The governance of English rugby union

Allwell Uwazuruike; Harriet Samuel

Rugby union governance in England

The two key bodies for the governance of rugby union in England are the Rugby Football Union and Premier Rugby Limited:

The Rugby Football Union: national governing body for rugby union in England.
Premier Rugby Limited: the company that owns and operates the Gallagher Premiership, the top tier of domestic rugby competition in England.

The Rugby Football Union

The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is the governing body for rugby union in England. This means that it maintains responsibility for the international teams, domestic competition outside of the top-tier, the grassroots game, and the broader regulation of clubs in England. The RFU’s regulations apply to all clubs in England. These exist alongside the regulations for specific competitions.

The RFU’s regulations place the creation of a “financial monitoring system” in the hands of the “relevant body”. In the case of the Premiership, this is Premiership Rugby Limited.

Outside of Championship Rugby, the RFU can only become involved in, or have access to, a club’s finances after a “notable event” (not formal administration procedures, but signals financial insolvency) or “insolvency event” (for instance, administration).

These post-insolvency event regulations also act as a deterrent to financial mismanagement. To this end, the RFU can relegate, deduct 35-points from, or apply a different sanction to any club that experiences an insolvency event. There is no penalty for notable events.

Premier Rugby Limited

Premier Rugby Limited (PRL) owns and operates the Premiership Rugby competition (known as the Gallagher Premiership). It was incorporated on 31 August 1995.

PRL has exclusive rights to enter into contracts for the broadcasting rights of the competition and other commercial rights of the league. Beverley Williamson, in their 2015 article on Premiership Rugby Union and antitrust law, offered the following summary of how the PRL distributes revenue amongst clubs:

In 2005 Premiership Rugby together with the incumbent premiership teams, agreed to implement a system for the distribution of the profits obtained from the sale of broadcasting rights to Premiership games. This system resulted in the creation of a share system that utilises three types of shares. A ‘P Share’ which is a perpetual share, was given to each of the Premiership teams at the time the system was started and yield the greatest value. It is retained unless a team is relegated and forced to sell it. Then there are ‘B Shares’ which each Premiership team obtain automatically. Finally, there are ‘A Shares’. The clubs get 5 A Shares for each consecutive year that they are in the Premiership for a maximum of 6 years and a total of 30 A Shares. The number of shares that a team has directly impacts the amount of central funding that a team receives. When a team is relegated from the Premiership, they lose 5 A Shares for each year that they are out. When a new team is promoted they will be awarded the B Share but will not be permitted to purchase a P Share until they have served two consecutive seasons in the Premiership. Until that time, any relegated team in the Championship in possession of the P Share, cannot be compelled to sell it.

The PRL is also responsible for the competition’s financial monitoring system. Much like the oversight powers of the RFU, the PRL can only access a club’s financial records in particular circumstances:

In the event that PRL considers that a Club may be unable to fulfil its obligations under the Regulations then PRL is entitled to require such Club to provide to PRL and/or their appointed representatives or advisers such accounting records referred to in Regulation 11.1 (a) above as PRL deems necessary.

Premiership Rugby clubs are subject to a salary cap. The salary cap sets the total amount a club can spend on the salaries of senior players. This was set at £5 million for the 2021-22 season and stayed at that ceiling until the end of the 2023-24 season. For the 2024-25 Salary Cap Year, the level of the Salary Cap is £6,400,000 with some credits and exclusions.

Under these regulations, the league has an independent Salary Cap Director who receives copies of all player contracts and completes an annual audit. These auditing powers are used solely to enforce these salary regulations.

Relationship between the PRL and RFU

The relationship between the PRL and the RFU is governed by the ‘Professional Game Agreement’. This enshrines certain regulations (for instance, the size of the England Elite Player Squad) and creates the structure for relations between the two bodies.

A Professional Game Agreement was signed in August 2016 to last until 2024. Under the deal, the clubs received £112 million from the RFU in the first four years. However, payment for the second four-year period was not a fixed figure as it was linked to the financial performance of the RFU.

In 2024, an eight-year Professional Game Partnership was signed which included the Rugby Players Association (RPA) as co-signatories for the first time.

Issues in grassroots rugby

A 2021 article on the biggest challenges facing grassroots clubs And how to respond identified five main challenges namely corona virus, kit supplies, player numbers, injuries and funding.

According to a 2023 Guardian article, the RFU “has acknowledged that some adult male clubs are struggling to achieve the numbers they have in the past, accelerated by nearly 18 months of no contact sports during lockdown”, although the youth game “appears to be thriving”.

A December 2024 Telegraph article collected data on grassroots rugby clubs. On challenges in grassroots rugby, the article states:

To ascertain how many clubs have exited the RFU league structure, Telegraph Sport looked at RFU handbooks from the 2001-2002 season and compared the teams listed with those in the current pyramid. These figures were then cross-referenced by local volunteers in organising committees who wish to remain anonymous.

The Midlands lost 60 clubs, London & South East 56, the North 38 and the South West 20. Each club could represent multiple XVs while many more are fielding one or two first XVs rather than four or five. One estimate suggests the Midlands lost 300 adult male teams in these 22 years.

…

One estimate suggests that there have been 245 walkovers, where one side is unable to fulfil a fixture, so far this season. There are multiple other sore points, from the introduction of the Game Management System (GMS) Player Registration, the removal of play-offs and the reorganisation of cup competitions that removed the twin incentives of prize money and a day out at Twickenham. “It has been a total car crash,” Rob Sigley, organiser of the Community Clubs Union, said. There remains considerable residual anger over the implementation of the tackle-height law change. “That was the perfect example of the RFU’s intransigence and almost belligerent approach to imposing what they think is best on the grass-roots game,” Moon said. “We told them it was going to be a s—show and it was.”

But without doubt the biggest point of contention was when the RFU made so many of its rugby development officers and community rugby coaches redundant in its last big round of cuts in 2020. “That is the single biggest act of self-harm the RFU could have taken,” one club chairman complained. Moon said: “They were absolutely vital in linking clubs to the schools and the next generation and that link has not been properly replaced.

Laurence Gale, editor of Turfpro, has identified 14 reasons for the decline of grassroots rugby: