Evans: Players wages put rugby on slippery slope
FORMER Harlequins chief executive Mark Evans says player wages must be slashed in order to halt an ‘orgy of expenditure’ that threatens to tear apart the fabric of the game.
Evans believes inflated wages in England and France have spiralled out of control, meaning the majority of clubs live well beyond their financial means, with the knock-on effects being felt across the globe as rugby markets in the Southern Hemisphere struggle to keep pace.
Financial accounts show that Premiership Rugby’s 13 shareholding clubs lost £48.2m in season 2017/18, with £142.9m (67.3%) of their £212.4m turnover going on wages – unstainable, according to Evans, who believes rugby’s governance structures require urgent overhaul. Evans, whose new book,
Unholy Union, shines a damning light on mismanagement and political machinations within global rugby, told The Rugby
Paper: “It’s not just the French and the English, if you look at Australia and New Zealand and levels of wages in Super Rugby as well, in relation to the size of their revenues the players are taking an inflated percentage.
“That is always what happens in sport if you don’t have a series of interlocking policies that give the players a fair return and allow wages to grow when revenues grow, but ensure they don’t squeeze a disproportionate amount from the company – as is currently the case.
“There’s always opportunity lost. If all the money goes on players, where doesn’t it go? It doesn’t go on marketing. It doesn’t go to grassroots. It doesn’t go into facilities or stadia development. Players will say it’s a short career and I’m the last person to blame them.
“I am blaming the structures and regulations they operate in. Rugby is heading down a slippery slope if nothing changes.
“Clubs are losing vast amounts of money amid an orgy of expenditure but sustainability won’t happen unless we agree as a group to align everyone’s interests. People go into a lot of reasons why that can’t happen but you look around the world and where the will exists, it can be done.”
Evans espouses strong independent governance, equalisation strategies at international and club level that bite, closed leagues and systems that seek to help new teams achieve their ambitions.
In the case of the latter, he believes Premiership Rugby’s failure to embrace an expansion system provides is a shameful indictment.
Evans said: “I’m in favour of a closed league but people misinterpret what a closed league is because I want it in order to grow the number of teams, not to cut it off at some arbitrary number of 10, 12 or 13.
“Look at Major League Soccer in America. It started in 1996 with ten teams and our Premiership had 12. Roll the clock forward 23 years and we’re still at 12 teams while MLS has 24 and is aiming to get to 32.
“There we have a closed league which has more than doubled in size in the same time frame that an open league with promotion and relegation and massive losses has stagnated. One league has grown massively into new markets and one hasn’t – and yet we in England go around and round in this ridiculous circle without finding the solution.”
In Unholy Union, Evans and co-author Michael Aylwin delve into the murky world of rugby politics, highlight the continuing suppression of Tier Two and Three countries and discuss rugby’s crisis at community level.
They claim the pan-global structure of rugby is threatened by the clubs of England and France, expose a Premiership salary cap cover up in 2006/7 and highlight a drugs crisis in South African schools.
Importantly, Evans and Aylwin also provide a range of solutions.
Unholy Union, published by Little Brown Book Group (£20)