predicting the total losses will be about 20% worse in the next set of accounts, the data shows“Clubs are no better off than when the Premiership started 20 years ago and that is a real shame,” said Leicester’s chief executive, Simon Cohen. “The percentage of extra revenue over the years that has gone to players has put clubs in a position where it has been difficult to invest in other areas of the game. You want to spend more on infrastructure and the matchday experience for fans but you are less able to do it because of the amount going on wages.”

Another club chief executive said the Premiership’s losses would show an increase when all the 2017-18 accounts were published – “the clubs are losing just under £35m cumulatively” – and blamed a rise in the wage cap and a reduction in TV revenue. The Premiership was also without a sponsor in 2017-18 after Aviva pulled out, although Gallagher has stepped in for this season that starts on Friday.

The salary cap for clubs is set at £7m, plus two marquee players and allowances, for the next three seasons. Premiership Rugby receives £28m a year, distributed between the clubs, with small variations according to success and number of internationals, from the Rugby Football Union.
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They have rich owners who are willing to cover their losses so it’s kind of irrelevant.

What we should be asking is how has the Rugby Union Premiership managed this?

2002-2003 average attendance 8518
2016-2017 average attendance 15065

Useless statistic using two seasons more then years apart

One thing Premiership rugby does have is a minimum standard of stadium required to be promoted to the Premiership. London Welsh were denied promotion because their stadium wasn’t up to the criteria.

A £7 milllion salary cap + 2 marquee players who do not count on the cap is huge compared to our £1.8 million cap.

No it isn’t, figures have steadily risen between those two years, neither year was an outlier.

How is it useless?

It shows growth within the sport regardless of the timescale?

RL will respond by rewarding mediocrity as usual....

Both sports seem to rely on the largesse of club owners. In other news Pope confirms Catholic status.

This is not a new story. Premiership teams have always struggled to balance the books. However it does help when, like Harlequins, you have dozens of multimillionaires sat in the stands who can lend a hand. Having said that, how much of the debt is going to service loans for stadium improvements or Wasps paying for a football stadium in Birmingham? When Leicester opened a 10 000 seater stand it must have cost a pretty penny but it always seems to be pretty full. It is a good job that we are all happy with the facilities in Super League.

What do we think the minimum standard of stadium should be. Minimum 10000 capacity with 2500 seats for a start.

What are the current requirements?

12,000 with 5000 seats IMO

This old chestnut keeps popping up on here, has no one realised that in Europe soccer is king it soaks up most of the cash from tv yet a lot of clubs outside the top four or five can’t compete with the best & a lot are sailing close to the wind with finances. We have to except that our game did alright when the vast majority of players were semi professional as union did when they were supposedly amateurs. There is just not enough revenue from advertising to justify better tv contracts. Yes we can all dream of the day when our clubs could pay million pound wages to our stars but it will take a massive shift in sporting culture in Europe for that to happen. What will make our sport strong is a larger player base spread over a lot larger geographical area. The aim should be to get evenly matched contests at every level of participation with leagues who’s winners are not predictable. To that end we may well end up with a semi pro set up again? The down side is that union & the NRLl would take all our top players & it would kill off the international game.

We should all follow the Giants model with 25,000 seats and 5000 fans, all with cheap season tickets, those empty grounds will propel the sport forward so fast it will be unbelievable.
There are 5 clubs averaging over 10,000 and 2 more quite close to 10,000. Of course the other sides need to do more and should be trying to attain the 10k average but the reality is that due to prolonged lack of success, they are a little way behind the others.
However, with the possible exception of Bradford, who have the POTENTIAL to be a bigger club at some point in the future, there is no other club outside SL that will hit the 10k mark.
We could always go with a 7 club top flight, it would be great, NOT.

How about minimum standards like: decent toilet facilities (including running water), HD CCTV (capture mugshots/incidents of unruly fans) etc before demanding minimum capacity. Not all clubs can even achieve the basics atm.