LONG READ How big-spending Bath and Saracens swapped places as England's dominant force

Roll the clock back, all the way to the start of 2016. The company accounts of all the clubs who formed part of Premiership Rugby Limited had been unveiled to public view and the figures made for stark reading. At the top of the list of debtors were Saracens, with a whopping £45.1m deficit carried over from the season before.

The chairman and chief club benefactor at the time, Nigel Wray, had some questions to answer about financial sustainability, and he opted for a crisp brand of sarcasm in response.

“Having a smaller squad and finishing 11^th [in the league] is an obvious way to cut the debt. But that would send out a terrible message to players that we weren’t ambitious, and [we] would hardly attract sponsors.

“We have a very well-known brand which is of considerable value and must be nurtured. The financial results are not good but they are better. We are finally going in the right direction.”

The club’s accounts showed an increase in turnover and a small reduction in the annual loss from £5.17m to £3.98m. The deficit was funded by parent company Premier Team Holdings Limited, and only three years later £48m in debt was being written off by the man who owned 99% of the company – Nigel Wray.

‘Going in the right direction’ means different things to different people, but in rugby forward movement still depends almost exclusively on the generosity of a big financial benefactor. Later in the same year, the North London club were found guilty of breaching the league’s salary cap regulations, and the small ladders of sustainability so painstakingly built were broken. The club slithered down the huge snake of a £5.36m fine and a 35-point penalty, which eventually led to the ultimate ignominy, relegation to the Championship.

Another three years on, and Leonard Curtis, an independent company specialising in insolvency and business rescue, were to be found analysing the financial outcomes of the 2022/23 Premiership season. Saracens again topped the charts, reporting a £5.3m annual loss, with Leonard Curtis observing it was one of seven clubs in the league which still depended on the goodwill of the owner.

“In 2022/23, seven of the ten Premiership clubs could be classed as balance sheet insolvent, meaning they were reliant on financial support from their owners, as they were also loss-making.”

The report also included a helpful ‘pounds v points’ table ranking the clubs according to the wage cost per point scored. Saracens did a lot better on that ladder, finishing second behind Sale Sharks with a cost per point of £201,784. The club languishing at the bottom were Bath. Every point scored was bought dearly for the pride of Somerset, at £316,723 apiece.

The appointment of South African head coach Johan van Graan at the start of 2022-23 was a watershed moment in Bath’s on-field performance, which has gone from strength to strength, graduating from an eighth-place finish in his first season to second in 2023-24, and winning the competition outright last season.

But if Bath’s second coming represented a moment of redemption for the club after years in the wilderness, the fiscal model underpinning it shows little sign of changing. Last week it was revealed Bath’s debt mountain topped £32.3m after their triumphant march to the Prem title, and when the dust had cleared it was the patronage of businessman Bruce Craig, who purchased 100% of the club 15 years ago, which was keeping the West Country outfit afloat.

In the circumstances, it probably came as no surprise Craig chose to share the financial burden with his long-term running mate, and high-powered hoover pioneer Sir James Dyson. Last week Dyson purchased 50% of Bath Rugby, while paying off a large chunk of the club debt into the bargain.

There is no getting away from the facts of life. Despite the majority of home games at the Rec selling out, with the added bonus of a home Prem semi-final and two more England Under-20 fixtures staged at the ground, a five per cent rise in turnover evaporated in an overall loss of over £500,000 in the season 2024-2025.

Even at the summit of the domestic game in England, there is a near-total dependence on the goodwill of a handful of wealthy individuals to support professional rugby. The prospect of long-term financial sustainability is still a very distant dream.

Bath and Saracens share a history of high debt and high ambition in the Prem, and it is fiendishly hard to keep the balance between the two. In practice, it is more of a seesaw. During their halcyon Champions Cup winning days, which included three victories in four seasons between 2015 and 2019, Saracens enjoyed enviable depth in the tight five forwards.

