Sunday evening, the president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR), Florian Grill, published a long letter on his Facebook account to respond to criticism from his opponents Bernard Laporte, Mourad Boudjellal, Guilhem Guirado and Marie-Pierre Pagès, former treasurer of the FFR. The manager was particularly concerned about the financial health of his institution, which has a deficit of 40 million euros over the last two seasons.
Questioned by our colleagues from Midi Libre, Florian Grill returned to the state of the finances of the FFR. “I am the owner of an SME. I know how to read the accounts and I know how to make decisions to reduce the size without affecting the teams at Marcoussis or altering sporting performance. All while freeing up resources for our clubs and our four objectives. It’s called “managing”. I’m not sure it was handled before,” he asserts.
He continued: “I kept sounding the alarm. For seven years we have been saying that we are going to the wall. This Federation has only made operating deficits. It was crazy to sign with CVC. They gave us short-term money but today they take 14% of regular income. I am unassailable on that. Take a look at all the reports from the steering committees, I kept saying that we were heading into a wall.”
In March 2021, the Six Nations Tournament and the CVC investment fund formalized “a long-term strategic partnership” which provided for CVC to invest more than 400 million euros over five years. According to projections, the FFR hoped to receive €15 million per year for five years for this concession of TV rights, a sum to which was added revenue from the marketing of the rights.
The FFR steering committee, then chaired by Bernard Laporte, approved this draft agreement between the Six Nations and CVC, former F1 financier and shareholder of the Pro 14 (the former Celtic League, which brings together the Welsh provinces, Irish, Italian, Scottish and South African) and the English Rugby Championship. In total, this fund has already invested more than 800 million euros in rugby.
