Originally published October 2022.
Why the sport’s model is ‘broken’.
As athletes, rugby union players are notoriously robust. But in England, the finances behind the sport are looking far from healthy. In the space of a few weeks, two of its most famous club teams, Worcester (founded 1871) and Wasps (1866), have gone into administration.
Bill Sweeney, chief-executive of the Rugby Football Union (RFU), which governs the English game, said the financial model of the sport is “broken”. He added: “Two professional clubs facing financial difficulties is a clear barometer of the challenges being felt by the economy, sport and rugby union specifically.”
A Parliamentary inquiry has now been launched over “serious concerns about the future of the sport”.
For Wasps and Worcester, those concerns are immediate. Both clubs will be relegated from the top tier of English rugby and hundreds of staff have lost their jobs. Fans of the clubs will miss out too of course, as will local businesses that rely on match-day spending by large numbers of supporters.
In the case of Wasps, there is a knock-on effect on its affiliated netball team, whose players and staff have also been made redundant, and its close relationship with Coventry City, the football club which shares use of its stadium.
That said, going into administration need not be fatal and is a way of trying to save a business from disappearing completely (liquidation).
“Administration has been commonly used in sport, particularly football, to keep clubs in existence and has touched rugby union’s top tier of clubs before”
