As a result of an ongoing investigation, England’s Premiership Rugby leaders Leicester Tigers have received a fine from Premiership Rugby, but no points deduction. They were deemed to have gone above the league’s salary cap and were fined £309,841.06.
The club will receive no further punishment for the discrepancies, it was announced. Leicester Tigers also decided against an appeal. Premiership Rugby stated that it was happy with the cooperation that Leicester Tigers put into the investigation.
Leicester Tigers were being investigated for a period of four seasons, a span from 2016/17 through 2019/20. Premiership Rugby was looking at the financial details of that period, which saw the Tigers go above the cap between £55,000 and £147,000 across the course of the four seasons.
The issues arose from some payments not being declared to the Premiership Rugby salary cap director. The investigation revealed that Leicester Tigers and at least one commercial partner had issued payments to the image rights companies of players. Those payments should have been declared as salary to the league.
With the payments being counted as salary, the figures pushed Leicester Tigers over the salary cap during the four seasons.
Another part of the investigation looked at the non-disclosure of information by the Tigers in the 2020/21 season. However, the club had not gone above the salary cap for that season.
There were substantial changes made to Premiership Rugby salary cap rules in 2020. It left salary cap director Andrew Rogers with more powers to use throughout the investigation to look for the breaches.
In 2019, Saracens were found guilty of breaching the salary cap and were penalised with relegation and a suspension from European action. This prompted Premiership Rugby to implement more stringent rules.
