The 30 Year Test, essay two. By Dan McKeown and Andrew Trimble.

Essay one, What is holding professional club rugby back?, is here.

Rugby has the talent and the audience. Why isn’t it a bigger business? Why hasn’t it grown as much as other sports in recent years?

Rugby can bring millions of people together, yet its professional clubs can struggle to survive. Worcester, Wasps and London Irish went into administration in 2022 and 2023. All three played in England’s top division. There are similar examples in the US, Argentina, Australia and South Africa. Around the same time as the three clubs in England collapsed, the men’s Rugby World Cup in France generated 1.33 billion hours of viewing.^1,2

Part of the problem is how the game is organised. Many leading players represent both a club and their country. National governing bodies, usually called unions, run the international teams, while clubs provide most of the regular competition. They share the players, and often the supporters, but they have different budgets and priorities. The Unions fund or subsidise their entire systems from the revenue of 7-8 annual international men’s home games. The clubs rely on Union controlled income for a significant portion of their annual revenue. The Unions have strong levels of control over the clubs.³

How can rugby use the success of its international game to build a healthier club game? How can the system reduce the reliance on these limited home fixtures? Financial support from the unions has become important to the clubs, but there is a limit to how much can be achieved by moving the same money around. The sport needs to attract more people to club rugby, earn more from the interest it already creates, and allow the club system to grow their share of the pie. That will take a better season and greater cooperation between the organisations responsible for it.

A place in the table

In April, sports data agency Two Circles published its Sports IP Revenue League 2026. It estimates that the businesses running sports competitions and events collected US$174bn in 2025 from broadcasting, sponsorship, tickets and other commercial activities. Rugby accounted for 2% of that total. That’s about two pence in every pound earned by these rights owners, not two pence of everything spent on sport.⁴

The report groups rugby union and rugby league together. It does not give a separate share for either code. Football accounts for 27% of the market. Golf, tennis and cricket each show the same rounded 2% share as rugby, but among the fifty biggest individual organisations listed, not one is from rugby union. Its the later point that’s shocking (but the 2% makes the better headline). The only rugby name is Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL), in 47th place with US$540m of central revenue. The PGA Tour is tenth, on US$2.5bn. India’s cricket board is sixteenth, on US$1.6bn. The US Tennis Association and Wimbledon are 33rd and 42nd.⁴

The comparison needs some care. Two Circles counts revenue when it first enters a sport, so money distributed from a league to its clubs isn’t counted twice. These are revenue figures, not profits, and the timing of major tournaments can affect a particular year’s ranking. The table cannot prove what rugby ought to earn. It can, however, show us what other sports have managed to build in recent years. Given the success of the Rugby World Cup, its stark that no Rugby Union element or competition is in the Top 50.⁴

What happens after the final?

The World Cup final gives a sense of rugby’s appeal. In France, an average of 10.9 million people watched South Africa beat New Zealand on TF1 in 2023. The men’s French Open tennis final that year averaged 4.8 million on France 2. And France wasn’t even playing in the rugby final.^5,6

Figure 1. Average TV audiences on the named French channels, 2023; not global or all-platform totals. Tennis also aired on Prime Video.

These are figures from two French television channels, not worldwide audiences, and they don’t tell us which sport earns more per viewer. What they do show is that rugby can hold a huge audience. The question is how to persuade some of those people to come back the following week.

Picture someone watching a World Cup match who becomes interested in a particular player. Where does that player play for the rest of the year? When is the next match? How can the new supporter watch it? A good highlights clip, a social media nudge, or a simple CRM-driven invitation to a club game might be enough to get them started.

Of course, some people only want to watch international rugby. Nobody should assume that every World Cup viewer is a potential season-ticket holder. But plenty might follow more of the game if it were easier to find and the season easier to understand.

That is harder than it sounds. The organisation attracting someone to an international match is often different from the one selling tickets to their next club game. Who pays for the follow-up? Who gets the benefit? If no one agrees, the opportunity is easily missed.

Then there is the calendar. International rugby has agreed periods when clubs must release players to their countries.³ Players also need proper rest. All of this is necessary, but clubs and their supporters still need to know when their best players will be available. In some systems, a club can lose their international players for up to 50% of the club games. The people setting the calendar should have those interests in the room from the beginning.

