TRP reports forecast £50m shortfall due in part by lost income during g World Cup

I'm sure there will some coverage in national press.... perhaps DCMS will have another look. 

Sweeney and his band of merry men need to go 

What CEO of any major company gets away with a loss like this 

With more to come 

In a normal world the shareholders would remove him

In this it’s up to the clubs ….

I believe so.  A culmination of factors have led to the perfect storm. 

Hopefully the lack of money will prompt the RFU to cut back on its generosity to the Cartel. 

22/23 will be about £10m loss, Bill Sweeney joined in May 2019. The balance of £40m is the forecast for the current year. One of his predecessors oversaw the East Stand £30m overspend and was shown the door

Apparently the Head of Finance has been banging on about this for a couple of years but to no avail.

The loss includes the £1m+ paid to Eddie Jones and crew in severance pay

RFU are allegedly considering employing Anthony Watson directly as no one seems to want him.

A significant issue is that if RFUs net worth drops below £160m then bank loan repayment will be triggered and RFU will need a White Knight, who said CVC? 

It's all in TRP - too much unfortunately to be just smoke. Front page article, Nick Cain comment piece, Jeff Probyn comment page, letters to the editor, Rams Chairman article. How Sweeney holds on I do not know, I suppose £35k a month into your bank account is one good reason plus all the perks. 

For once it makes the £2.20 for TRP worthwhile! 

Sweeney will presumably cite Covid as the reason for much of the losses on his watch.

But in the midst of all this the Board seem happy to create another potential zombie club in Tier 2. And discourage clubs such as Caldy who have sustainable business models. Indeed, if they put another £4.2m into the Championship clubs (making £500,000 per club), ring fenced for paying contracts, but simultaneously imposed a £500,000 cap on remuneration to players, they might create a sustainable model at Tier 2 as well. But that would be a disaster for the master plan. The last thing the Board or the people they think are their friends (CVC) want is a sustainable Tier 2.

As things stand, a critical mass of clubs in both top two tiers are seriously loss-making and unsustainable on a day-to-day basis. This is precisely the kind of market that private-equity firms search out because they can see a product that creates demand in a very affluent market that is resistant to advertising and marketing using mass methods, but open to advertising and marketing channeled through trusted intermediaries (i.e. our beloved rugby "brands").

The perfect world for a PE firm looking for targets in media/entertainment consists of: high-quality content with a strong potential television/streaming audience of affluent consumers; a controlled marketplace of competition with a minimum amount of external influence or regulation (i.e. the PE firm gets to write the rules and there is a ring fenced competition); marketing and merchandising opportunities in multiple "geographies"; utter incompetence, maladministration, outdated and self-destructive articles of association, personal bitterness and rivalry that allows a divide-and-rule policy to succeed.

F1 had all these. Rugby has all except the international marketing possibilities. Guess who made a profit of $5-7bn dollars on a $2bn investment from putting minimal funding into F1 and taking vast amounts out? Guess who was accused of "raping" the sport of Formula One racing? Guess which company used the same individual partners to begin the takeover of rugby in the world, not just England, as they used to take over F1? 

Yes, you guessed it:  https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/sep/10/cvc-ownership-f1-warning-premiership-rugby-union#:~:text=CVC%20owned%20F1%20between%202006,F1%20in%20a%20single%20sentence." rel="nofollow - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/sep/10/cvc-ownership-f1-warning-premiership-rugby-union#:~:text=CVC%20owned%20F1%20between%202006,F1%20in%20a%20single%20sentence.

This piece was 4 years ago. It is criminal that nobody in rugby read it, or if they did, that they did nothing to act on it.

Look at the state of F1 now: artificial, bleeding supporters dry, a decreasingly interesting spectacle, absurd rules, concentration of power and success in just a few teams.

The one chance for rugby in England is a popular revolt. It is still effectively member-controlled, but that could become moot in a matter of months.

SGM now!

Led by the Championship clubs, or at least those who are not wedded to Premiership clubs for survival.

It may be our only chance to prevent the zombification of our sport.  

I can see any reason for CVC wanting to take over the Premiership clubs.

Why buy the clubs, they lose £3m a year each - and there is no way to stop that, except to realize that they simply cannot match French wages.

Without a strict salary cap, if you increase the TV money, it will all go on player wages.

Of course, with a strict salary cap, many more English players would be tempted to end their career in France - but I am not sure how many would be good enough to get a contract.

But, as long as the RFU keep their nerve, and require England players to play for Premiership clubs, those wanting a cap - and the sponsorship and other benefits that can bring - would have to remain in the Premiership and accept lower pay now, for the prospect of more pay later.

Augean stable: a condition or place marked by great accumulation of filth or Lovelyion

The word Augean is sometimes used by itself, too - it has come to mean "extremely difficult and usually distasteful." We can refer to "Augean tasks," "Augean labour" or even "Augean clutter."

Who is our Hercules?

The P shares are in a nominal company that is given the sides' 80% portion of the PRL income, so as long as PRL control the TV income, the shares have value.

If the RFU took the TV contracts in house, and paid sides playing in the premiership directly, there would be nothing to have shares in.

Of course, that would annoy CVC. Who bet on the RFU continuing to employ PRL to run the Premiership.

I would put that role out to tender.

Get organizations to bid for how much they give the RFU, with a minimum pay out to the clubs - meaning they make a profit if they can sell more sponsorship contracts. With a re-tendering process every five years say.

RFU finances 13.

We continue to have questions about the state of RFU finances. Francis Baron, former chief executive of the RFU, supplied us with information suggesting that the RFU’s finances had in recent years significantly declined, with reserves depleted and losses made. 

Bill Sweeney told us: Our annual report will be published fairly soon, at the end of this month. It will show reserves of £126 million; £90 million of that is from the CVC but that gives you a figure of £36 million. Ten years ago that figure was £14 million, so from a reserves point of view, we are in a pretty good state.

Surely he knew the direction of travel then! 

That would only work if you sealed the bottom of the Championship though - otherwise by giving a central £500,000 which can only be spent on salaries you're pretty much guaranteeing clubs will come up with an operating model that sees them implode (potentially as businesses, never mind as clubs) if they get relegated to level 3....

ringfenced handouts for player salaries would allow clubs to cut their budget completely differently, meaning relegation would lead to a festival of playing and non-playing redundancies, and a scrabble for volunteers to try and keep the show on the road at the relegated club - probably annually. 

Again, there is a gap between level 1 and level 2 - the solution to fixing that probably doesn't run through moving the gap to between level 2 and level 3. That's just shifting the problem by a tier.