LONG READ 'Setting a sky-high entry cost to the Prem is not going to help with the expansion process'

Austin Healey had an interesting on-air conversation with the chief executive of Prem Rugby Simon Massie-Taylor at the weekend. It was about the cost of gaining a place to his league.

In case you missed it, the path to the Prem will, in future seasons, no longer be decided by the simplistic business of being a fast-improving rugby team. While the Six Nations was casting its spell over rugby lovers, the system of deciding who would sit at the top table of the English game was changed.

Promotion and relegation – which admittedly hasn’t happened for five seasons anyway – was voted out by the RFU and replaced with the ‘expansion league’ franchise concept desired by the Prem.

It was, they insisted, not a case of the drawbridge being pulled up. But instead of playing their way to the top, aspirational clubs will instead have to apply to join with their bids assessed on various additional factors including geography, infrastructure, academy set-up and finance.

Of these, as Healey’s questioning on TNT Sports flushed out, finance has emerged as the big one.

He wanted to find out from Massie-Taylor what his local club Caldy – currently in the second-tier Champ – would need to spend to reach the Prem.

“Professional rugby is expensive so it needs the right backing,” replied Massie-Taylor.

That wasn’t enough for Healey. “How much money, if I own Caldy, do I need?”

“You wouldn’t have enough, sorry Austin,” laughed Massie-Taylor.

The quick-witted Healey shot back that Massie-Taylor would be surprised but, with admirable persistence, came back again at him.

Finally, he got an answer.

“It’s in the tens of millions, the mid-tens of millions. That’s just to get going.”

Buying your way into a league hardly sounds conducive to attracting applications if the desire really is to grow the professional game.

The figure was broken down by Massie-Taylor into player wages, academy costs – all the overheads you expect in professional sport – and then the P word.

“You have to buy your way into the league as well. That’s the P Shares.”

The P Shares – a mandatory membership fee paid to the existing Prem clubs on entry – are the killer, it turns out.

Prem Rugby say the purchase price will be set at ‘market value’. The word is that figure will be somewhere around £13m.

Which is a serious chunk of money just to step through the door.

Even the concept itself feels wrong. Buying your way into a league hardly sounds conducive to attracting applications if the desire really is to grow the professional game.

The P Shares – or to give them their full title Perpetual Shares – were handed out to the original 13 Premiership clubs by themselves back in 2005.

They were essentially an instrument created to recognise the financial outlay involved in putting down the foundation stones of the pro game – and to claw back some of that money from any new entrants to the league.

The terms of their issue ensured the established clubs received a larger slice of the pie when it came to central funding than newly promoted clubs.

The stated intention is for two additional teams to be added to the Prem for the 2029/30 season and that is as it should be. Ten clubs is too few.

Owning one was not a pre-requirement to play in the top division – as it will be from now on – but the financial handicap of being without one was considerable.

A promoted club would be operating on less than half the central funding income of an existing one.

If new clubs wanted to fight on an even footing, they would have to buy their way to parity and purchase a P Share of their own – as Exeter did when they purchased relegated Leeds’s one in 2012 two years after winning promotion. They paid £5m for it.

The stated intention is for two additional teams to be added to the Prem for the 2029/30 season and that is as it should be. Ten clubs is too few.

However, setting a sky-high entry cost is not going to help with that expansion process.

The essential reality of the English club game is that it is the money of private individuals that funds it. The involvement of Red Bull, at Newcastle, is a notable but isolated exception.

Aspiring investors already know the bloody back story. Three Premiership clubs have gone bust in recent times. They know they are likely to lose money playing in the league. Prem clubs make losses – even the most successful of them. Champions Bath reported losses of £2.8m earlier this week.

Throwing in a substantial additional sign-up fee and it would be no surprise if the majority of prospective owners binned off the idea entirely.

Some may be so wealthy they can shoulder the burden – Bath’s new co-owner Sir James Dyson probably would not lose too much sleep over signing the cheque – but if you are restricting access to those clubs with billionaire backers then that makes for a tiny pool of possibilities.

Birmingham, whose blue-nosed football club is owned by American Tom Wagner and has NFL legend Tom Brady as a minority shareholder, has been mentioned as one such possibility.

But at a time when English club rugby ought to be sending out signals that it is open for business, this seems, on the face of it, a counter-productive approach.

The Prem is not the Premier League with its billions of followers, its lucrative TV deals and its cultural impact around the globe. There are a finite number of people – usually those with a pre-existing love for the game – willing to put their hands into their pockets to support it.

There is an argument that attaching a price in the tens-of-millions range to buy into top-level club rugby gives it luxury value. Pop a big number on a designer coat and it becomes desirable.

But a rugby union club, with the best will in the world, is not a ‘must-have’ acquisition.

The Prem is not the Premier League with its billions of followers, its lucrative TV deals and its cultural impact around the globe.

There are a finite number of people – usually those with a pre-existing love for the game – willing to put their hands into their pockets to support it.

If it wants to expand that pool Prem Rugby should be building bridges, not digging out a moat around itself.

Massie-Taylor was at pains to stress that his organisation would be working with interested parties to try to develop clubs so they are better prepared to make the jump. That is good to hear.

What would be of more benefit though would be scrapping the prohibitive, protectionist P Shares altogether.