DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
ComeAllWithin (Harlequins Rugby)
HTML https://comeallwithin.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: ComeAllWithin Board
*****************************************************
#Post#: 132625--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: SunburyQuin
Date: January 10, 2025, 3:10 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: poorfour link ---
>
> ...... In the case of Worcester it seems that the owners who
took it on from Cecil Duckworth actually dismantled a lot of the
safeguards he had put in to keep it viable and may never have
had the wherewithal to keep it going.
>
--- End Quote ---
That is putting it mildly, poorfour ! It was actually a case of
deliberate, unscrupulous asset stripping with no interest in the
club at all !
#Post#: 132626--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: RodneyRegis
Date: January 10, 2025, 3:13 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Only Joe Quin link ---
>
> Surely the income from fat cat owners is missing from this
equation?
>
--- End Quote ---
Only if you consider capital an element of profit.
#Post#: 132627--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: thatchapcarnell
Date: January 10, 2025, 3:59 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Domestos link ---
>
> Which brings us back to a statement of fact. Many/most
professional rugby clubs are not commercially viable.
>
> What should they do to make themselves viable?
>
> Serious question.
>
--- End Quote ---
A really difficult question to answer.
For eg the Stoop is sold out most games so it's not a question
of attracting more fans as currently we can't accommodate those
we already have (though this is not the case for all clubs).
So you could invest in capital and increase capacity but that's
not an overnight thing and seemingly locals aren't thrilled by
an additional 10k people arriving every other weekend.
You could increase ticket prices but it's not a huge revenue
stream and you risk reaching a tipping point where people refuse
to attend.
Central revenue could increase which requires the RFU to make
more money from internationals and more money to come from TV
deals. For that to happen the sport in general needs to be more
popular - how do you do that?
Playing more games (ie 13 team league) leads to an increase in
ticket revenue but a decrease in TV money, players hate it and
it dilutes the talent pool. As Laurie says in the interview,
while the manner it was achieved was far from ideal, a 10-team
league was actually probably needed.
Or you have to cut costs by 25-30%....a dramatic reduction in
"star players" which then leads to a fall in crowds and TV
revenue as fewer people want to watch a less attractive game.
International success for England would, you would think, lead
to an increase in popularity but Twickenham is sold out for
virtually all games already and 6 Nations remains on free-to-air
(rightly or wrongly) so where is any additional money going to
come from there?
#Post#: 132628--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: dinsdale
Date: January 10, 2025, 5:46 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Domestos link ---
>
> Which brings us back to a statement of fact. Many/most
professional rugby clubs are not commercially viable.
>
> What should they do to make themselves viable?
>
> Serious question.
>
--- End Quote ---
The only decent source of new revenue is TV money & sponsorship
- which are really the same thing, they both reflect interest in
the game. So, make the games interesting and competitive and
promote it heavily.
Now that we are hopefully past the era or some individuals
trying to break the sport for their own personal aggrandizement,
I think the clubs are mostly trying to do the right thing. I've
very much enjoyed the rather random nature of the league the
last few years.
Also take a look at what the successful, profitable sports in
the USA have done over the years. They promote the sport
heavily, not just the teams. A huge amount of the sponsorship is
at the league level, not the club level. As one example, all the
NFL uniforms are made by Nike. The clubs gave up their
individual rights for a collective deal around a decade ago.
#Post#: 132629--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: Camquin
Date: January 10, 2025, 5:50 am
---------------------------------------------------------
RFU central funding is contentious.
The Professional Game used to take 50% of RFU expenditure after
costs, now it takes 66%.
The Premiership clubs already get £3m each from the RFU,
guaranteed for the next eight years, plus the TV money and
league sponsorship - mainly Gallagher, but smaller amounts from
other official partners.
The Championship gets £1m across the 12 clubs - significantly
less than before covid and less than the Panjandrum pays
himself.
And the funding for community clubs and Rugby Development
Officers is being cut - this is where the redundancies are being
made.
And if you are not introducing youngsters to the game, where is
the next generation of fans coming from?
The winning solution is to grow the income. But you cannot play
more internationals, there does not seem to be appetite among
domestic broadcasters to pay more - if anything the market for
minority sports is decreasing as the Soccer juggernaut crushes
everything.
And there isn't the interest in overseas markets to generate
sizable income. The hope was rugby would crack America. The
delusion was that CVC would help do that. But that does not seem
to be happening.
#Post#: 132630--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: Harleking
Date: January 10, 2025, 6:00 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Its tricky to know what the solution is, but it's certainly not
putting the 6 nations behind a pay wall for a few extra quid,
which I fear is exactly what the RFU are planning.
Most of the people that I know who "like rugby" in fact just
watch the 6 nations and the world cups, and even a fair few
people who aren't into rugby tend to watch it because it's a big
event. If that becomes difficult to do, then their engagement
with the sport falls to pretty much nothing.
The effect won't be immediate, but I genuinely think that the
sport dies 20 or 30 years down the line without its annual
showcase.
