Paris Rugby League,[1] doing business as Paris Saint-Germain Rugby League or PSG Rugby League, was a French professional rugby league football team that operated between 1995 and 1997, as a member of the Super League, Europe's highest tier.[5][6][7]
PSG RL played its first official game against Sheffield Eagles on 29 March 1996, which also marked the first game in Super League history.[5][8] Built on an unconventional template, the team did not prove financially viable and disbanded after two seasons. The Super League re-entered the French territory in 2005, this time opting for a traditional market team, the Catalans Dragons, which has been considerably more successful.[9]
In 1994, veteran rugby union executive Jacques Fouroux, who had lost his political allies at the French Rugby Federation,[10] switched codes and announced the creation of France Rugby League, a summer rugby league tour for regional selects teams that ran between seasons of the historic French championship, and aimed to grow the sport outside of its traditional markets, a move that shared similarities—albeit on a more modest scale—with Rupert Murdoch's projected European Super League.[11]Rugby Football LeagueCEOMaurice Lindsay voiced his support for the project, and in February 1995 mentioned Fouroux as the ideal entrepreneur to lead an expansion of the Super League to France.[12]
PSG partnership
As a former rugby union executive, Fouroux had an existing relationship with top execs at TV channel Canal+, the parent company of Paris Saint-Germain F.C.,[13] which at the time was attempting to establish itself as a multisports club in the mold of Stade Français or Racing Club de France, having already endorsed basketball, team handball and volleyball sections.[14] Due to its notoriety and ready-made connections with the broadcasting world, he quickly saw the PSG brand as the ideal vehicle for his provisionally named Paris Rugby League club.[1][15] A second team based in Toulouse was also considered, before it was decided to focus the French game's limited resources on Paris.[16][17] The choice of the capital was resented by the leadership of some traditional southern clubs.[17] With the Super League expanding beyond the Channel, France Rugby League was re-positioned as a developmental circuit for the new Paris team.[18]
Paris Rugby League, now renamed Paris Saint-Germain Rugby League, was officially announced as PSG's newest department on 23 December 1995.[19] France Rugby League's Paris–Île-de-France selects team took the name PSG Espoirs Île-de-France ('PSG Île-de-France Prospects').[20] The alliance also yielded a watershed three-year broadcasting agreement with Canal+.[17]
Founder Jacques Fouroux was appointed as team president. Tas Baitieri, a France-based Australian player-turned-executive with a long experience serving as a go-between between his adopted country and the game's Anglo-Saxon authorities,[17][21] was named as the team's football manager.[10] Baitieri was allowed to work for Paris despite also being employed by the Australian Rugby League, at the time embroiled in a bitter rivalry with the Super League.[22] The entire PSG RL organization came together in short order, taking only eight months to go from the drawing board to its competitive debut, a hectic schedule which Baitieri negatively compared with the three years typically afforded to an ARL expansion franchise.[23]
The initial plan was to run the Paris team, coached by former French national coach Michel Mazaré, on the same model as the teams of France Rugby League: a select squad drawing its players from existing French championship clubs, albeit one whose territory would encompass the entire French rugby league membership rather than a single region.[23][24] However it soon became clear, due to the French game's decline over the preceding decades, as well as overlap between the final stretch of the French championship and the early weeks of Super League, that additional players would need to be recruited. Halfway into the season, the team lost founding figures Fouroux and Baitieri (the former unexpectedly returning to rugby union and the later fulfilling his obligations to the ARL), leaving various RFL and French federation executives to wrestle for control of the team as the logistical and financial challenges of Fouroux's initial plan were fast becoming apparent.[22][25] Despite several foreign additions throughout the season, PSG only barely escaped relegation, finishing in 11th place only two points ahead of last-place Workington Town. This was, however, in line with management's own pre-season projections.[26]
For the second season, the team abandoned the selects concept entirely, and relied on full-timers. The coaching job went to Australian Peter Mulholland (who was replaced by Englishman Andy Goodway after a slow start), while the share allocated to domestic players greatly decreased under both the RFL's pressure for better results, and an increasing lack of cooperation from more storied French clubs, who resented loaning their talent to a propped-up Paris side.[27] The team's mounting financial issues lead its parent organization to temporarily strip it of the PSG name in the middle of the season, and further negative attention arose when it was publicized that many of its imports were salaried in the U.K. rather than France, as part of a tax avoidance scheme.[28] The results marginally improved to 6 wins, although the team again finished in 11th place. In addition to the Super League, PSG RL also played in the Challenge Cup, the reborn World Club Challenge and an expanded Premiership Trophy that season, without notable results.[29]
