Boost for finances as recovery continues

THE Commission des Championnats professionnels de l’Autorité de régulation du rugby – the new name for the financial auditors of the professional game at this end of the Channel Tunnel – reported that revenues for Top 14 and ProD2 clubs rose 43 per cent between the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons, from just under €360 million to €515m. Some €371m of that revenue was generated by the Top 14 alone

The Commission’s 150-plus page annual report revealed that sponsorship and partnership revenues in the Top 14 rose €67m over the same period; matchday income was up €43m, and merchandising sales were €13m up year on year.

“At the end of the 2020-2021 season, club revenues had collapsed [because of Covid-19], and a return to normality was not at all assured. But we’re finally back to pre-Covid levels,” Emmanuel Eschalier, the general manager of the of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR), told business newspaper Les Echos this week, on foot of the report.

Clubs are hoping, too, for an additional financial bounce following the Rugby World Cup later this year. “It should allow us to maintain the momentum we have [built], to develop the economy of the clubs … to continue investment in infrastructure and training,” the report said.

“This is the strategy that has been developed over the last few years, and French rugby is now reaping the benefits … We hope above all that [the World Cup] will allow us to continue the same dynamic and amplify it.”

Not everything in the garden is rosy, however. While 13 of the 14 clubs in the Top 14 showed improving results in 2021/22 compared with the previous year, several are still running deficits “linked in particular to the increase in the wage bill, which is faster than the increase in operating income”, the report revealed.

But the report has given all clubs in the top two men’s divisions a clean bill of financial health. Even so, budgets for next season, which have yet to be published, are expected to be slightly down on this year. The salary cap for both the Top 14 and ProD2, meanwhile, is set to remain at €10.7m.