Buried under James O’Connor’s latest tribulations in the media yesterday was what seemed like pretty momentous news: the ARU and RUPA had come to their first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for almost a decade.
In the media we’d been told that the players had made big sacrifices, but when you read the the details of the new agreement here, it looked like RUPA had got one over on the ARU by upping their share of revenue overall.
So what actually happened?
Having dug some dirt and talked to a few in the know, here’s the nitty gritty.
Yes, RUPA did cede some money
- By match payments being reduced from $13,100 to $10,000 for players on a top up, and $12,000 for those not on a top-up (and per diems being reduced when they’re on tour) the ARU will save around $1 million per year over the next four years
- Due to an income bonanza from the Lions this year, RUPA may have been entitled to around a $3 million ‘bonus’ as their share in the revenue (we say may because this could have been in dispute). They will forgo a claim on this money and agree to an ongoing ledger agreement, where overpayments in some years are balanced off against underpayments in others.
But in return they got
- An increase in the GPR (Gross Player Revenue) from 26 per cent to 29 per cent. This won’t actually see an increase the amount the players will get in the near future as the size of the overall pie is currently shrinking. But if/when the pie grows, so will the players’ slice of it. The trick is that up until now there had been lower limits set in dollars as to what the player GPR could be, and this turned out to be higher than the headline 26 per cent share RUPA had in the previous CBA.
- A whole bunch of player payment-related issues now placed within the CBA that weren’t there before – salary caps, minimum wages, Sevens wages (including women for the first time), the Rebels, a novice player draft etc. By being out of the CBA before, RUPA had no say over them. This gives RUPA far more control in the total rugby remuneration picture going forward.
In summary
The ARU have achieved a slight reduction in the total player salary bill and absolute clarity on what the players will cost it over the next two years (which they need because the ARU finances are in such a perilous state). RUPA has taken a bit of a haircut in this short term (the CBA will be revisited on a 2+2 year basis), but set itself up for when the good times come again, which both parties need to work together to create.
