Just how rich is Leinster Rugby — and should it win more?

Times

a day ago

When the final whistle blew in Croke Park last Saturday, crowning Leinster as the United Rugby Championship winners in front of 46,000 fans, the natural celebration was palpably tinged with relief.
The team had developed a frustrating habit of falling short at critical moments, losing three European finals in a row in 2022, 2023 and last year to French opposition.
There was a similar trend in the United Rugby Championship.
It led Donncha O'Callaghan, the former Munster and Ireland player, to remark — perhaps mischievously — that 'Leinster are up there with the national children's hospital, in terms of return on investment'. Throughout the season, commentators in England and France liberally attributed budgets to the club that backed up his assessment.
Ordinarily Irish rugby treats finances like the third secret of Fatima. Yet Shane Nolan, chief executive of Leinster Rugby, is a new broom at the club. A former Google Ireland executive, he is somewhat exasperated by the misinformation circulating around the club's finances.
According to Nolan, Leinster's revenue falls into three buckets, very broadly speaking: ticket sales, commercial revenue and the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU).
'Typically we'd be running on about €8 million or €9 million of ticketing revenue, but that'll be above €10 million this year,' he said, which was a consequence of being able to sell more tickets at the Aviva Stadium than the RDS Arena.
In previous seasons the club attracted 15,000 for a normal league match in the RDS, but that has risen to 18,000 or so in Lansdowne Road. Season ticket sales surged from 12,000 in previous seasons to 15,000 this season, a 25 per cent increase.
While they still haven't counted the revenue from the past three weeks, which included a quarter-final, semi-final and final — about 25 per cent of the gate from which goes to Leinster — it likely means the club has hit a record for ticket revenue this year.
Sponsorship and commercial income — from jersey sponsorship, match-day hoardings, merchandising and other sources — grew to about €10 million this year, which brings the province's self-generated revenue for last season to about €20 million.
The third source of money is where things get a little complicated. The IRFU distributes revenue from the Six Nations, television contracts and competition income from the URC and the European Rugby Champions Cup.
It provides support in a complicated array of direct grants and other supports, and all get treated differently by the provinces for accounting purposes, making comparisons difficult.
Broadly speaking, the value of total IRFU supports, according to sources familiar with the matter, works out at between €11 million and €12 million annually for each of the provinces.
This brings Leinster's budget this year to slightly more than €30 million.
Munster, for example, declared this month that its revenues were up last year from €18 million to €20 million, though it is not clear how much of that was from ticket sales and commercial revenue, and how much of the IRFU's financial supports were included in that figure. The all-in figure for Munster is likely to be higher, though still short of Leinster's.
Ulster Rugby is the only club that publishes a set of financial accounts, These date back to 2023, when the province had income of £12 million and expenditure of £12.9 million, running a loss of about £900,000. That figure was made up of £4.6 million in grants, £2.7 million in sponsorship and £3 million in match-day income. There is a significant sum of IRFU support not reflected in those accounts, meaning that for comparison purposes Ulster's annual budget is likely higher than that.
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Connacht doesn't publish financial accounts but does disclose figures at its annual meetings. According to sources familiar with those figures, the province earns somewhere between €5 million and €6 million in self-generated commercial revenues, including ticketing, sponsorship and other sources combined. Adding the rough figure of €11 million in IRFU supports gives Connacht a budget of about €16 million.
Even allowing for the difficulty of comparing apples with oranges, Leinster is clearly the healthiest Irish province, yet Nolan is quick to point out that some of the chatter about it being 'the best resourced club in the world' is wildly off base, especially compared with clubs in France and Japan.
A recent report by the French Professional Championship Control Commission, which oversees the finances of its clubs in the Top 14 and the Pro D2, shows that many French clubs have substantially bigger budgets than Leinster.
That report put Toulouse's budget at €62.5 million, while Stade Francais had €46.1 million, Toulon €42.3 million, and La Rochelle and Bordeaux Bègles €40.8 million each. Three of the last four winners of the European Rugby Champions Cup — two of them Leinster's conquerors — have budgets at least a third bigger than Leinster's.
An independent review carried out in England in September last year showed that in the 2022-23 season, the best-funded clubs were Harlequins and Saracens, which had budgets of £26.8 million and £23.2 million respectively. Northampton, which beat Leinster this season in the semi-finals of the European Rugby Champions Cup, had a budget of £21.9 million.
But a budget is only half the story — what really matters is how the clubs spend their money, and that has been a big part of the debate around Leinster's last four years.
