Although SA Rugby confirmed on Friday that the organisation has largely continued to run at a loss, there was a decisive statement that revealed that clarified that the R93m group loss in 2024 had already been wiped out with a strong start to 2025.

The loss was predominantly put down South African rugby’s continued investment into membership of northern hemisphere rugby competitions, but SARU is reportedly set to buck the global trend and report a profit of more than R100m for 2025.

In the last reporting cycle other international federations had lost as much as R913m with five other Tier One nations reporting losses of between R588m and R181m. The next ‘best’ performance after South Africa’s was a loss of R126m, members were told.

SA Rugby countering losses

Overall, in 2024, Group commercial revenues exceeded R1,5bn for the first time (R1,552bn), up from R1,440bn in 2023. Total income with the addition of grants (principally from World Rugby of R186m) took total income to R1,76bn. Revenues for 2025 are forecast to exceed R2bn.

The 7,8% increase in revenues was attributable to increased broadcast revenues in a non-Rugby World Cup year, competition sponsorships and a strong performance in merchandising receipts which more than doubled from R30m to R62m.

Expenses increased from R1,816bn to R1,871bn. The 2,9% increase was put down to investment in hosting three World Rugby tournaments (R133m), a R24m increase in player image rights (to R148m), and the costs associated with the mooted private equity transaction (R13m).

Total expenditure attributable to the northern hemisphere international franchise competition was R446m while SA Rugby was still able to make a full distribution to member unions. Spending on the world ranked number 1 team, the Springboks, and other national teams, was R433m, a reduction of R27m on the Rugby World Cup winning year of 2023 (R460m).

Oberholzer said the financial outlook beyond next year was equally healthy with strong revenues forecast for 2026 with new competition formats in the pipeline.

“The income that SA Rugby generates all goes back into supporting the growth and promotion of rugby in the country,” he said.

“It allows us to fund Springbok campaigns, expand women’s rugby programmes and fuel our other national teams. It pays for our members’ activities in their communities as well as their professional teams. It underwrites our rugby safety programme BokSmart; supports referee and coaching development and our age group competitions as well as development programmes and allows us turn on sell-out Test match entertainment and our domestic competitions.

“Ultimately, every rand that we earn goes into powering the game in some shape or form and after a challenging 2024 we have a good news story to tell our South African rugby community as we look ahead.”

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Src: TheSouthAfrican.com - https://rugga.co.za/springboks/sa-rugby-reports-r93m-group-loss-but/