Help needed please.

Hi guys, I need some help.

I am planning to do some research just for the hell of it in the state of professional club/provincial/regional rugby. And I need clarity on some issues.

Europe.

From what I understand in :

England there is the 12 Premiership sides that are fully professional
Wales has the 4 regional sides that is fully professional
Ireland has the four provincial teams that is fully professional
Scotland has 2 teams that is fully professional.
Italy has 2? teams that is fuly professional?
France has 14 fully professional teams in the top 14.

Are those the full extent of fully professional teams in Europe?
When you look at the squads of each of these teams, that includes the players on payroll for the whole season which includes either RABO and HC, or Top 14 and Heineken cup, or Aviva and HC?

In other words when the squads get announced for the season, that's it?

Also I need to know what are the slaary caps inplace fr each country if any, and the average income per player.

I will find out how many foreign players each sqaud has myself, so if you have links that are accurate it would help (I have been using wiki)

OZ

OZ only has the 5 Franchises that are fully professional from what I understand.
Is there a salary cap in place?
How many foreign players?
etc.

NZ

I know the Super Rugby Franchises are fully professional, do they work on a alary cap?
How many foreign players (would most likely be mostly from Samoa, Fiji and Tonga I would assume)?

Thanks for the help.

England has professional sides in their ND1 (France probably do aswell). But realisticaly, only the top 6 or 7 will be fully professional. Players from the Aviva Premiership can also go on loan to these lower division sides if they are struggling for game time in their team. The Aviva has A-teams, which I believe are also professional.

Ireland has Provincial A teams, they compete in the B&I cup. They have their all Ireland clubs below this, but I think that is Welsh Prem equalivilent (semi-pro).

Are those the full extent of fully professional teams in Europe?
When you look at the squads of each of these teams, that includes the players on payroll for the whole season which includes either RABO and HC, or Top 14 and Heineken cup, or Aviva and HC?

In other words when the squads get announced for the season, that's it?

Also I need to know what are the slaary caps inplace fr each country if any, and the average income per player.

I believe it is the rule. You name your Heineken cup squad and may not change it (until a certain date, one of the latter rounds I think). I am not sure though.

Each of Wal, Fra and Eng now have a salary cap. I think Wales' is 2.2 million. France have a salary cap of 8 million euro's, but get a lot more income via sponsorship, etc... So Toulouse overall budget is something like 29 million euro's.

Players incomes vary, depending on the player. Highest earners in Wales will vary between 200 - 300,000. France's will be 900,000.

Hi Biltong,

In Ireland there are 4 professional teams: Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. They are branches of the IRFU and subsidised financially by the national team's revenue.

Within these a number of players around 20 are centrally contracted to the IRFU to play for Ireland and the rest to their province.

The IRFU also help pay for overseas players wages too. In terms of average salary not sure, obviously the Central contracted players and big name NIEs would be on much higher salaries - Tommy Bowe is rumoured to be on around 300k sterling which would be the extreme upper end. I'd guess most of the Ireland guys are on around 200-300k euros. Provincial players much less.

The Southern based players also have the added incentive of a percentage tax rebate (75%?) from the Irish goverment which sportsmen, artists, entertainers etc. get when they retire if they stay in the country.

There is no wage cap. 4 NIEs + 1 non capped project allowed per province except Connacht which are allowed some more.

Within the provincial players some of the younger guys are on development contracts. Not sure if the academy players are fully pro or if the second tier provincial sides which play in the B&I cup are as well?

Not sure if that is much help?

England has professional sides in their ND1 (France probably do aswell). But realisticaly, only the top 6 or 7 will be fully professional

The Championship is fully professional, the RFU pushed it through a couple of years back in order to try and lift the competition for places in the AP. The funding the RFU agreed upon and then failed to pay has been part of a law suit between the Championship clubs and the RFU recently. Though the league is professional the contracts are often much, much smaller than in the AP and it is not unusual for the players to also study at university or coach at semi pro teams on the side to earn extra cash.

Rodders, don't the provinces also rely on subsidies from Heineken Cup revenue? Hence the more incenvtive to do well in the competition.

