Sheffield Eagles Board React To RFL Indicative Grading
25/10/2023
Sheffield Eagles Board React To RFL Indicative Grading
The Board of Sheffield Eagles has welcomed the release of the indicative gradings earlier today by the Rugby Football League, which has seen Sheffield Eagles graded a Category B club with 8.36 points and sees the club ranked 22nd of the 35 professional clubs in the league.
Membership of the Betfred Super League in 2025 will be determined by the top 12 teams in the 2024 rankings, which will be announced at the culmination of the 2024 season.
The main purpose of the indicative grading process that has been running throughout 2023 is to give clubs a clear indication of their strengths and weaknesses, and the areas in which they need to improve to increase their score in 2024.
Grading was one of seven recommendations which were presented to Rugby League in the autumn of 2022 as part of IMG’s Reimagining of the sport rugby-league.com/uploads/docs/Reimagining Rugby League Presentation – MEDIA_27Sep2022.pdf, and which were supported by a substantial majority of clubs at all levels.
The Sheffield Eagles Directors have spent a significant amount of time to understand the grading process, with grading a standing agenda item for its meetings, and the Board has developed a sophisticated tracker to allow it to understand its current performance against the grading criteria and to plot the impact of improvement and investment into each of the five areas and return that those activities will generate.
We are also still in conversation with IMG and The RFL on certain areas that we believe further points should be awarded.
Grading has been designed to incentivise clubs to grow their fanbase, grow top-line non-centralised revenue, to better engage with fans, to be run in a best-in-class way, to invest both in their club and the sport in a sustainable manner, and to ensure strong governance.
Whilst the position of 22nd is the equivalent of 10th in Championship, lower than our league finish this year, may be seen as a concern to the club, it should be understood that several of the grading criterion draw on data which is averaged over the previous three seasons which, for the 2021 season and part of the 2022 season, has seen the Eagles playing outside of Sheffield. The return to city has heralded an improvement in several areas, which will see an improvement in our grading score in the future as the averaging process ceases to feature the seasons we have played outside of Sheffield, with key examples being;
Average league attendances doubling in 2023 compared to the 2021 season,
An increase in investment into the club driving turnover figures and allowing an investment into on-field performance with a 4th placed finish in 2023, compared to 12th in 2021,
The club’s Foundation increasing its turnover from just £264 in the 2019/20 financial year to over £180,000 in the 2022/23 financial year.
Additionally, the club has been investing in the key areas of improvement, with dedicated staff now in place to drive ticketing and merchandise sales and to improve the club’s online, digital and social media presence. There is also a full roster of events, corporate hospitality opportunities and other sponsorship opportunities to develop and expand income streams and some other very exciting long term developments in the pipeline which will contribute significantly to the club’s grading score as they come on stream, which gives the Board confidence for the future direction of the club and that will yield a significantly improved ranking score in the future.
Full details of the grading criteria were published in early 2023 - IMG & Rugby League Grading Criteria 2023.pdf (IMG & Rugby League Grading Criteria 2023.pdf (rugby-league.com)) – with clubs receiving the grading criteria handbook later in the spring which has also been published given the emphasis on transparency throughout the process Rugby League Grading Handbook Updated.pdf (rugby-league.com)
