All 10 Premiership rugby clubs in debt as losses rise to £36.5m

All 10 clubs in England's Premiership, the top-flight rugby union league, are in debt. Six of them are balance-sheet insolvent, meaning they owe more than they own. That is the central finding of the third Leonard Curtis Rugby Finance Report, published on Tuesday 3 November 2026.

The report looks at the 2024-25 season, and the picture is tougher than the year before. Combined losses across the 10 clubs rose from £34m to £36.5m. Spread out, that works out at an average loss of £3.7m per club each year, or about £308,000 a month.

Income is moving the wrong way. Total revenues fell from £182.2m to £178.9m, while total wage bills grew from £125.9m to £129.8m. Put simply, clubs were paying more to players and staff while bringing in less money.

Debt rose too. Combined debt went from £342.5m to £366.1m. The earlier Leonard Curtis report had already flagged the rise to £342.5m in 2023/24, up from £329.8m the season before.

Four clubs escaped the insolvency tally: Northampton, Gloucester, Leicester and Saracens. Northampton, Gloucester, Leicester and Saracens are the only Premiership clubs that are not balance-sheet insolvent, and all four still carry debt like the rest of the league.

The figures also have a timing issue. They cover 2024-25, which came before new owners arrived at Newcastle (backed by Red Bull), Bath (Dyson) and Exeter (Black Knight). Any effect those takeovers have on the numbers will only show up in later seasons. That is a question for future reports, not something the current figures can answer.

The league has bigger plans on the horizon. Premiership Rugby wants to grow from 10 clubs to 12 by the 2029-30 season. Any new franchise will have to spend at least one season in the Championship, the second tier, before it can move up.

The report is built from publicly available figures. Leonard Curtis has tracked the clubs' finances for several years. The earlier edition found cumulative losses of £176.9m across the ten-year period it assessed.

For supporters, the question is simple. Can clubs keep paying players more while their income falls? Every club in the league has to answer that, whether it is in the black or in the red. The next set of accounts will show whether the new owners have changed the trend, but for now the numbers point the other way.