How Much French Rugby Clubs Really Spend

Deep diving the vast expenditure of Top 14 rugby teams: Players, staff and more...

This is the 2nd in a 3-part series breaking down the 2023/24 LNR financial report revealing the financial dealings of Top 14 and ProD2 clubs. You can read part 1, which looks at how the clubs generate their income, here.

How Much Do They Spend?

Each Top14 team spends a different amount during the season, with the gap between the top spender and the bottom spender being in the tens of millions of euros.

The LNR report revealed the median average expenditure in the league was 37.8 million, but the top club was spending 62.5 million whilst the bottom club spend just 18.3 million - a near 45 million euro disparity.

The report does not name the clubs in this table, however from other tables in the report we can conclude that the top club is Toulouse and the bottom club is Oyonnax.

What Do They Spend The Money On?

The single greatest draw on Top 14 purses is player salaries. These account for, on average, 28% of teams budgets. By comparison, coaches’ salaries account for just 4% of expenses.

The second highest expense is ‘social charges’ which some would argue should count as salaries as it includes things like national insurance.

The below graphic reveals how the budget for each club breaks down - again without naming the clubs. This time, all salaries are classed together rather than being split by players/coaches/other staff.

We see that the top club (Toulouse) spent an incredible 20.9 million euros on salaries last season, nearly 5 million more than anyone else. They also spent a whopping 31.7 million on ‘other charges’, over 10 million more than anyone else. These charges likely include academies, coaching development, women’s teams and more.

Oyonnax, by stark contrast, spent less on total salaries than Toulouse spent on social charges alone.

The Salary Cap Question

The Top 14 operates to a salary cap of 10.7 million euros per season. However, there are several credits and exemptions clubs can apply which allow them to spend, in some cases, significantly more than this.

Overall, 50% of the Top14 clubs spent more that 10.7 million on player wages. This phenomenon is not unique to France; most salary caps in rugby have loopholes that teams can exploit.

The LNR report reveals the budget (more accurately, the expenditure) and the player wages of each team and where they rank overall. It is understood that Lyon’s expenditure was so high because of capital investment in facilities such as stadium and gym renovations.

The table shows that Toulouse spent 13.4 millions euros on player wages, around 25% more than the theoretical salary cap. The major reason they are able to do this is because of how many players they contribute to the France national squad - as was revealed in part 1 of this series.

The percentage of total spend on player wages is broken down in the graph below. It highlights how the top clubs (and Lyon) spend increasingly more money on things other than player wages compared to the mid table clubs.

Spend vs Results

With the financial data for the 2023/24 season now available, we are able to clash this against the performance data (wins & log points) to find the correlation of spend to success, who overachieved and who underachieved.

The first analysis is Top 14 wins per million euros spent. We use Top 14 results only as it is like-for-like opposition, whereas Champions/Challenge cup sees a more variance.

This analysis reveals Perpignan and Stade Francais significantly over performed last season, which gives context for the latter’s struggles this season. UBB also performed much better in wins per million than their final opponents Toulouse.

Montpellier, on the other hand, drastically under performed compare to the rest. this is emphasised by the second analysis: log points vs player wages. Above the dotted line is considered good, below it considered bad.

Interestingly, Toulouse have gone from one of the worst teams in the previous analysis to one of the best in this. Stade Francais once again over perform, as do UBB. Overall, we see there is a strong correlation between player wages and success on the pitch, with the top 4 of the top 5 spenders all making the play-offs last season.

Oyonnax, the club promoted from the ProD2, were the worst performers. They attempted to survive in the Top 14 with just a 6.1 million player wage bill, 1.7 million less than anyone else but still nearly 1 million more than the highest spending ProD2 club (Brive). Vannes, the club promoted from the ProD2, spent just 3.6 million. This shows the huge discrepancy between the two divisions.

Remarkably, Dax managed to achieve a ProD2 play-off spot - meaning they could have been promoted - with the lowest player salaries in the league at just 1.7 million euros.

Finally, we look at money spent on areas other than player salaries vs log points. This again shows how Toulouse and Lyon were significant outliers in this facet, whereas the rest are reasonably closely clustered to the line.

It does suggest that there is little correlation between spend not on players and results. 4 of the top 5 spenders did make the play-offs, but Toulouse’s vast expenditure did not result in a similarly large gap to the opposition in the table. However, the context to this is that Toulouse not only won the league by a record score in the final but also won the Champions Cup. Ultimately, this stat can be heavily skewed by clubs making large capital investments, as Lyon have shown.

Summary

We have learned that the average spend by clubs in the Top 14 is 37.8 millions euros, but there are very large discrepancies between the clubs. Toulouse spend vastly more than anyone else on both wages and other areas of their organisation.

An average of 28% of total spend is on player wages, and 50% of all clubs are able to exceed the 10.7 million euro salary cap. There is a strong correlation between money spent and results on the pitch, with the top spending club winning the league and the bottom spending club (Oyonnax) being relegated.

In the final part of this series, we will look at the profits and losses of top 14 clubs and consider if the LNR report shows that the league may be financially unsustainable.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my weekly Top 14 podcast capturing all the latest news, results and gossip in French rugby!