English rugby shake-up includes new £12m television deal for remodelled Championship
Plans for a radical shake up of the English Championship, which includes controversially ring-fencing the Gallagher Premiership for at least four years, includes a television deal potentially worth up to £12m a year split into five packages. RugbyPass has seen a copy of the 76-page plan for the second tier of English rugby put together by Ed Griffiths, the former Saracens chief executive, which has been presented to the Rugby Football Union and is now with the Premiership clubs, leading universities and potential broadcasting and sponsorship partners.
While the newly styled “The English Championship” would start in 2021-22 and has projected television revenue worth only a quarter of the current Premiership deal, the proposal is adamant a figure of between £10m and £12m would be possible to generate once the league is established and could be generated from outlets, including sports streaming companies and YouTube, and would feature Thursday and Friday fixtures.
The most extensive shake-up of the sport since rugby went professional is expected to be put before the 11 Championship clubs – relegated Saracens are not included – in its final draft by the end of August with an estimated running cost of £15.6m in its first year.
This will come from significant investment from both the RFU and Premiership Rugby – recognising ring-fencing from 2021 to 2025 – on top of broadcasting and sponsorship revenues. The Championship will be split into two conferences of six teams, designated North and South, with at least 14 home matches in the various competitions.
Within two years the Championship will expand to 16 teams with a women’s championship also included in the proposals.
Funding the Championship has become even tougher thanks to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with the RFU facing losses of up to £100m and the Premiership clubs also struggling due to the lockdown. Even before the current financial crisis the RFU had announced it would reduce central funding for the Championship from £530,000 to £288,000 per club next season in a package of cuts totalling £3million.
In the face of this financial body blow, Griffiths was tasked with delivering a new vision for the Championship. His plan is designed to achieve that by turning the league into a nursery, producing outstanding young English talent that is then drip-fed into the Premiership via an annual American-style draft system.
The young players will emerge from six regional centres based across the country and linked to two clubs in a remodelled Championship. This system would replace the current 13 academies based on the Premiership clubs with the RFU funding diverted to the six new centres.
The proposal states that: “The RFU will cease providing a fixed subsidy to a generally failing system, and instead be asked to support a significantly improved system that enhances the game, delivers a clear return on investment and offers measurable success.”
Under the draft, 60 players would take part from the regional hubs with the worst performing Premiership club having first pick of players, who will be offered in four bands.
A player signed from the first pick will be given an annual salary of £90,000 for three years at his Premiership club with the fourth round picks collecting £50,000 a year over the same period. Young players would not be allowed to join a top-flight club straight from school, having to spend at least one year at an academy with the system controlled by the RFU.
The Premiership clubs will be asked to draft a minimum of 48 players each December and “to respect regulations that prevent any Premiership club from contracting any young English player from anywhere except the TEC Draft.”
Done deal. ?https://t.co/m8FKjjgoFG
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) July 31, 2020
Championship clubs would operate a minimum wage structure with no less than £600,000 in the pot in 2020-21 for a 35-man squad. Twelve of those players will be from the academies and their salaries not included in the £600,000, leaving that figure to be split between 23 players giving a salary of £22,000 each. This will be supplemented by outside employment with measures in place to ensure “phantom” jobs are not created to boost salaries.
Critically, only 10 players in a squad will be over the age of 24 emphasising the Championship’s position as the focal point for young English rugby talent. Players will be contracted to the league with clubs acting as third parties.
Coaches and referees are also key components of the plans, with three of the four senior coaches English at the Championship clubs, while the league will have six dedicated referees who will be paid £40,000 a year.
A joint “Promotion and Relegation Commission”, chaired by an independent QC, would decide on promotion to the Premiership from the 2025-26 season onwards and there is a proposal that states promotion from National League One to the Championship would also be suspended for at least two seasons.
To expand the fixtures for Championship clubs there would be home matches against Tier Two/Three nations and a national knockout cup, plus a regional “division of origin” competition and an English Championship XV to tour France or South Africa.
Comments on RugbyPass
Don’t pay a blind bit of notice to Lukie… he likes the sound of his own voice and is always looking for something controversial to say. He has been banging on about Leinster's defensive system all season like he knows something Jacques Nienebar doesn’t. Which is the reason why he didn’t apply for the job obviously
14 Go to commentsWho got the benefits out of Schmidt, Lowe, Aki, and Gibson Park?
14 Go to commentsWhat’s new its a common occurrence, just the journos out there expecting a negative spin. The outcome will be beneficial to jordie and Leinster. The home grown lads hav got some experience to step up to and be more competitive, that or spend the 6 months keeping the bench warm.