Morg the provinces generate their own revenue, and a lot of that would come from the Heino I'd imagine however the big revenue driver in Irish rugby is the National team and the money generated from the 6N, AIs, sponsorship etc.

This money from this is invested into the provinces, wolfhounds, under age, grassroots etc.

The IRFUs financial reports are available on IrishRugby.ie.

France have 14 fully professional teams in the top 14 and another 16 in the ProD2 (2nd division).
Federale 1 (3rd division) might have some semi-professional teams.

some business data (2010-2011 season) as audited by the DNACG (sort of financial watchdog that look after professional clubs accounts) :
top 14 average budget 17.8M€ per year
cumulated top 14 clubs income : 242 M€ (of which half is sponsoring/merchandising, tickets sale being around 50 and tv rights 30).
cumulated to14 clubs salaries (inc staff) : 112 M€ (in average a top 14 clubs spend 6.2M€ in players per year excl tax etc)
cumulated operational loss/revenue : - 10 M€ (was -12 the season before) - only one club had a deficit below -750k€ in june 2011 (stade français is my guess).

average salary 13500€ per month (top 14 + pro d2) . a french international allegedly earns between 20 and 40 k€ per month (in average). this excludes the large sponsorship and marketing revenue they earn outside.
last salary cap I have heard of was 9.5 M€ per year per club but this also exclude marketing/sponsorship revenues allocated to players...

now on the players : usual a top 14 squad has 35-36 professional players.
50% must be JIFF qualified. what it means its they must have spent 5 seasons playing in France before they turn 24. Because it would be against EU law it cannot discreminate against foreigners hence you have a couple of Fidjians or Georgians that are JIFF qualified (Nakaiciti in Clermont for instance and maybe Bennet in the future).
the quota is meant to go to 60% in 2013-2014.
its pretty uneffective if you ask me: most teams will pick average french players just to fill their squad and the likes of Agen will still have up to 14 foreigners in their starting XV!! bottom line: if anyone has a kid who has potential to be a decent tightead/flyhalf/2nd row : make sure he spend a few years in some french club while young, it might be a good investment for his future.

That's some very interesting info on French rugby whocares.

Morg the provinces generate their own revenue, and a lot of that would come from the Heino I'd imagine

I thought the IRFU took the Irish portion of the pot from the HEC tv rights and split it between the provinces? On top of that there is some money for progression but the bulk will come from the tv deal paid out of the European pot annually.

You are right though, this pales into insignificance compared to the International and 6N rights. The 6N pot is supposed to be seriously hefty.

Yes that is probably correct but the point remains that most of the money generated is from the National side not the provinces. This is then invested back into the provinces in terms of wages subsidies and funding the academies etc.

Not sure on the exact details.

It seems a lot of the financial issues of how much revenue is generated, from where and how it is split is hidden from public scrutiny.

You see I want to compare the different models each country uses and what percentage of their players play domestically, how many plays outside their borders, how many foriegn players they have and how this all affects the end result of their domestic comps and international matches.

The IRFU publish a financial report each year. It shows where money is spent and generated but obviously certain details are not made public.

It does make it diffcult to compile an analysis though.

Biltong, how does the french system compare to the SA one out of interest?

In New Zealand, the Chiefs had Taumalolo, Schwalger and Kane Thompson, who were foreigners, while the Highlanders had James Haskell but outside of that, there isn't anyone that I can think of this past year who has played for another international side.

There are plenty who are eligible, but most of the time, once they select to play for another country, they are squeezed out. In the past, there was a rule, that only if a coach could prove an international from another country improved on a deficiency in a position at a Franchise could they be signed. That has now been relaxed officially, but you get the sense, the idea is still in place.

whocares wrote:Biltong, how does the french system compare to the SA one out of interest?

whocares our system is rather simple really.

