Prem clubs have agreed to introduce a ‘salary floor’ – a minimum amount each team must spend on players’ wages – from next season in an attempt to keep the top flight as closely fought as possible.
Each club will be obliged to spend £5.4m a season on talent.
The salary cap – a £6.4m limit on squad spending, albeit with ‘credits’ on offer for home-grown talent and other factors which stretch the restriction to £7.8m – will remain the same.
Failure to spend up to the salary floor will be punished by a fine equivalent to the difference between a club’s squad spend and the lower limit, incentivising clubs to invest in their squads.
Several clubs are likely to need to pay more to meet the new lower figure.
Last season, Bristol boss Pat Lam estimated that eventual champions and the Bears’ semi-final conquerors Bath spent “close to £3m more than we have on our squad”., external
While bottom side Newcastle have brought in a raft of new players since energy drink giant Red Bull took over in August, they are still thought to be well short of a £5.4m wage bill.
While such prescriptions over squad spending are rare in UK sport, they are more common overseas.
The NRL, Australia’s elite rugby league competition, requires its clubs to spend at least 95% of its salary cap figure. In American Football’s NFL, it is set at 90%.
Prem Rugby hopes that, with relegation to be formally scrapped next season, greater payroll parity will improve the competitive balance of the top flight.
A divide has opened up in the table this season with four teams – Newcastle Red Bulls, Harlequins, Gloucester and Sale – cut adrift of the play-off race with seven rounds of the season to go.
Sixth-placed Saracens, who are eight points off the top four, could have their hopes of extending their campaign all but ended this weekend if they lose to leaders Northampton.
Introducing a salary floor is reflective of renewed confidence in the league’s future, with billionaire industrialist James Dyson having become co-owner of Bath this month and further investment in Prem clubs believed to be in the pipeline.
The league intends to add two teams to its current 10 in the 2029-30 season if a wrangle with the second-tier Champ can be smoothed out.
While it has been agreed that any new entrants to the Prem must complete a campaign in the Champ first, it is yet to be agreed how high a team would have to finish to demonstrate their on-field credentials, with Prem Rugby chief executive Simon Massie-Taylor believing a top-six finish and qualification for the Champ play-offs “would be the natural thing”.
Massie-Taylor is keen to build on this weekend’s ‘big game’ concept, with Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium earmarked as a possible host for neutral-venue Prem semi-finals from 2029.
Saracens are staging Saturday’s match against Saints at the 63,000-capacity Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, while Gloucester are hosting Leicester at Villa Park and Bristol will take their match against Harlequins to Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on the same day.
Harlequins put on two of their regular-season fixtures at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium, which also hosts June’s Prem final.