A repeat of last season’s Premiership final between the Northampton Saints and Bath Rugby kicks off the new season tonight. (Credit: Premiership Rugby)

After two years of preparation, Premiership Rugby is ready for lift-off with a relaunch of its new brand strategy for the 2024-25 season that gets underway tonight.

Following a difficult period off the field – during which Wasps and Worcester Warriors went out of business and were relegated from the top flight – questions were raised about the league’s governance system. It was clear major changes were needed.

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After consultations and collaborations with key stakeholders, Premiership Rugby is finally ready for rebirth this campaign.

The 2023-24 season was seen as a “transitionary year” for the Premiership, as well as the last year of the Professional Game Agreement (PGA), more crucially.

As an evolution to the PGA, Premiership Rugby recently announced a long-term partnership with the RFU national governing body and the Rugby Players Association (RPA) to revamp the governance of English domestic rugby union and create financial stability for the game.

The three organizations have teamed up to create a new Men’s Professional Game Partnership (MPGP) after 18 months of collaboration.

To lead the eight-year partnership, a new Professional Rugby Board (PRB) has been established to replace the Professional Game Board to bring all rugby decisions under one roof to oversee the strategy.

The trio will collaborate on several joint initiatives to grow revenues and manage costs in the overall system.

Notably, this will include a joint marketing agreement to enhance the domestic game commercially by increasing attendance and TV viewership.

Outlining the JMA agreement, Rob Calder, Premiership Rugby’s chief growth officer, tells Sportcal (GlobalData Sport): “If we can bring these two entities together – the RFU and Premiership Rugby – and build a future together, rather than maybe what's been the case historically, where they did their thing and we did our thing, but lean on each other and work together as allies to grow rugby, we're excited about it.

“The joint marketing agreement is the commitments that we make to each other around how we're going to promote the game.”

This will include clear windows for both domestic rugby and international competition that will see an alignment of the calendar, thus allowing the Premiership and RFU to work on cross-promotion throughout the season. This will also involve strategic collaboration around data and marketing.

Significantly, the JMA agreement could open opportunities for brands to partner with the RFU and the men’s and women’s Premiership competitions simultaneously.

“That's an area where we are really open for business,” Calder says.

“We think it's a compelling proposition to have men's rugby and women's rugby as part of the same conversation. Obviously, with the [2025] Women's World Cup down the track, there's a great national moment coming with women's rugby, and if we can help promote that, then all the better.”

Having joined Premiership Rugby in October 2022, Calder has been involved heavily in the league’s relaunch.

He was formerly the commercial director of short-form English cricket domestic competiution, The Hundred, which was notable as the Premiership was particularly keen to use the model adopted by that nascent competition to engage a new audience.

“The big lesson from The Hundred was that audiences are out there, and family audiences are out there,” Calder explains. “If you get your proposition right, you can reach wider audiences, and that's really what we're trying to do with rugby. So that informed a lot of the work we did.

“I used my experience on The Hundred to narrow down what the proposition was that we're trying to pitch to new audiences. With The Hundred, it was all about simplifying cricket and applying more energy and colour to a sport.

“With rugby, we just need a clear proposition about what it is and work harder at communicating the excitement that goes along with attending or watching live rugby.”

Having initially joined as chief growth officer, Calder’s remit with the Premiership has since widened having taken on the commercial responsibilities previously held by chief commercial officer Mark Brittain following his departure after the 2023-24 season.

Ahead of the new campaign, he has already overseen the title sponsorship renewal with insurance firm Gallagher and the new partnership secured this week with Buffalo Trace.

Having led commercial operations for The Hundred, Calder is keen to implement some similar principles from his role with that competition around the alignment of commercial with brand and audience.

With the RFU in tow, the Premiership is ready to enter the sponsorship market with a new and direct approach.

“I want to make sure that over the next couple of years, we tighten up so we’ve got a single proposition, and we want to find brand partners who are as much part of our marketing mix as we are part of theirs,” Calder shares.

“There should be a big overlap and an audience overlap. You shouldn't be pulling in a different direction from your commercial partners. It's important that we build out a portfolio that helps us to get to that next generation or fills a different role in our portfolio. That's the approach we're taking.

“Having aligned the commercial, brand and marketing side of things, there's a real enthusiasm for how we take that to market, and we intend to do that over the next six months.

“We've confirmed the Gallagher title partnership, which as our key partner is just critical to have that foundation for an additional three years. But what we want to do is take that momentum and get back out into the market as soon as possible with this new proposition.”

A key focus of the Premiership’s relaunch is to grow its reach, both domestically and internationally.

Last season, the league was broadcast in 164 territories – reaching more than 100 million fans globally. In its debut season with TNT Sports, the league also achieved its fastest-ever sold-out Premiership Rugby Final after the closest season on record.

The Premiership also set attendance and viewership records throughout the campaign. The 2023–2024 season had the highest average match attendance since the competition started in 1987.

Excluding one-off matches at the likes of Twickenham and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the average attendance for regular home games rose slightly, from 12,569 in the 2022-23 season to 12,843 last year.

Despite the marginal rise, it still represented growth for the league, which was much needed given the game’s financial problems and emphasised the continued popularity of the sport.

As well as maintaining domestic growth, Premiership Rugby is keen to expand the league’s footprint to global markets.

The competition secured key free-to-air linear exposure in the US last season with Fox Sports picking up rights to broadcast the final portion of the campaign.

The US is a key growth market for Premiership Rugby with that country set to host the Rugby World Cup for the first time in 2031.

“With the US, there's an innovator over there, and that's the focus for us, somebody who's going to lean into rugby and lean into what we're doing and into this proposition,” Calder outlines.

“It's important that we work with partners who understand that. I would apply that logic to TNT Sports as well, we want to work with partners who understand that there's an opportunity for growth in rugby, and TNT does.

“In the UK, the opportunity for bringing new people into rugby is really clear and we've managed to do that with our final in which we had our first sell-out for probably eight years in June. We’re growth focused and next generation focused, and that's the brief for international markets as well as the UK.”

A repeat of last season's Premiership final between champions Northampton Saints and Bath Rugby kicks off the new campaign tonight.