No advertising campaign can fix a badly planned season. That takes decisions from unions, leagues, clubs and players who are prepared to work together.

A competition people can rely on

A fan considering a season ticket wants to know who they’ll see on the pitch. A broadcaster wants confidence that the fixtures it has bought, and the stars that have driven its value, will actually be delivered. A sponsor needs time to build an association with a competition. None of them can plan confidently if the product keeps changing around them.

The English Premiership had thirteen clubs in 2021/22. Two seasons later, it had ten, after the collapse of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish.^1,7 Those weren’t just three names missing from a league table. Their supporters lost fixtures, rivalries and, in some cases, the club as they knew it. The media partners lost product, the sponsors lost investment. The c. 180 players lost their jobs.

Look across the professional era and the pattern is clear. Since 1995, the five major club competitions in England, France, the southern hemisphere, the Celtic nations and Japan have between them run more than thirty different team counts and around ten different points systems. No league has kept the same size for the whole period. Super Rugby has had eight formats in thirty seasons, including a split into three regional competitions in 2020 and 2021. The competition that became the URC has had nine. France ran three different league sizes in four seasons between 1999 and 2002. England changed the value of a win twice in ten months, from two points to three in the middle of the 1999/2000 season, then to four with bonus points the following year.¹⁴

Rugby’s thirty years of structural churn

League	First season	Teams at start	Teams today	Changes of size	Points systems
Premiership	1995/96	10	10	6	3
Top 14 and predecessors	1995/96	20	14	5	4
Super Rugby	1996	12	11	8	1
URC and predecessors	2001/02	15	16	9	1
Japan Top League and League One	2003/04	12	12	4	1

Figure 2. Distinct team count configurations and points systems per competition since its first professional season, to 2025/26. Teams at start is the first season shown. Source: league season records.¹⁴

Even the Premiership’s long run at twelve clubs, from 1999 to 2022, ended in disorder. The RFU Council voted in February 2021 to scrap relegation because Covid cancellations had skewed the table. In June 2021 it approved a fourteen club league with no relegation in 2021/22 and no promotion or relegation in 2022/23 either. The fourteen club league never arrived. Three clubs collapsed in the first of those seasons.¹⁵

Each change reset the competitive record, the broadcast packaging and the sponsor inventory. Each contraction cost clubs their existence: the Celtic Warriors, Border Reivers and Melbourne Rebels as well as Worcester, Wasps and London Irish. Supporters of those clubs did not stop loving rugby. They stopped having a team to follow.

Competitions need room to evolve. Sometimes that means expansion, a new format or a different broadcast deal. But planned change is very different from a season being thrown into confusion because another club has run out of money. The record above is mostly the second kind.

A stable league need not be a closed one. Promotion and relegation can work perfectly well. The Top 14 has been fourteen clubs for twenty years with relegation throughout, and it has just secured the largest domestic broadcast deal in club rugby.¹¹ What matters is that people know the rules, trust the schedule and have reasonable confidence that the clubs will be there to finish it.

What other competitions show

Two Circles found that sixteen of the twenty largest sports businesses on its list were leagues or event organisers bringing together teams or competitors.⁴ A competition with a clear identity and a dependable calendar is easier to follow, and easier to sell.

There are different ways to achieve that. In baseball and ice hockey, for example, clubs earn much of their revenue locally. Europe’s leading football leagues still have promotion and relegation. Success does not require a single owner or an American franchise system. It does require clubs to agree how the competition works.⁴

American leagues do change size, but on their own terms. An NFL or NBA expansion is planned years ahead, priced and paid for, and no franchise in either league has folded mid season in over half a century. The contrast with rugby is not closed against open. It is orderly change against forced contraction.

The NRL is an interesting comparison because it is a different version of rugby. In 2025, its governing commission reported A$562.3m distributed to clubs, players, state bodies and development programmes. It also reported an A$64.8m operating surplus, its fifth in a row.⁸ That is money being earned and put back into the game.

In July this year, the NRL announced a seven-year media agreement worth A$5.3bn, starting in 2028. It covers the men’s and women’s competitions and State of Origin, the fiercely contested series between Australian states. The NRL also made a point of retaining control over its schedule and competition structure.⁹ It knows what it is selling and has the means to plan several seasons ahead.

