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Tony Rowe says it is too difficult for clubs to secure investment when the threat of relegation looms - Getty Images/Dan Mullan
In almost 30 years at the helm, Tony Rowe has had better weeks with Exeter.
Rowe oversaw the Chiefs’ promotion from the Championship, their first Premiership title, and their league and European double, but, last Sunday, the chairman and chief executive gave his playing squad and coaches both barrels after a record Premiership loss, to Gloucester at Kingsholm.
Days later, both Rob Hunter, the head coach of just over a month, and Ali Hepher, an assistant, were suspended pending a review into both the heavy defeat and the season as a whole. Rob Baxter will return to a front-line coaching role for the remainder of the season.
Rowe is a pragmatic sort; for him, it is a case of onwards and upwards. What’s done is done; action has been taken. He believes that Baxter is one of Europe’s best coaches so the director of rugby will return to what he does best. The rest was not easy but it is time to be positive, he says, backing what he believes to be as good a crop of young players as Exeter have ever seen.
But, in almost 30 years at the helm, Rowe has never known a financial landscape like the one in which English rugby currently finds itself. Last week, Telegraph Sport exclusively revealed the Premiership’s franchise plan, which seeks to abolish relegation and retain promotion – a strategy which has already gathered steam. The primary reason for the revamp was that finding investment with relegation hanging over teams had started to prove impossible. And if the plight of Wasps, Worcester and London Irish has taught us anything, it is that the Premiership needs cash.
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Head coach Rob Hunter was suspended by Rowe following Exeter’s record defeat at Gloucester - Getty Images/Bob Bradford - CameraSport
Along with Baxter, Rowe is the architect of one of English rugby’s great success stories. But with the Chiefs languishing in ninth place in the table, he is now experiencing how tough it is to attract investment when the threat of relegation exists.
“Franchising is the way forward for English rugby,” Rowe tells Telegraph Sport. “We need it. English rugby is on its knees. Anyone who says it isn’t, is telling a lie. The RFU has to wake up and smell the coffee. It earns the majority of its funds from our assets – and we are losing money. They need to let us go to franchise and not interfere and then they’ll always have our assets to earn money from. If they don’t, I don’t know what the consequences will be, but they won’t be good.
“Relegation does not really help anyone. Before the franchise talk began, I believed in promotion and relegation. That’s where [Exeter] came from. You have to have an opportunity for someone to come up. I’m in favour of promotion without relegation; allowing clubs to invest and work hard to get themselves up into the top league.
“We want to get the league back up to 12, 14 and then when you’re at 16 you’ll have two conferences of eight – with play-offs top and bottom. We have all agreed that there would be no limit on the number of clubs. You have the 10 clubs now, but we want Wasps, Worcester and London Irish back. We want to see the likes of Ealing, Coventry up there... and Yorkshire, wow. One of the biggest rugby counties in the country without a team in the top division. It’s barren.
“Exeter are the lowest in the Premiership we’ve ever been. Ever. Including the first year we were in it. And, for the first time ever, I’ve experienced the problems of the threat of relegation hanging over you, which other clubs have reported before. I’ve had sponsors say to my salespeople, who have come back to me and said: ‘So-and-so is quite happy to do his sponsorship for next year but if we get relegated he wants to renegotiate.’ I can’t run a business like that. There’s an opportunity here with franchising for people to invest their money and for it to be secure.
“To do away with relegation has to be a positive for English rugby. If people making the decisions at Twickenham cannot see that the old-fashioned way is not the way to encourage investment... nobody is going to invest large sums of money into a Championship club with the risk of them being relegated back into that league after a year. It is not going to happen.”
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Exeter Chiefs celebrate winning the Premiership in 2017 - Getty Images/David Rogers
Exeter, arguably, are the club who have benefited most from the English league pyramid system. Rowe, in a sense, would be more than willing to bite the hand that fed him, because he believes there is no other option. Since Covid, the Chiefs, profitable in 2019-20, have lost £20 million in revenue.
“Covid knocked the stuffing out of us,” he says. “We need to get ourselves back on track financially and, when you look at world sport, franchising is the way it’s going.”
Rowe’s position is unique as he is one of the only Premiership club owners to have experience of English rugby’s second tier. Exeter’s chairman believes this move will be “a fantastic opportunity for Championship clubs” who themselves might find it easier to attract vital investment to the league. Telegraph Sport understands that the Tier 2 board are in favour of expansion of professional rugby but there must be sporting as well as financial considerations. Rowe believes, however, that a promoted Championship club would require around £25 million to compete in the Premiership.
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Rowe shows off Exeter’s Premiership and Champions Cup trophies from 2020, but the tables have since turned on the club’s fortunes - Getty Images/David Rogers
“I’ve been in business for 53 years: would I look at spending £25 million on the basis that in a year’s time I could get demoted? No, no, no,” Rowe says.
“In 2009-10, the playing budget of Exeter was about £2 million, in our last season in the Championship. We had already invested in Sandy Park and we had to increase the capacity from 7,500-8,000 to 10,000 to gain entry into the Premiership, but we were entering the league very much like the clubs at the moment. The entry criteria currently is that the Championship clubs can come in with a 5,000-seater stadium and they have three years to build it up to 10,000.
“If those rules stay the same, then we in 2009 were pretty much the same as Championship clubs now. Now here is the big ‘but’. Back in our first year in the Premiership, the salary cap was only £4 million. The level of rugby in the Championship today is far inferior to the Premiership. The standard in the Premiership is fantastic. We were able to make the step from Championship to the Premiership because we were able to quickly increase our ground capacity, the jump from £2 million to £4 million in salary cap was manageable – we only had a £3 million budget for two seasons and Rob [Baxter] managed the money wisely before we could buy a P [Perpetual] share to give us the funding – and the playing chasm between the two leagues was not what it is now.
“Most Championship clubs today are probably spending £2 million on players at most. The Premiership salary cap is £6.4 million, but it’s plus, plus, plus [dispensations for academy players]. And, if they’re going to go into the Premiership, they’ll have to spend a few million on increasing the capacity of their stadium.
“The P share when we bought it was worth only £5 million because it was only a third of the income. Today it is 50 per cent and that share is valued at £14 million, £15 million. So, an investor looking to put into a club, to get into the Premiership and a franchise, they’re looking at spending around £25 million. The big investors are not going to invest money in a club that could be in the Championship. They want to be in the Premiership with the TV coverage and the media coverage.
“If investors want to take a gamble, they’d go to the bookies and put their money on a horse, wouldn’t they?”
If the Premiership clubs have their way, to further Rowe’s analogy, the league hopes to know the winner before the race is run.
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