DCMS Publishes Damning Rugby Report

The Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee has released a report around the financial and structural issues within professional rugby union, in which it called Premiership rugby’s club finances ‘clearly unsustainable’.

The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee’s report said the recent demise of Wasps and Worcester Warriors puts a ‘stain on the reputation’ of the sport’s authorities.

The committee heard from a number of significant figures from the game after the two top-tier clubs went into administration in 2022.

Acting Chair of the committee, Damian Green MP claimed, “Inert leadership from the Rugby Football Union [RFU] and Premiership Rugby [PRL] has allowed mismanagement to collapse two of English rugby’s top teams.

“Thousands of loyal fans have been deprived of their clubs and hundreds of jobs have been lost.”

Green also described the game as “in disarray”.

The committee pointed towards the annual average losses across Premiership rugby, which amounts to £4m, and blamed a ‘lack of safeguards’ at the top level of the sport.

Regarding the two Premiership clubs that fell into administration specifically, the report claimed that Worcester Warriors’ ‘unscrupulous owners mismanaged club finances while attempting to strip the club of its assets’, and that they ‘had gone more than a year without filing accounts, with players paid late for several months.’

On Wasps, the report pointed to a ‘disastrous and ill-thought-through relocation to Coventry’ as the key contributor to the club’s debt issues.

Player welfare was also high up on the report’s agenda, claiming that players should have ‘a stonger say in all matters relating to their welfare’ and a ‘benevolent fund to help address the financial issues faced by players and staff’ should be established.

The players’ union, the Rugby Players Association, responded to the report positively, stating, ‘we welcome the recognition of change needed’.