The financial meltdown of London Irish, Wasps and Worcester has left the taxpayer out of pocket by more than £30m in unrecovered Covid loans.
The three Premiership clubs went out of business during the 2022-2023 campaign after taking £41.6m in contingency funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to cover the loss of revenue from matches and broadcast deals affected by the pandemic.
Worcester Warriors owed £15.7m in total, but the club’s administrators paid back £9.8m in June 2023.
Wasps’ administrators have repaid £300,000 of their £14.1m loan, while no money from London Irish’s £11.8m has yet been returned to the public purse, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report.
The DCMS says it expects to recover a further £7.3m to £11.1m in all from the trio and six other borrowers who have gone bust since receiving loans.
London Irish, Wasps and Worcester have all applied to return to the Championship when it expands from 12 to 14 clubs next season.
While all rugby creditors need to be repaid in full before they can return to professional rugby, government debt could still be on the books.
“Although progress has been made in recovering initial repayments, it is concerning that up to £29m of taxpayer money could be lost from borrowers who have since gone under,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee.
Clifton-Brown added that the DCMS should have a more detailed plan in place to recover the rest of the £123.8m loaned to Premiership clubs during the pandemic.
“DCMS should continue to keep a close eye on English rugby union clubs that have been teetering on the edge,” he added.
“Given the public money at stake, the department has more to do to show it has a long-term plan for managing and recovering loans across the sectors.”
“DCMS accepted that some borrowers were already financially risky before the pandemic,” noted the NAO in its report.
“It nonetheless considered it needed to provide loans to some organisations in both the culture and sports sectors despite their financial vulnerability as otherwise the bodies would almost certainly have failed, and its overriding intention was to protect the sectors through the pandemic.”
Premiership clubs accounted for 57% of the loans made to sport by the DCMS during the pandemic, with rugby union in total making up 64% of the total borrowed.
Rugby league (£24.2m), horse racing (£21.5m) and tennis (£14.3m) were the next highest beneficiaries, while non-league football clubs received £13.4m.