Disbanding
While the team managed to avoid relegation on the field, its peculiar business model and lack of history in the market stood in the way of profitability, and it was disbanded at the end of the season (see § Business model).[2] Former PSG member Laurent Lucchese assessed: "I understand why Jacques Fouroux at the start wanted a team in Paris, to promote the sport and get the TV coverage in Charléty, but I think we should have moved the club [...] to be closer to supporters and play in different spots in the south of France. A club without any roots can’t live long."[30]
Business model
Following in the footsteps of France Rugby League, PSG attempted to grow the sport past its traditional demographics, and was entirely geared towards a casual audience.[31] The spectator experience was hyped up as much as the on-field product, with a pre-game show that featured pyrotechnics and musical performances.[22][32] In order to further maximize the team's reach, most tickets were distributed for free (traveling fans from the U.K. still had to pay for admission), and were offered as an incentive for sponsors, who could distribute them as customer rewards.[24] The spectacle of generous crowds, amplified by the thorough television coverage expected from PSG parent Canal+, was supposed to create a virtuous circle, attracting more corporate sponsors and pushing the team into the black.[13]
Based on spectacular attendance figures at early games, the strategy was praised, with Bradford chairman Chris Caisley crediting Paris as the only club other than his own "who really tried" to live up to the Super League's mainstream aspirations.[31] However, by its own admission, the hastily thrown together team had launched without any significant corporate sponsor attached to its name.[26] Beyond a prestigious name, the Paris Saint-Germain alliance did not bring much financial security either, as the big club did not actually own the team, and the ancillary support it provided was in line with what rugby union's Stade Français was receiving despite not bearing the PSG name.[33] With only peripheral involvement, Canal+ had little incentive to put all its weight behind rugby league, and the vaunted broadcasting deal rarely amounted to more than highlights packages.[34]
In the end, PSG RL never developed the requisite network of corporate partners, with many tickets disseminated via public institutions, while Murdoch and the RFL were left to absorb most of its losses. By the end of the second season, RFL chairman Rodney Walker—a political rival of RFL CEO and PSG cheerleader Maurice Lindsay—had enough. In late October 1997, he declared, "We have decided we can no longer offer to subsidize the Paris club. They have to find ways to generate income, which they have not done to date." With little hope of surviving on its own, the team was wound up shortly after.[35]
Partway into the 2023–24 Ligue 2 season, soccer's Paris FC, also playing out of Charléty Stadium, announced that it would transition to a similar free admission scheme in hopes of boosting its sagging attendance at the notoriously unpopular venue.[36]
Legacy
French Rugby League Federation president Jean-Paul Ferré vowed to come back with a new team as part of a proposed 1999 expansion. Paris was briefly considered, however the more likely location this time was Toulouse.[37][38] Neither happened, but the door eventually re-opened in 2002, when French clubs were invited by to tender for a place in the Super League. While some again viewed Toulouse Olympique as the favorite at the beginning of the selection process, Perpignan's Catalans Dragons were ultimately chosen, making their debut in 2006.[39]
The professional experience brought back by PSG players to their French league clubs was credited for making the Dragons' transition to Super League a smoother one.[30]LeMonde.fr also named Fouroux's aggressive promotional tactics at PSG as a precursor to union team Stade Français' more widely recognized marketing efforts under president Max Guazzini.[40] The club also earned notice for being the first in the RFL system to entrust a managerial position to a woman, Rebecca Cove.[41]
^ abc"Paris Rugby League". Répertoire National des Associations (in French). Direction de l'information légale et administrative. Retrieved 9 December 2023.
^ abBurke, David (3 November 1997). "Rugby League". Manchester Evening News. p. Sport 15. Huddersfield Giants have been given a passport into Super League for next season [...] they will replace Paris Saint-Germain.
^ abIrvine, Christopher (30 March 1996). "French chalk up opening triumph". The Times. London.
^Perrin, Frank (7 December 2021). "6 – Pioneering Rugby League". Rugby League, Rugby of The Future. Carcassonne: Fédération Française de Rugby à XIII. p. 129. ISBN9782322400539.
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