“We can’t go on like this,” said Gavin Marshall, the union’s chief financial and operating officer, as the WRU loss before tax hit £18.1m.
The Welsh Rugby Union’s loss for the year to June 2026 is two and a half times the £7.2m it lost the year before, and it came in a year when turnover went up.
“At the moment we’re not sustainable,” he said of the cost of funding four professional clubs.
Should the WRU still be funding four regions while it loses £18m a year? Tell us in the comments.
The extra £10.1m vanished
The WRU loss before tax rose to £18.1m in 2025/26 because costs at Principality Stadium and a full year of owning Cardiff Rugby grew faster than a £10.1m rise in turnover to £116.2m, according to the union’s results published on 22 October 2026.
The operating loss went up by the same £10.1m, from £4.7m to £14.8m. Every extra pound in, a pound more lost.
Seven Tests, £2m more at the gate
Wales played seven men’s Tests at Principality Stadium in 2025/26, two more than the year before. Match income still grew by only about £2m, a result the union blames on cheaper average tickets, some thinner crowds and squeezed household budgets.
Direct stadium and event costs climbed by about £7m. Not all of that is the two extra Tests: the WRU also points to more events overall and higher staffing and delivery bills.
There were empty seats too. The 57,744 who watched France win 54-12 in February were Wales’s smallest Six Nations crowd in Cardiff, BBC Sport reports.
What Cardiff cost the group
EBITDA, the union’s measure before the money it hands on to rugby and before one-off costs, dropped to £19.7m from £32.8m. Strip Cardiff out and it fell from £35.2m to £28.5m.
That makes Cardiff’s drag on group EBITDA £8.8m in 2025/26, up from £2.4m a year earlier. Our calculation from the union’s figures: about half of the £13.1m fall in EBITDA is the capital club.
The WRU bought Cardiff in April 2025, so the earlier figure covers only a few months of ownership.
WalesOnline, reading the full accounts, reports a Cardiff loss of £1.2m for the year. The £8.8m is the gap between the two EBITDA figures, not what Cardiff lost.
The WRU wants to sell Cardiff again
“The strategy is not to own Cardiff,” Marshall said. A deal with Ospreys owners Y11 Sport & Media fell through, and the union will only sell once the restructure is done, which could mean keeping the club until at least 2028.
The regions’ cheque did not shrink
Distributions to the four professional regions, the semi-professional game and community rugby were £32.6m, the same as in 2024/25.
WalesOnline also reports the PRA 25 debt-for-equity swaps in the accounts: £2.9m of debt turned into an interest in the Ospreys and a £2.813m preference-share holding in Dragons, with the Scarlets deal expected within weeks. The accounts are expected at Companies House on Friday.
A new chair inherits the bill
Lyndon Faulkner, the WRU’s incoming independent chair, is due in post by the union’s AGM on Sunday 22 November. A State of the Game summit on the professional game follows in early December, and the union has said it will name the three men’s licence holders before June 2027 is out.
Those talks now start £18.1m in the red. In July the WRU said Cardiff Rugby and Dragons would be offered the capital and east licences, as long as they sign up to the final terms. Ospreys and Scarlets are left fighting over the one licence in the west.
Can cheaper tickets fix this?
Marshall says a new ticketing strategy, a food and drink push with Aramark and more big events at the stadium are the fix. The first test is Wales’s November Tests against Japan, New Zealand and Australia, where match income per Test will show whether cheaper tickets filled seats or just lowered the take.
The union funds £26m across the four clubs and has about £20m to spend on the professional game, according to Marshall’s figures in BBC Sport’s report. So which should go: one of the two regions in the west, or the club the WRU already owns and wants to sell? Tell us in the comments.
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