England’s World Cup incentive
£7m bonus
England players will share a jackpot of close to £7 million, around £225,000 per player, if they win the World Cup in Japan, The Daily Telegraph understands.
The squad will land in Tokyo today with the largest financial incentive of any team in Rugby World Cup history.
England’s flight to Tokyo took off as scheduled, despite Typhoon Faxai being expected to hit the Japanese capital early this morning.
It is understood that England’s 31-man squad will receive match fees, whether or not they feature in the match-day squad, of £13,000 per player in each of the four pool matches.
That is a significant drop from the fee of £23,000 players receive for the Six Nations matches, but does not include image rights because the tournament is overseas and there are no commercial opportunities. The fee is also split between 31 players, rather than 23.
However, if Eddie Jones’ side reach the knockout stages, they will be playing for a bonus pot of just over £5million if they replicate the 2003 side, who lifted the Webb Ellis Trophy in Sydney.
In a significant change to the 2015 payment structure, the England players will receive cumulative bonus payments, increasing from the quarter-finals in a fourtiered bonus structure, with a shared payment of just over £2.5 million guaranteed for winning the World Cup.
Reaching the quarter-finals is understood to be worth 10 per cent of the bonus pot, which would trigger extra payments of around £16,000 per player, should they reach the last four. It is believed that the Rugby Football Union has taken out insurance that would pay out more than £6million to cover the costs of the players’ fees.
The fee structure was agreed between the Rugby Players’ Association and the RFU in November 2016 as part of the new players’ deal for payments that meant match fees rose to £23,000 per player for Six Nations, autumn Tests and World Cup warm-up matches. The payment structure for this World Cup is a potential rise of around £1million from four years ago, had England won their home tournament.
Having the deal in place three years before the start of the tournament ensured there was no repeat of the row between the players and the RFU that marred the departure to the 2011 World Cup and led to some players threatening to boycott the official send-off dinner.
Lewis Moody, the former England captain, who led the negotiations with the RFU in 2011, said that there had previously been a feeling among the England squad that it was a case of “us versus them”.
The 2011 squad were eventually paid a tournament fee of £1.25 million – just under £42,000 per player for reaching the quarter-finals.
That would have risen by £100,000 if they had won the World Cup, including a win bonus pot of £2.5million.
England may have won three of their World Cup warm-up games convincingly, but captain Owen Farrell believes a sole defeat by Wales will provide the most valuable lessons ahead of Japan.
Farrell started at fly-half on Friday evening in Newcastle as his side put a disjointed opening behind them, eventually pulling away to beat Italy 37-0. The 27-year-old highlighted a 13-6 loss in Cardiff as a mark of important persistence.
“Probably our ability to stick in the fight, in different situations,” said Farrell when asked about what aspect of the warm-up matches would please England most.
“That Wales game away was tough. Going behind, we stuck in and gave ourselves an opportunity at the end and it didn’t happen. I think we have been pretty consistent in showing up in the next plays.”