Prem Rugby chiefs admit its ‘challenging’ to compete with Top 14
Prem Rugby chiefs have admitted competing with the French Top 14 has been “challenging” given English salary cap rules.
Clubs across England can spend around £8m per season on their squad, with £6.4m of that the standard cap and the remaining a series of credits and allowances.
The French Top 14 will see its salary cap rise to around £9.5m next season, with the gap between the two leagues often cited for Prem Rugby’s failure to win the Investec Champions Cup of late – Exeter Chiefs were the last English side, in 2020, to triumph in the top-flight European club competition.
Speaking at the Sports Resolutions conference in London this week, Prem Rugby’s salary cap director Andrew Rogers said: “It’s a challenge, the market.
“They have a higher salary cap. They obviously have a different tax ratio. In France, you can get in there for your first year, and I think you only [pay] tax on 70 per cent of your income. They have very beneficial systems, as does the Irish where, when you retire after 10 years in Ireland, you get a rebate of 40 per cent of all the tax you paid for the last 10 years.
“So there are benefits in other unions and other jurisdictions. We know there’s a difference in semantics between competitive and success, but we are competitive in the European competitions, and that’s important.”
Prem Rugby salary cap changes?
Relegation has been scrapped from Prem Rugby, something Rogers cites as a key reason for a flurry of investment into the sport in recent months.
The likes of energy drinks giant Red Bull and vacuum cleaner magnate Sir James Dyson have come into the game, while US investors are circling Exeter Chiefs. That has filtered down into the second tier Champ, where Cornish Pirates have seen a cash injection from across the pond.
The Prem will next year introduce a salary cap floor, forcing teams to close in on each other in terms of spending volumes.
“We’ve gone through a lot of challenges recently,” added Rogers. “We’ve just removed relegation from the Prem, and that’s already showing positives with investment, we’ve had Red Bull buying into Newcastle, Dyson buying into Bath, there’s other conversations that are obviously in the press at the moment which I won’t talk about.
“But there’s suddenly a big change. We’re also introducing a salary floor for next year to keep the league competitive. So actually, we’re on a far more positive trajectory than we had been coming out of Covid.”