They could field double depth and international combinations at tight-head prop [Vincent Koch and Juan Figallo], hooker [Jamie George and Schalk Brits], and perm any two from five in the second row, with Maro Itoje, George Kruis, Will Skelton, Jim Hamilton and Nick Isiekwe all jostling for playing time. In the 2019 final against Leinster, they crammed three into the starting lineup – Skelton and Kruis at four and five, with Itoje shifted to six and Isiekwe doing bench duty.

Likewise, Bath Rugby have been struggling to juggle a roster at tighthead including Springbok scrum icon Thomas du Toit, 2025 British and Irish Lion Will Stuart, current Wales international Archie Griffin and a certain future England international in Vilikesa Sela. That situation is simply not sustainable at a club where wages consume approximately 75% of total club revenue.

‘The Tank’, the man who was named to World Rugby’s current dream team and the club’s main problem-solver in real time at the scrum, has been sacrificed on the altar of the need to balance the books. He will pack his bags for South Africa and the Sharks at season’s end. At the same time, the present and future of the position in England was guaranteed with contract extensions for Stuart and Sela until 2028. It is a cutthroat business indeed, when the constraints of the salary cap force you to release the man who is currently the best in the world at what he does.

A similar logjam of talent in the back-row will prompt the release of juggernaut number eight Alfie Barbeary after the 2025 season is done – to none other than their high-rollin’ buddies at the StoneX Stadium. The histories of the two clubs are curiously intertwined: Bath were the bee’s knees in the 1990s, Saracens were the dominant force two decades later, and now they will meet again in the first knockout round of 16 in the Investec Champions Cup – only a fortnight after Bath shattered the Faz-and-the-Fez 62-15 in the Prem.

Before their Prem semi-final last June, Bristol Bears head coach Pat Lam had observed “Bath have spent close to £3m more than we have on our squad, so it is a phenomenal effort to get to where we are, and what better place to go now than play the top team, the number one on the spend.” Bath’s capacity to spend all the way up to the salary cap limit shows up most clearly in their killing power from the bench.

They were already well ahead on the scoreboard against Saracens when Thomas du Toit, Kepu Tuipulotu, Ted Hill, Guy Pepper and Sam Underhill up front, and Santi Carreras behind, entered off the pine in the 52^nd minute. The eclectic mix of a Springbok scrum superman, an Argentine playmaking magician and a brigade of England internationals, present or future, in the back five forwards was entirely too much for Sarries, who lost the remainder of the game 26-0.

Within the first minute of their arrival, Du Toit had won a scrum penalty, Finn Russell had kicked to the corner and Tuipulotu had driven the ball over from the inevitable driving lineout. The combined defensive presence of Du Toit, Pepper and Underhill proved impossible to contain in and around the tackle in the last 20 minutes.

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) March 30, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) March 30, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) March 30, 2026

First Underhill, Tuipulotu and Du Toit combine to hold up Saracens wing Tobias Elliott as he knifes infield, and effect the turnover scrum; then Pepper and England centre Ollie Lawrence combine on a double jackal above the prone Elliot Daly; then Pepper, Tuipulotu and Du Toit become the first three defenders out from ruck, with the Springbok strongman eventually getting his big paws on the pill. With threats at the tackle and post-tackle lurking around every corner, where can you run?

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) March 30, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) March 30, 2026

In the first clip, hit by Underhill, dig by Pepper, and hit by Du Toit in three of the first four phases; even after a temporary escape by Fergus Burke, Pepper, Max Ojomoh and Ted Hill are back on the attack on the very next phase of play. It is relentless.

Bath and Saracens have been two of the most illustrious names in the English Premiership since the inaugural season of the competition back in 1987-88, winning 13 titles between them. In the professional era, both have pushed the salary cap to its limit, and the club from North London stepped beyond it in 2019. Both represent the high-debt, big benefactor model which Prem-builders hope will be a saving grace for English club rugby. Finally, ‘going in the right direction’? The jury is still out.