There are limits to the comparison. League and union have different histories and supporters. Rugby union can also make money. Rugby Australia lost A$36.8m in 2024, then reported an A$70.6m operating surplus in 2025, helped enormously by the British & Irish Lions tour. It has proposed putting some of the proceeds from major events into a longer-term investment fund.¹⁰

That is encouraging. But a windfall from a visiting team is different from clubs having dependable income year after year. The question is how one helps deliver the other.

Cricket has a lesson of its own. The Indian Premier League brought top players together in a short, city-based competition with strong team identities. Two Circles estimates its 2025 revenue at US$1.4bn. India’s huge cricket audience and advertising market gave it advantages that rugby cannot simply copy. But the IPL’s founders made clear decisions about what the competition would be, when it would take place and why people would watch.⁴

Rugby should ask those questions about its own clubs. Which games matter most? Can people find them and watch them? And who is able to make the necessary decisions?

Rugby has examples of its own

Rugby union already has examples to learn from. France’s Top 14 and Pro D2 have agreed a Canal+ broadcast contract averaging €139.4m a season from 2027/28 to 2031/32, 14.7% above the previous deal.¹¹ That is a meaningful increase in the value of club rugby within the existing game.

The women’s game has also shown what is possible. Two Circles reports that the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup sold around 444,000 tickets and brought in 330% more sponsorship revenue than the previous tournament. The organisers invested in making the event visible and worked together to promote it. The results speak for themselves.⁴

Of course, a strong tournament doesn’t guarantee healthy clubs. But these examples should give rugby confidence. There is demand for the game, and there are ways to grow it. The challenge is to turn occasional successes into something supporters can follow year after year.

Start with a season people can follow

England has already made a start. In 2024, the RFU, Premiership Rugby and the players’ association agreed a Professional Game Partnership. It includes joint marketing intended to increase attendances and television audiences, alongside funding and player-management arrangements.¹² The intention is there. Now we need to see what it achieves.

Why stop at England? Imagine Europe’s existing club competitions working together to make the season easier to follow. The clubs would keep their identities, home grounds and rivalries. What would change is the way their competitions fit together.

For example, the domestic leagues could finish before a clearly promoted European run-in, with quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final on successive weekends. Supporters would know what was at stake, and broadcasters could spend several weeks building towards a final that felt like the climax of the season.

Figure 3. Illustration, not an agreed schedule. Earlier European rounds, recovery, travel and international commitments must fit within a redesigned season, not be added to it.

The rest of the calendar would have to be built around that finish. Clubs need proper runs of league matches. International windows must be protected, and players must have time to recover. Making a better season may mean moving or cutting fixtures, not simply adding another three big weekends.

This is a suggestion to explore, not a ready-made fixture list. Qualification, earlier European rounds, travel and player welfare all need detailed work. Some clubs would finish sooner than others, with consequences for their finances and preparation. But it helps to picture the kind of season we’re talking about.

Make the agreement work

The sporting plan should come first. Then make it easy for people to follow. Someone who signs up for news after an international match should be able to find club highlights, fixtures and information about where to watch. That can all be gathered in one place, even if different broadcasters hold different live rights. The differnet media rights deals creates a minefield and severely limits the possibilities for using international content to attract club patrons.

Clubs, unions and competition organisers would need to agree who pays for this work and who shares in the money it brings in. Give someone a budget and the authority to make it happen. Make sure clubs and players have a voice. A committee that can only ask everyone else for permission will not achieve much.

They also need an agreement that lasts. Set clear rules for changing the calendar, resolving disputes and handling a club’s financial difficulties. A central decision-maker is only useful if the funding is realistic and the decisions are good.

Thirty years of resets show why. Format has been permanently renegotiable because the bodies setting it are balancing club, union and international interests at the same time. Whether churn is a cause of rugby’s weak commercial position or a symptom of it, the result for a broadcaster or sponsor is the same: nobody can tell them what they are buying at the end of the contract.

