THE RFL has announced almost £1 million loss for 2022 following the sharing of its Annual Report and Financial Statements for 2022.
The accounts have been shared with clubs and other members of the Rugby League Council ahead of next month’s Annual General Meeting with a loss of £987k for 2022 – following a profit of £1.059m for 2021 – and cash reserves of £7.9m.
On the flipside, turnover was up by 70% from £24.764m in 2021 to £42.152m in 2022, largely as a result of the World Cup, with sponsorship increasing from £1.668m to £5.744m, and Government funding from £8.351m to £11.030m, mainly due to grants received by Rugby League World Cup 2021 Limited for delivery of the Tournament in 2022.
Distributions to clubs were significantly reduced, from £8.356m in 2021 to £5.278m in 2022 – relating in the main to the reduction in distributions to Championship and League One Clubs resulting from the sport’s lower levels of revenue.
The Strategic Report accompanying the statements summarises the results: “The Board and Executive team had budgeted to make a profit in 2022 (£394k) in order to continue the financial turnaround from the previous three years and to build reserves for future to bolster the Group’s ability to absorb potential budget shocks in the coming years.
“Despite strict cost control and management of spend by the Executive, the Group has been faced with another challenging year.”
Four key areas are identified, of which Insurance is the most significant, with costs rising from £705,644 in 2021 to £1,430,627 in 2022 – the result of “a significant premium increase which was not able to be budgeted”. This cost is incurred on behalf of the whole game, as it arises from liability insurance placed by the RFL on behalf of its clubs.
Central Events are the next factor identified, with ticketing revenues for the 2022 Challenge Cup Final “below expectations”, and “a significant cost absorbed to stage the Mid-Season International…which gave the England Men’s and Women’s teams a chance to perform ahead of the RLWC2021 tournament held in the autumn”.
The RFL also had to deal with restructuring, as part of the planned realignment of the sport. RL Commercial, which was formed in 2022 as a joint venture between the RFL and Super League Europe, has been assigned the rights of all the commercial properties of the professional sport and is charged with selling those properties as well as staging the sport’s central events.
The resulting restructuring has produced “a smaller Executive team in 2023, at a lower cost than in prior years” – but “there were some one-off restructuring costs accounted for in 2022”.
Finally, the Strategic Report notes that the postponement of Rugby League World Cup to Autumn 2022 led to the refunding of “a substantial number of tickets which had already been purchased. Other revenue streams were also impacted in 2021 and did not recover in 2022 when the Tournament was rescheduled. Clearly, while the RLWC2021 was rationalised during the latter part of 2021, there was certainly a cost of keeping the Tournament functional during this period and retaining key members of the management team and staff”.
