How much do PREM Rugby players earn? Salary cap, average wages & biggest contracts
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How much?
The average senior PREM Rugby player earned £165,181 in 2024/25, according to the league’s latest salary cap report. Its ten highest earners averaged £584,916, showing the gap between a typical wage and the biggest contracts.
A two-part investigation by Charlie Morgan in The Times has examined how all ten clubs are managing their squads ahead of the 2026/27 season. It reports figures for several major deals, while PREM Rugby’s official report provides the league-wide averages.
What does the average PREM Rugby player earn?
Average senior player income rose from £150,479 to £165,181 in 2024/25. The median was £140,000.
The league excluded players who earned less than £30,000 during the season from these calculations. That includes some on short-term contracts, whose earnings for part of a year would distort an annual comparison.
Fly-half was the best-paid position, with an average income of £259,602. Back-row forwards averaged £192,358, while wings were the lowest-paid position at £132,303.
The report also gives an average senior player total salary of £190,963. That is a measure of club cost which includes items such as employer National Insurance contributions. The £165,181 income figure is the one to use when describing what players received.
What is the PREM Rugby salary cap?
The senior squad salary cap is £6.4million for 2026/27, with a new £5.4million minimum spend. It limits a club’s chargeable squad spend rather than setting a maximum wage for any one player.
Clubs can use credits for homegrown players and international call-ups, as well as an injury allowance. They can also exclude one marquee player’s salary from the cap. That helps explain why a club’s total spending can exceed £6.4million: average senior squad cash spend was just over £7million per club in 2024/25, before credits and exclusions.
Who are the biggest earners?
PREM Rugby does not publish a complete list of individual salaries. Its report says the ten highest earners averaged £584,916 in 2024/25, but does not name them. It also warns against treating the marquee designation as a ranking: three of the nine marquee players that season were outside the top ten earners.
The Times identifies Finn Russell as Bath’s marquee player and Maro Itoje as Saracens’, without giving a current salary for either. Russell’s Bath deal has previously been reported at around £1million a year, though the financial terms of the extension he signed until 2028 were not announced. There is no verified current figure for Itoje in the reporting used here.
Among the contracts detailed by The Times:
- Fin Smith is understood to earn around £600,000 a season as Northampton’s marquee player.
- Tommy Freeman is set to earn around £450,000 a season from 2027/28 at Northampton.
- Henry Pollock’s Northampton extension is reported to be worth £400,000 a season, with a possible increase brought forward into 2026/27.
- Ollie Lawrence, Bath: expected to earn close to £400,000 in 2026/27.
- Ross Byrne, Gloucester: around £350,000 a season.
- George Furbank, Harlequins: a deal averaging around £330,000 a season.
- Courtney Lawes, Sale: a little over £320,000 on his one-year deal; Joe Marchant is around £320,000.
- Ben Earl and George Martin, Saracens: each thought to be in the £300,000–£350,000-a-season range.
Several England internationals also receive a payment of around £150,000 from their enhanced elite contracts with the union.
There are further increases on the horizon. Santiago Carreras is reported to be heading towards £500,000 at Bath in 2027/28, while Leicester’s Ollie Chessum could command more than £400,000 if he agrees to a new deal.
Those are future or prospective figures, rather than confirmed salaries for this season.
Individual contract reporting: Charlie Morgan’s part one and part two for The Times. League averages: PREM Rugby’s 2024/25 salary cap report.