#Post#: 132633--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: Wirralquin
Date: January 10, 2025, 7:19 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Are the women’s team financed out of same pot ? If so how much ?
And seems a bit unfair considering Bath and Northampton don’t
have ladies teams in top league
#Post#: 132636--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: T-Bone
Date: January 10, 2025, 7:24 am
---------------------------------------------------------
The short term answer is to pay the players less. Rugby is a
minority sport and pay does not reflect the level of interest.
Yes, some players would go elsewhere, but there are only so many
spots available in France and Japan.
Players will argue that the risk to them of playing means they
should be rewarded. That is fair enough.
So, you need to find a balance where players feel they're
getting enough but not so much it risks clubs going under.
Some players would leave the game but if the issue isn't sorted,
the game collapses then none of them has a job
It's difficult. Obviously no-one wants to see the players
earning less, but rugby is a tiny sport. Supposedly the USA and
the women's game are going to pull in loads of punters. There
was an article on bbc about roc nation, Marcus and maro's
agents. Apparently getting a 1% share of the US market would
double rugby's global revenues, but is that ever going to
happen. He thinks rugby needs more global stars but I'm not so
sure.
#Post#: 132640--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: never sleep
Date: January 10, 2025, 7:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Wirralquin link ---
>
> Are the women’s team financed out of same pot ? If so how much
? And seems a bit unfair considering Bath and Northampton don’t
have ladies teams in top league
>
--- End Quote ---
If the guy who has been underwriting our losses every single
year for many years insists that we spend a small amount of the
money on a women's team, then that is okay by me.
This is better than us telling him that we are refusing to field
a team and him cutting our finances as that could put us in the
same boat as Wasps, etc.
#Post#: 132642--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clubs finances and other things
DIR By: poorfour
Date: January 10, 2025, 7:53 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Domestos link ---
>
> Which brings us back to a statement of fact. Many/most
professional rugby clubs are not commercially viable.
>
> What should they do to make themselves viable?
>
> Serious question.
>
--- End Quote ---
They have to grow revenues; there's not much room for manoeuvre
on reducing costs unless teams are prepared to accept being less
competitive.
Revenue growth is also tricky. A lot of teams get good
attendance in terms of the % of the stadium filled across the
season, but building bigger stands is expensive and difficult to
get backinfg for when the business is losing money hand over
fist. And there's no room in the schedule for more games.
There's the option to use bigger stadiums but Quins are the only
team who've really managed to make the "big game" model work -
although he doesn't say it outright, it's pretty clear from
Lawrie's tone that he doesn't think Saracens and the other teams
are making anything like the money Quins do on their comparable
fixtures. That said, it sounds like Quins will hit breakeven
when they manage to get 70k+ at both BG and BSKO, so if other
teams can build their games on a similar basis there is
potentially a long term pathway to profitability.
Beyond that, I read that TV viewership was up significantly vs
previous years over the Christmas period, which is potentially
positive in the long term, but the signs are that the streaming
bubble has popped for everyone and tv deals are less lucrative
than they were a couple of years ago. However, I imagine CVC
will be looking to do something similar to what they've done
with F1 with Drive To Survive (and NFL has done with Quarterback
and Receiver), and build interest in the personalities in the
game as a way to build audience interest. Six Nations Full
Contact wasn't great, though. Maybe it was because I was more
familiar with the players (and the results) but it didn't grab
me the way the gridiron shows did. But over time, it's likely to
be the right way to go.
All of this is pretty hard slog, and in many ways it's marginal
gains because of the capacity and schedule constraints. There's
also the question of how you pry a predominantly male UK
audience away from soccer, when every rugby game will clash with
at least a couple of soccer matches.
Which is why rugby as a whole is looking at what untapped
markets they can reach, and has concluded that the two best long
term bets are the US (where even capturing a tiny segment of the
tv market could be very lucrative - though expect more evening
games if it happens) and the women's game - and the strategy for
capitalising on both is an intertwined one that runs through to
2033 (with the men's and women's RWCs being hosted in the US in
2031 and 2033).
Women's rugby is not profitable at the moment but there are
signs that it could get there faster than the men's game has. It
enables rugby to fit more games into the calendar, so the fixed
costs of owning/renting and running a stadium get spread over a
greater number of games, and it draws in a different audience
(including more of a family audience, which helps with creating
a next generation). The operating cost is lower because it can
use a lot of the same staff, systems etc that the men's game
does, and the players are paid much less (and have a revenue
sharing agreement with PWR, so wage growth should align to
revenue long term - something the men's game should, with
hindsight, have done).
Whether either of those translate into more attendance, more
viewers and more revenue remains to be seen, but the women's
team currently costs around £1-1.5m to run (IIRC). Leicester's
Caterpillar stand cost £20m. From the perspective of an owner,
the path to a positive return on the former may well make more
sense than the latter, not least because you're not incurring a
massive capital cost up front.
*****************************************************
Page 3 of 5
DIR Previous Page
DIR Next Page