16/10/2025 - NATHAN BOTHA
How France’s Top 14 rugby rights outpaced the English PREM

Over the past decade, the Top 14, France’s main rugby union club competition, has seen its media rights value grow continuously through its renewals with Canal+ to become Europe’s leading domestic rugby tournament. By contrast, England’s PREM Rugby (formerly the English Premiership) has seen its media rights stagnate under agreements with TNT Sports and ITV.

Notably, in the 2013-14 season, TNT Sports (then BT Sport) paid €13m more for English Premiership broadcast rights than Canal+ paid for the Top 14 in France. Since then, however, Canal+ has come to pay nearly three times as much for the Top 14’s rights compared to the amount earned by PREM Rugby.

While both leagues have retained the same broadcasters throughout this period, different market forces have impacted their rights growth trajectory. In France, after being the main broadcaster of soccer’s Ligue 1 for years, Canal+ is no longer involved with it. This has freed up budget and production resource for other sports, and so Top 14 has now become a key part of Canal+’s portfolio. However, in the UK, TNT Sports has not faced much competition for the PREM Rugby rights, which has allowed it to retain them without having to heavily increase its investment. TNT therefore still primarily focuses its budget on other major properties such as the English Premier League and UEFA Champions League.

The Top 14’s greater income allows it to attract global marquee players, albeit within the restrictions of its salary cap; the Top 14 salary cap is €10.8m (£9.4m) compared to £6.4m (€7.4m) in PREM Rugby, although both are subject to a number of credits and exclusions. As a result, clubs in the French league are able to retain French international players with higher salaries as well as attracting big name international players from other countries like Owen Farrell, Dan Biggar and Will Skelton.

English clubs, meanwhile, have seen greater financial instability, with three teams having folded since 2022, reducing the number of teams in the league to 10, resulting in fewer matches over the course of the season. As a result, PREM Rugby is considering suspending relegation for two years to bring the number of teams back up to 12.

These factors are likely impacting consumer fandom in the two countries. While rugby union has a similar popularity among sports fans in the UK and France (according to Ampere Sports – Consumer Q4 2024, 20% of UK sports fans follow the sport compared with 29% in France), the Top 14 is more popular with French rugby fans, 43% of whom follow the league, compared to just  27% of UK rugby fans who say they follow the PREM.

This higher popularity for the Top 14 in turn allows the league to continue to generate higher rights revenues in the next cycle, enabling the league to further entrench its position as Europe’s leading domestic rugby league.

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