14 Go to commentsI’m all for speeding up the game. But can we be certain that the slowness of the game contributed to fans walking out? I’m not so sure. Super rugby largely suffered from most fans only being able to, really, follow the games played in their own time zone. So at least a third of the fan base wasn’t engaged at any point in time. As a Saffer following SA teams in the URC - I now watch virtually every European game played on the weekend. In SR, I wouldn’t be bothered to follow the games being played on the other side of the world, at weird hours, if my team wasn’t playing. I now follow the whole tournament and not just the games in my time zone. Second, with New Zealand teams always winning. It’s like formula one. When one team dominates, people lose interest. After COVID, with SA leaving and Australia dipping in form, SR became an even greater one horse race. Thats why I think Japan’s league needs to get in the mix. The international flavor of those teams could make for a great spectacle. But surely if we believe that shaving seconds off lost time events in rugby is going to draw fans back, we should be shown some figures that supports this idea before we draw any major conclusions. Where are the stats that shows these changes have made that sort of impact? We’ve measured down to the average no. Of seconds per game. Where the measurement of the impact on the fanbase? Does a rugby “fan” who lost interest because of ball in play time suddenly have a revived interest because we’ve saved or brought back into play a matter of seconds or a few minutes each game? I doubt it. I don’t thinks it’s even a noticeable difference to be impactful. The 20 min red card idea. Agreed. Let’s give it a go. But I think it’s fairer that the player sent off is substituted and plays no further part in the game as a consequence.
1 Go to commentsThose are pretty good draws for the two top Aussie teams. I certainly wouldn't want my Chiefs to have a quarter final in Brisbane. None of the top teams will want the Crusaders.
1 Go to commentsHonestly, I am a bit lost here …. Ireland - RSA was (at least in my opinion) perhaps (from a purely technical / rugby-skills-show point of view) the pinnacle of the RWC2023 - almost flawless playing (putting aside the kicking of RSA which was the difference between the two teams), rugby at it’s very best …. if I were a Bok and after the game some Irish lads came around saying “see you in 5 weeks same place”, I definitely wouldn’t have thought of it as being in any way “arrogant”, rather a sort of jolly “if we both continue to play like this, no one could stop us” - besides, few of us fans would have, at that time, been surprised to see the same teams playing on 23 september and 28 october 2023 ….. well, we all know Ireland chose to hit a slump to keep the QF curse alive …..
135 Go to commentsThere’s value gleaned from having an All Black star running and training with your team. How many games he starts (or even where he plays in the backline) will be decided on a week by week basis based on the needs for that week. But the overall learning and growth for all concerned, I’d think, is massively beneficial. Especially for Irish players.
14 Go to commentsSon, whith just " raw athlete “ , you are able to beat “ better rugby players “ by 74 points…. May be England should recruit in athletics….
1 Go to commentsPffft. It’s not a one-way street bud and Irish teams don’t seem to have had an issue taking kiwi players previously.
14 Go to commentsParticularly great to have captain Scott Barrett back after going off last week for the Crusaders. Codie Taylor a real leader and mighty Tamaiti Williams join Fletcher Newell in the front row. Those 2 will make a big difference. Great bench with the likes of Tom Christie, Jamie Hannah etc who are playing well. Should be a great derby.
1 Go to commentsDoes a blitz defence not have a weekness against a well-placed grubber kick, perhaps angled cleverly. All the defence is up and the full-back can only cover so much ground. Thoughts?
28 Go to commentsWhile Iose is destructive in the Canes set-up, he is not big for an international 8 and could struggle against the top teams. With his speed, he could be developed into a seven but, as Ben points out, he doesn’t show a scavenging game with the Canes or make dominating tackles. Sotutu has shown a step up this year and attitude plus motivation seems to be the big areas of growth. Deserves another AB shot imo.
3 Go to commentsNaholo is my only question mark for this side. He wasn’t the only one who had a forgettable game against the Brumbies but he was passive, defensively poor and generally lacked energy. Needs to get a whole lot busier for me. I would have liked to see Sullivan on that wing with Higgins on the bench (if staying with a 6-2 as BeegMike points out on here!)
3 Go to commentsWell, I am sure that Eben said exactly what he meant to say, exactly how he meant to say it. Does he strike you as a man that doesn't know arrogance when he sees it. He should know it because he has shaken the arrogance out of many foes before.
135 Go to commentsPls get it into your thick arrogant heads that the final was played by two Southern Hemisphere teams. The best against the best and that Argentina was just unlucky otherwise non of the Northetn Hemisphere teams would have seen the light of day.
135 Go to commentsAs long as New Zealand youth are involved in sport they are passionate for, and are well supported, it’s all good. I love league as well as rugby. NRL clubs have long since scouted the First 15 competitions, the NH and Japan scout super rugby and NPC. It’s a miracle there’s any players left for the all blacks to pick from.
5 Go to commentsI'm a Bok fan, so I don't say this lightly, but he is one of my all time favourite players. I am really going to miss watching him play. Thanks for many great memories. You are a true legend of the game.
3 Go to commentsBest way to deal with all of this is to play another game.
135 Go to commentsIt’s 12-15 games Luke. Ringrose has barely played in 2024 and Henshaw and Keenan have also been out for spells in the same time period. There are always injuries and for younger players to play with the likes of Barrett will be great for them. It’s just looking for negatives where there are none.
14 Go to commentsAndy Goode pushing his own agenda with very dubious considerations on refereeing performances. Luke Pearce speaking a bit of French doesn’t make him a good and adequate referee for the Champions Cup final; his latest refereeing performance in particular was not so great.
4 Go to comments