Why the Premiership is desperate for a 10-team league

It is remarkable to consider it is not yet two years since the Rugby Football Union voted to approve the expansion of the Premiership to 14 clubs.

The historic vote by the governing body’s council in late June 2021 rubber-stamped what was called the ‘Covid Recovery Plan’, including the suspension of promotion and relegation for the 2023-24 season.

The RFU said it hoped that the structural changes would “improve the financial stability and sustainability of professional rugby during the next three seasons while also providing benefits for England and the community game”.

Then the sad demise of Wasps and Worcester Warriors early this season reduced the league to 11 clubs, a figure which is widely expected to drop to 10 next week unless the US consortium attempting to buy London Irish can deliver an approved takeover by the RFU’s deadline next Tuesday.

If London Irish do go under, plans for a 10-team Premiership will be fast-tracked  for approval by the same RFU council next month that 24 months earlier had signed off on 14.

And yet, while no one wanted to get to this point in such a horrific and costly manner, a 10-team league is now seen as the optimal size for the league. That would be the case even if Wasps, Worcester and London Irish were in rude financial health and Ealing and Jersey owned stadiums with capacities above 10,000.

There is a perception, an unfair one, that Premiership Rugby is secretly pleased to see Wasps and Worcester (and possibly London Irish) go to the wall because it could allow it to accelerate those plans to reduce the league to 10 teams by a season.

What has yet to be fully explained is how and why this reduced format is now seen as the league structure that will breathe life back into the English club game when the 14-team league was heralded as way forward less than two years ago.

It is a journey that began in February of 2022. Simon Massie-Taylor, who had been appointed as the new Prem Rugby chief executive in the previous month, was tasked with drawing up a new strategic plan for the league.

Along with Martyn Phillips, Prem Rugby’s new chairman and the former chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union, the pair set about asking fundamental, even existential questions.

Could the ‘product’ be improved to get it to a better place or was the model broken beyond repair or tinkering? The answer was clear. The possibility of sparking the league back into life with a couple of defibrillator pads was not deemed likely to be successful.

A huge piece of work was carried out over the coming months and the answer consistently came back that a 13-team league (as it was then) just did not work.

There were too many games that overlapped with international matches; clubs were not seeing enough of their England players, players were probably playing too much rugby, which was increasing the risk of injury; supporters were frustrated at not seeing their Test stars in action for their clubs and even when they were, they were at times not the ‘best version of themselves’ for key games.

The decision to reduce the league to 10 clubs would, in an instant, remove the overlaps between the Premiership and the international Test windows, increasing the number of games England stars will be available for their clubs.

'We are finally going to play less rugby'

As one insider close to the strategic review said, it would “put a premium on quality not quantity. We would become the only league in the world that would say:  'We are finally going to play less rugby.'

“If you've got 10 teams, the chances are you've got concentration of players and coaches in those 10 teams. They should be high quality games. They should be well attended games, their games broadcasters would be very interested in from a supporter point of view, you're not having to be made to choose between international and Premiership games.

“Then there is the player welfare side of it, you can build proper loading, around playing and recovery, and perhaps most importantly you are removing conflict from the system. Rather than fight for players and eyeballs between club and country, we can move forward and grow the game together in an aligned season.”

The status quo is not working: time to be radical

If the financial turmoil of the last 12 months has proved anything, it is that the status quo is not working, underscoring the need to try something radical.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks however was to convince the clubs that it is in their best interests to give up a number of home fixtures that remain the lifeblood in terms of revenue for Premiership clubs.

Losing three home games is likely to be worth around £1 million in lost revenue, and although a 10-team league would mean clubs receiving more central funding from the RFU, that would be a marginal figure. Central to his strategy is to ensure that there is no more creep from the international game, aside from calls for a fourth Test match in the November window for the new world league blueprint that will see a northern versus southern hemisphere ‘grand final’ every two years.'

“The bet we are making is that we have got to convince broadcasters, sponsors and supporters that when you come to our games, they are going to be really good games with really good players featuring in hard fought contests,” added the source.

“Also with a greater concentration of players whose workload is managed then the clubs should be more competitive in the European/Champions Cup tournaments and potentially a world club championship.

'The game is challenged but we can make it work'

“People are saying that the game is in trouble, but what I am saying is that while the game is challenged, we think it can be made to work and I think it will be now.”

Massie-Taylor and Phillips were able to win the argument, with the new strategy to move to 10 teams approved at a Prem Rugby board meeting in May last year, well in advance of the financial strife that would overwhelm Wasps and Worcester later in the year.

The overhaul is not to stop at the league structure. It is understood that the minimum standard criteria is also to be re-written to set a standard that a club needs to demonstrate on and off the pitch to be a Premiership club beyond a 10,000-capacity stadium. A sporting commission and regulations on financial sustainability are to be put in place.

“If you're going to be a Premiership club, you need to have a competitive squad, a great coaching team, a really good supporter experience on match day, be sustainable financially, and have a social media following,” added the insider.

'If you're a fan of a club, you can expect a really premium experience'

“Basically, you are saying that if you're a fan of this club, you can expect a really premium experience and we're going to be really disciplined about making sure we have that.”

Which, interestingly, does not shut the door on promotion and relegation. Both Prem Rugby and the RFU are aligned on the need for a strong second-tier, likely to be renamed Prem 2, and movement in a 'franchise system' would be possible.

“We need a broad criteria on what it takes to become a Premiership club and then if a club wins on the pitch, then up they come,” the insider added. “But clearly, we are not as stable as we need to be, so we need to stabilise first and that will in turn attract new investment.”

The fixture schedule will also be revised, to ensure a sprinkling of ‘big game’ matches and local derbies enhance the narrative of the season in a coordinated fashion, while a hardship fund is to be established to help players who may lose their jobs during the transition.

“We haven’t got magic wands, but we are going to be in a much better place in a couple of years,” he added