Broadcasting should be handled country by country. In some markets, free television is the best way to introduce people to rugby. In others, established pay-TV partners may offer the best deal. Rugby doesn’t need every match on one channel, and it certainly doesn’t need another app for every competition.

There are legal and contractual hurdles, particularly if rights are sold together.¹³ That is why it makes sense to start with competitions willing to try. Player welfare and funding for amateur and youth rugby should be part of the agreement from the start.

Then measure whether it works. Are people coming back to watch? Are more of them buying tickets? How much extra income is left after paying for the work? And are clubs becoming more financially secure? More revenue is only progress if it doesn’t disappear into higher costs and another round of financial trouble.

Supporters cannot be told to love club rugby because the sport needs their money. Rugby must give them a good reason to care. That means sorting out the matches, the calendar and the way people watch them, as well as the finances.

Earning a bigger place

Think of the best tries you’ve watched. Someone sees a gap and backs themselves. A teammate gets on their shoulder. There is a tackle, perhaps two, and somehow the ball stays alive until it crosses the line. You see the skill, but you also see the nerve, the trust and the refusal to give up.

Those qualities are part of what makes rugby special. Players have to judge when to go alone and when to pass, and their teammates have to commit to the same move. They won’t all get the glory, but the try belongs to them all.

It’s time to ask as much of the people running the game. That may mean giving up control of part of a calendar, sharing a commercial opportunity or backing a plan whose rewards take years to arrive. Those choices involve risk, and there will be setbacks. The people in charge should be prepared to take the hits, just as they ask the players to.

‘Gods make their own importance,’ wrote Patrick Kavanagh in Epic. Rugby’s place in world sport isn’t fixed by the position it holds in today’s revenue table. It will be decided by the ambition of the people running it and what they’re willing to do to earn a better one.

The players have shown us how to get over the line. It’s time for the people running rugby to make them proud.

About the authors

Andrew Trimble won 70 caps for Ireland, winning the 2014 Six Nations. He founded Kairos, a sports-tech business sold to Teamworks in 2024. Dan McKeown was a shareholder in ProD2 club Beziers, is chair of London Irish RFC and is a corporate finance adviser.

Media and interview requests: inquiries@30yeartest.com

Sources and reference notes

1. Reuters. Worcester to join expanded English Championship three years after going bust. 3 April 2025.
2. World Rugby. Rugby World Cup 2023 was the most viewed rugby event of all time. 30 January 2024.
3. World Rugby. Regulation 9: Availability of Players. 8 October 2026.
4. Two Circles. Sports IP Revenue League 2026. 27 April 2026.
5. TF1. Bilan Coupe du monde de rugby : des audiences historiques ! 29 October 2023.
6. France Télévisions. Bilan audiences Roland-Garros 2023. June 2023.
7. Saracens / Premiership Rugby. Premiership expansion plans approved by RFU Council. 2021 announcement; subsequent 2023/24 season coverage.
8. Australian Rugby League Commission / NRL. No.1 in Australia & the Pacific: Rugby League announces record results.
9. Australian Rugby League Commission / NRL. Historic $5.3 billion media rights deal sets new benchmark for Australian sport. 7 July 2026.
10. Reuters / SABC Sport. Australia back in the black after lucrative Lions tour. 3 September 2025; full-year result reported 22 April 2026.
11. Ligue Nationale de Rugby. TOP 14 et PRO D2 : les droits audiovisuels attribués à CANAL+ pour les saisons 2027/2028 à 2031/2032.
12. Rugby Players Association / Professional Players Federation. RPA enter new Men’s Professional Game Partnership. 4 September 2024.
13. European Commission. Summary of decision of 22 March 2006: joint selling of media rights to the FA Premier League. Official Journal, 12 January 2008.
14. League season records, 1995/96 to 2025/26: French Championship, Top 16 and Top 14; Allied Dunbar, Zurich and Gallagher Premiership; Celtic League, Pro12, Pro14 and URC; Super 12 to Super Rugby Pacific; Japan Top League and League One. Compiled September 2026; season by season workings available on request.
15. RugbyPass. RFU scrap relegation for 2021, Premiership goes to 13 teams; The Rugby Paper. RFU approves 14-team Premiership expansion and voids relegation for further two seasons. 12 February 2021 and 29 June 2021.