Springboks on contracts from SARU for R 56.7 million (up to 30 players)

SARPA (South African Rugby players Association has about 600 members who looks after the welfare of the players)

There are 5 Super Rugby Franchises who contracts 150 players. (Salaries unknown, but these players are also contracted by the Currie Cup Provinces and each Franchise has feeder provinces outside of their central areas whereby they can contract players for te Super Rugby tournament, after the Super rugby tournament these players will go back to their provices for the Currie cup)

Then there are 14 Provinces who take part in the Currie Cup, Premier division of 6 teams and 1st division of 8 teams (How much these players are paid is difficult to ascertain, I have a source inside the Lions Union that says the Lions have an A grade contract that runs from R600 000 per year, and B grade for newer players that runs from R 360 000 per year)

During the Super rugby , all the Provinces compete in in the Vodacom Cup including Namibia and Las Pampas (from Argentina), this is a great system whereby the young players get a chance to show their worth, especially where provicial teams have been depleted of ther stars who are playing in the Super Rugby competition.) Whether these guys are fully pro is unlikely, I think the newbies are most likely not contracted at all and aren't recieving huge moneys.

That's more or less the best way to describe it. THe 600 players of SARPA are the players who do have contracts, but I would think their incomes vary quite a bit.

thanks Biltong but where does the revenue come from (rough split between tv money, tickets sales, sponsorship/merchandising)?

THe 600 players of SARPA are the players who do have contracts, but I would think their incomes vary quite a bit.

I think that's pretty much the same everywhere. I heard from someone who knows a couple of the Nottingham players (Championship Rugby Club) that their wages are pretty much minimum wage and I suspect that academy players earn pretty much that when at AP clubs (if they have got to their full pro contracts otherwise they are probably on part time deals). The step up between academy wages and first team wages is supposed to be significant, I heard rumours Manu Tuilagi's wages more than tripled from academy player to first team and that was before he'd played a game for the first team (so he's probably not on that big a salary just yet).

Compare that to the likes of Twelvetrees who was a semi regular first teamer at Tigers and turned down a deal of just over £100k to go to Gloucester for roughly £150k. That's a huge difference in pay between the Championsip/AP Academy boys and those AP first teamers.

SANZAR signed a broadcasting deal for 437 million dollars that is split amongst the three nations.

So each gets about 143 million dollars. that is for five years.

Super sport then signs a seperate deal with SARU for the Currie Cup and Vodacom Cup, but I can;t find any firgures anywhere, when you look at Currie Cup, it draws higher crowds on average than the Super XV does.

by memory in the currie Cup it draws and average of about 28 000 per match X R 100 per ticket average.

There are 30 matches plus 3 play off matches for a total of 33 matches.

So gate revenue is about R 92 million for the Currie cup premier division.

Currie Cup A division ticket prices are about R 80 per ticket, and although there are more games, I don't think the crowds will average more than 10 000.

So you are probably looking at about R 60 million revenue there.

I have no idea how much revenue the merchandising brings in.

I am doing a lot of guessing here, but it might give you some idea.

Pretty sure I heard that Georgia have professional teams and the Russian league is also fully professional if that counts as Europe.

I think I remember hearing on a radio show that 80% of the IRFU's income is from the test team and only 20% from the four provinces. But more than 20% is invested back into the provinces. So the test team helps subsidies the provincial game.

This is why the IRFU feel they can interfere in player selection at the provinces and come up with half baked schemes about who the provinces can sign.

I think it's also true that th 6 Nations is by far the biggest financial driver of the Irish game and doing well in this competition as seen as the most important thing for Irish rugby. So I'm sure they're not happy with the last few tournaments.

Pretty sure there's no salary cap in Scotland. The two professional Scottish sides are funded by the SRU, so are capped by the poverty of that institution (including the extent of its ability to raise debt that it'll never be able to repay).

There's also a salary cap in France. It's €8.3 million I believe. The number of Jiff qualified players will have to increase to 60% next season. The majority of non French players come from Britain and Ireland and play in the second division so this limit will have a knock on effect on the amount of rugby players that leave these countries to work, hopefully helping improve the standard of rugby there.

http://www2.lequipe.fr/redirect-v6/homes/Rugby/breves2010/20100809_154828_les-quotas-sont-la.html

I saw an interview with Garret Fitzgerald (runs Munster rugby) who said that the rabo league was the bread and butter of the province and that is where they make their money. The h cup takes a lot out of ticket sales.

Here is the IRFU's annual report including the accounts for 2011/ 2012:

http://www.irishrugby.ie/downloads/IRFU_Annual_Report-2011-2012v2.pdf