Ranking the budgets of the 14 best clubs for the 2022-2023 season

What are the budgets of the top 14 clubs? Saturday 3 September marked the launch of 124^e A copy of the French Rugby Union Championship. This division features 14 teams that can all claim the Prinus Shield at the end of the season. How are the budgets of these 14 teams formed? Below is a ranking of the top 14 clubs according to the budget they have.

Considered the “World’s Best Tournament”, it is the 14th most attractive league. In fact, many foreign players (New Zealanders, Australians, etc.) come to France in order to develop in the various teams in the territory. The top 14 teams gather the best 14 teams in French rugby, like many formations that can dream of the title of champion of France, especially because of the running of this tournament. In fact, it is divided into two parts: the first phase which is called the “regular” of the home and away matches (26 days total) and the second part called the “final” phase, which includes the 6 best teams from the first. part. It is played in a direct elimination, as the last match, final at the Stade de France.

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The sporting ambitions of the top 14 clubs

The French Rugby Union Championship is not only one of the toughest, but also one of the most homogeneous. In particular, thanks to its formula, the top six teams of the regular stage retained all their chances of winning the Stade de France title at the end of the final. For example, during the 2017-2018 fiscal year, Castres Olympique, 6^{The tenth} From the rating at the end of the normal stage by 2 small points before 7^{The tenth}Finally, he won the championship.

In fact, the sporting level of the 14 teams in the tournament is very uniform. Only Stade Toulousain managed to stand out from the other teams. With 21 wins, Rouge et Noir broke the record for the 14th most successful.

However, over the last 10 seasons, there have been 7 different champions: Stade Toulousain (2012, 2019, 2020), Castres Olympique (2013 and 2018), RC Toulon (2014), Stade Français (2015), Racing 92 (2016). ), and ASM Clermont Auvergne (2017) and Montpellier (2022). This shows how difficult it is for different teams to raise the Prinus shield. Every year, the struggle for the coronation rages and expectations are going well. Now less than a year to the Rugby World Cup in France, very smart who can say for sure the name of the big winner on the evening of June 17th at the Stade de France!

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How are the budgets of the top 14 clubs formed?

The average budget of the 14 clubs for this season is €29.852 million. This year, the club with the biggest budget is not Stade Français, like last season, but Stade Toulousain. If sometimes the richest teams are the ones that play in the top spots, then this is not a generality. This is how club budgets are configured:

the tickets

Ticket revenue is an important component of the budget of the top 14 clubs, and generally accounts for approximately 20% of the budget. However, this revenue varies for different clubs and the average attendance at their stadiums. The previous year, on 22^e On tournament day, the 14 teams had a record attendance of nearly 16,000 spectators per game. Which makes it among the most attractive leagues in Europe. During boxing days (matches over the Christmas holidays), average attendance increases by 30% compared to other tournament days. Among the largest audiences in the top 14 are Bordeaux-Beagle (24341), Toulouse (21919), Clermont (17012), La Rochelle (16000) and Bayonne (14,495).

TV rights

Television rights also account for about 20% of budgets. The marketing of the television rights is guaranteed by the National Rugby League (LNR). Canal+, France’s historic rugby broadcaster, holds the TV rights for the 2019-2023 cycle, at €97 million per season. Most recently, the audiovisual rights for the top 14 channels were reallocated to Canal+ for an additional four seasons from 2023, for a total of €113.6 million per season, LNR explained. After that, the TV broadcasting rights are redistributed between each club. LNR, wanting to maintain a tournament as homogeneous as possible, tries to create an even distribution. It is clear that sports results are taken into account, but their impact is less compared to what is practiced in other sports such as football.

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Care

Sponsorship contracts are the main source of income for the various Top14 clubs. Depending on the teams, these partnerships can represent up to 50% of the club’s budget. So it is of crucial importance. Plus, with the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France underway, you should never run out of rugby news! According to the study Nielsen SportsRugby is one of the 3 major sports of interest among the French. According to this same study, during the previous season, the top 14 club sponsors were Natixis, Capri Sun, Crédit Agricole, Groupama and Fiducial.

Other Components of a Budget for Top 14 Clubs

Clubs participating in a European competition also receive different amounts of money depending on their background. For example, the winner of the Champions Cup, La Rochelle, received 1.2 million euros. A significant portion of its budget is throughout the year. Finally, club budgets are generally supplemented by promotion and, to a lesser extent, by public subsidies.

Ranking the 14 best budgets for the 2022-2023 season

First of all, we note that there are certainly significant differences between the budgets, but they remain reasonable, especially if we compare them to other sports, such as football. This homogeneity of budgets contributes to the uncertainty of the tournament.

Among the biggest budgets, we find the main contenders for the title and in particular Toulouse Stadium (€43,687 million) and Toulon (38,290 million euros). They arrived last season, Montpellier and Castres, totaling 7 times in a row^e and 11^e Championship budgets, which once again shows that budget isn’t everything.

The Paris stadium It climbed to second place in this ranking (41.378 million euros), evidence of the ambitions demonstrated by Hans-Peter Wild, the Swiss businessman and billionaire who took over the management of the club in 2017. The new policy set by this investor is accompanied by the resumption of work. From Jean-Point Stadium for 10 years and great efforts have been made to improve training. After a disappointing season 2021-2022 punctuated by 11^e Put in the order that the “Stadistes” are aiming at least in the top six.

After that, six clubs have a budget between €35 million and €29 million. These last ones are also contenders for the top six, or even more. among them, Clermont and Lions They will make sure to get back on their feet after a complicated season that didn’t allow them to see the final stages.

Finally, at the bottom of the ranking, are the three smallest budgets – namely BayonneAnd the Brave And the Perpignan You are likely to struggle to survive among the elite.