https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/sep/09/rfu-to-axe-42-staff-a-week-after-new-264m-deal-with-premiership-rugby" rel="nofollow - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/sep/09/rfu-to-axe-42-staff-a-week-after-new-264m-deal-with-premiership-rugby

My 7 year old couldn't run a business this poorly.

In this article about TV audiences and sport.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/sep/09/euro-2024-and-olympics-fuel-summer-of-sports-tv-boom-to-buck-industry-trends" rel="nofollow - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/sep/09/euro-2024-and-olympics-fuel-summer-of-sports-tv-boom-to-buck-industry-trends

Goes the sentence "English club rugby is in an existentially unhealthy place."

1) PRL pay over 27% of their TV revenue only.  The RFU money goes direct and unadulterated to the clubs.

2) If you think this is a "giveaway" you have no idea what it involves or are not looking at it in a good faith way.  Attitudes like this are why I think there is no amount of money we should accept for selling our souls. Whatever we agree to people complain it is too much.  The RFU now have their total control and draconian game limits.  They control the players like the Premiership do the Dual Registered ones.  How many posters think that is a healthy thing for the game?

3) The RFU being grossly over staffed at HQ has little bearing on anything, and even if you do think this money should be spent on a different part of rugby (which is fair enough) I don't see why the RFU should employ non-rugby people simply for the sake of it, which appears to be what you are advocating for by comparing rugby expenditure (albeit at a level you don't like) against jobsworths at HQ with non-jobs.

The thing is though is that is fundamentally at the door of the RFU.

They chose to spend the first decade of professionalism fighting & suing the top clubs.  They've spent the next two decades paying them off and splitting them apart from the other senior clubs to divide and rule and by hook or by crook get their ring fenced franchises they wanted back in 2002 with the "Andrew Plan". 

The RFU could have recognised that England doesn't suit regions or franchises and took on the clubs by making sure they had a competition format that was inclusive & fair (as far as it can be).  The FFR did this, LNR is constituted as it is not just because the French have more solidarity but because FFR only authorised its creation with a more egalitarian format.  That was possible from the RFU too and they chose the route of fighting then bribing the clubs.

For instance I would agree with probably 80% of the good faith criticisms of the Prem clubs on here, but where I disagree with people who think they have done this in a vacuum.  It is always worth remembering that World Rugby fined and threatened to expel the RFU for the crime of allowing TV money from Sky in 1996 to go direct to the clubs, not be washed through the RFU accounts.  And that was at a time when the RFU and club relationship was at its probably lowest.  Having to fight for your existence does force people into positions they probably wouldn't have adopted otherwise.