Premiership Rugby, English rugby union’s top domestic competition, has announced a three-year extension of its title sponsorship agreement with insurance firm Gallagher.
The renewal will begin with the 2025-26 season and run through the 2027-28 campaign, taking the partnership between the two parties to a decade.
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The competition will continue to be known as Gallagher Premiership Rugby, which also extends a strategic business and community engagement partnership between the two.
Gallagher first partnered with Premiership Rugby in 2018 and renewed that deal in 2022. The current agreement was due to expire at the end of the upcoming 2024-25 season.
In an interview with Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), Rob Calder, chief growth officer at Premiership Rugby, said: “We’re really proud of this partnership because it's been through a lot.
“When we started in 2018, nobody knew what the next few years were going to bring so to be in a position now where we're renewing for a second time (third agreement overall) is brilliant. It really is a testament to a true partnership because Gallagher has backed us during the challenges of Covid, and over the last few years. So now to get this agreement signed just reinforces the partnership and the belief that they have in Premiership Rugby.
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By GlobalData“It's such a positive step and they talk positively about being ‘right here for rugby’ – and we see that in everything that they do. We see it in a lot of the community work that they do as well, and we definitely see it in the relationships we've got with the individuals and the wider business.”
The new title sponsorship agreement will increase in value for Premiership Rugby, with Calder describing it as “a positive increase” for the league and its clubs.
Gallagher had an exclusivity period in its contract to negotiate a renewal with Premiership Rugby, with the league keen to prolong the close ties they’ve developed since 2018.
A key aspect of the extension talks was evolving the partnership and building on previous activations.
Calder said: “We had an agreement to discuss a renewal and we wanted to do that because when you've got a strong partnership with somebody, you know the areas that you want to maintain and build, and you also know the areas you want to improve.
“So, we spent a lot of time over the last nine months developing the revised agreement and there's a big focus on evolution as well – it's not just a question of lifting and dropping this existing relationship.
“We've tweaked it and changed the ambition in some spaces. Some of those are around the community program, some are around how we make the most of the platform so that Gallagher can build their business off the back of it. That's really what's been the big success for them over the last few years, being able to build their business using our league as a platform.
“Then the third thing is the brand development that we're doing, and the fact that we've engaged them from the start on this. They've been included in the whole process of how we evolve as a business and as a sport.”
Premiership Rugby will be collaborating closely with Gallagher on the Project Rugby 2.0 initiative, an expansion of the existing Project Rugby community programme to increase participation.
Since 2018, Gallagher has co-funded the programme, which has seen more than 100,000 young people engage in the sport across England.
Michael Rea, chief executive of Gallagher in the UK, added: “I am delighted to renew and extend our partnership with Premiership Rugby. Our relationship over the past six seasons has helped to take the game of rugby to new viewers and participants.
“For our business, the partnership has helped us to expand the Gallagher name and interact with rugby at all levels of the game.”
The key Gallagher renewal comes ahead of the start of a significant 2024-25 season for Premiership Rugby, as the league prepares to “relaunch” under a new brand strategy to bounce back from its off-field issues.
Last week, the competition announced a partnership with the Rugby Football Union national governing body and the Rugby Players Association aimed at creating financial stability for the professional game.
The three organizations have teamed up to create a new Men’s Professional Game Partnership after 18 months of collaboration.
To lead the eight-year partnership, a new Professional Rugby Board has been established to replace the Professional Game Board to bring all rugby decisions under one roof to oversee the strategy.