A great deal of the club's budget is spent on the ordinary costs of running a professional rugby team, and several million more is spent on grassroots rugby throughout the province. Yet in truth, only one number matters at Leinster: what is spent on players.
The root of the perception is that Leinster has an unfair and disproportionate advantage over not just its Irish peers but also its French and English rivals.
That stems from the IRFU central contracting structure, which takes a large chunk of the cost of star players off a province's balance sheet and into the national team budget.
Were the number of central contracts equally distributed, that perhaps would not be an issue, but Leinster has 11 central contracts while the other provinces only have three between them. Ulster has none.
For 11 of its first-team players, Leinster must pay only 30 per cent of their wages — though this will rise to 40 per cent next year.
It allows Leinster, the critics say, to go out and boost its squad with superstars of the game, including New Zealand's Jordie Barrett, South Africa's RG Snyman and the French prop Rabah Slimani. This year it will welcome another galactico, Rieko Ioane.
Leinster fans argue that the club has less control over centrally contracted players, causing huge disruptions around Six Nations time. This summer, the club will have about two dozen players away on international duty with Ireland and the Lions.
Fans of provincial rivals argue that this is a high-class problem, especially with the kind of money that can buy in world-class players to smooth over those bumps.
So just how big a budget for player salaries does Leinster have, when you include the IRFU contribution?
In May this year The Daily Telegraph newspaper claimed that 'one informed source proposed a figure as high as €17 million'.
Nolan refused to be drawn on the precise value of the playing budget for Leinster, yet based on conversations with several people familiar with the matter, the club's total salary bill is somewhere north of €12 million.
That is considerably higher than for Leinster's provincial peers. Ulster's playing bill is said to be about £6.5 million, which has been significantly trimmed down from £7.5 million in previous seasons. Munster has also been trimming its wages, and according to informed sources its total bill today is only slightly higher than Ulster's. Some figures for Connacht have put its playing bill at between €5 million and €6 million.
Meanwhile, English clubs have to operate within a salary cap of £6.4 million, though they are allowed some freedom to spend on marquee players, up to £7.8 million.
That independent review of English clubs showed that the entire wage bill for England's top three clubs was quite high — Harlequins (£15.1 million), Saracens (£14.9 million) and Bath (£14.8 million), but that included every member of staff at the club.
A report by the Professional Championship Control Commission this year put the player bill for Toulouse at €13.4 million, La Rochelle had €12.3 million, Racing 92 €12.1 million and Bordeaux Bègles €11 million.
Leinster clearly sits at the top table, far above its provincial rivals, and at least on a par with the teams in France that it regards as its true rivals. Moreover, its financial wherewithal is expected to grow in the coming years, as the capacity of a redeveloped RDS grows to nearly 21,000.
Nolan believes the number of season tickets, one of the main bedrocks of any sports team's finances, can grow. 'We still have massive upside, I think,' he said. 'We're moving into a 21,000-seater stadium and we want that to be sold out every match.'
He points to Leinster's arch nemesis, La Rochelle. 'They have a 16,000-seater stadium and a seven-year waiting list for a season ticket. It's the hottest ticket in town and that's what we want the RDS to be for us. There is clearly demand we can tap into.'
Nolan also believes there is room to grow the commercial and sponsorship revenue significantly.
John Feehan, former chief executive of the Six Nations, now boss of Basketball Ireland, does not buy into the 'expensive failure' narrative.
'Fans have incredible expectations, but it doesn't matter how much money you've got, you can't just expect to win everything in sight,' he said. 'The reality is that but for a dropkick being a foot or two closer to the goals, or a penalty being taken, Leinster could have two more European cups.
'Money doesn't guarantee success — all it guarantees is to get to the place where you should be at least contending.'
James Downey, a former professional rugby player turned agent, who has turned out in Ireland, England and Italy, says a whole season cannot be defined by a single game, no matter how good or bad.
'Leinster still won 26 games, lost two games in the URC and had one bad game against Northampton,' he said. 'You've got 12 Irish Lions and the majority are Leinster players. Is it a success? I think it is.'Yet Leinster fans and players want one thing above all else: that fifth European star on their jersey. 'If they'd lost the URC and won Europe, everyone would be much happier,' Downey said.
'Winning is a habit, and so is losing. For a lot of these players, they won't have won anything with Leinster before. This year has got to be a success in terms of getting over that line and getting that trophy.'
Munster legend O'Callaghan's characterisation sticks in the craw for many Leinster fans precisely because it is rooted in an undeniable truth.
The national children's hospital is slated to open in 2026, which will give Leinster one more crack at shaking off those comparisons by landing European success.