Is Pollock worth £1 million?

In the wake of Eddie Hearn's claim we look at whether £1m is a fair evaluation for Pollock.

Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sports has claimed that when Henry Pollock’s contract runs out next summer he will demand a £1 million annual contract to stay at Saints. At present, the BBC believes Pollock is on £150,000 per year at Saints so this would represent an increase of almost seven times his current pay. Of course Hearn’s job is to get the most he can for Pollock but is there any logic to this amount?

It’s hard to know how much players are being paid but it’s likely that the only player earning more than £1 million per year is Antoine Dupont - probably the best player in the World in a rich league. Finn Russell is probably pushing £1 million but I’d be surprised if he’s breaching that mark. So this would make Pollock the second best paid player in the World. Is that logical?

On the face of it, this seems somewhat reasonable. Pollock is a very good player, he’s been consistently excellent for Saints and very good for England. He would be in the top 20 players in the Prem, at least. Breaking the seven figure mark therefore doesn’t seem that ludicrous. But there are some factors at play.

First, back row isn’t a particularly high value position. Finn Russell is responsible for driving Bath around the park, making their decisions, kicking points etc. There are maybe five fly-halves in the World you could replace him with and not see an enormous drop off in quality. With Russell, Bath have won 47 of their 63 games (75%), without him they’ve won 7 of 16 (44%). With Pollock, in the last two years Saints have won 19 of 26 (73%) and without, 15 of 25 (60%). Note that Saints have won 80% of games that Callum Chick has played in. Obviously you’d rather have Pollock there but it’s just a function of how rugby is played that a back row isn’t as critical to a team’s success as a fly-half.

From a playing perspective, by pricing Pollock at the million pound mark you are claiming that he is worth more than Russell. I would claim that is a virtually impossible argument to make even if you make the reasonable argument that Pollock is a better player than Russell (I don’t agree with that by the way but it’s not a ridiculous argument to make).

But, of course it’s not just the on pitch portion which matters to the Saints. If Pollock brings in more money to the club, through increased attendances, new sponsorship deals, selling more jerseys, or performing so that the Saints win leagues or reach latter stages of Europe, than the million he costs then it makes some sense to pay him that - more later on why only some sense.

In 2023-24, when Pollock made one start in the Prem, the Saints’ average attendance was 14,291. It has since jumped to 15,056 the season before last and 15,040 last year. That is a nice bump and if you attribute it entirely to Pollock it would be worth around £400,000 per season. Additionally, if you believe Pollock is responsible for their Prem play-off runs and deep European challenges then there are additional benefits. The value of playing an extra home game in the Prem is around £350k in profit and the same for playing an extra home Champions Cup game, though if he’s responsible for getting you to an extra away Champions Cup game or a semi-final he may be costing you money.

We’ve found a possible £1.1 million there but again, only if you believe the Saints wouldn’t achieve that without Pollock. That would be an exceptional claim especially as the Saints achieved a home play-off Prem game by nine points. So you would be valuing Pollock as worth at least ten league points which would be 14% of the total number of points accrued by Saints. It is not realistic that any one player, even the best player in the World, would be single handedly worth 14% of their team’s total value.

This is a problem for the Prem because there’s not really a value to finishing marginally higher in the table. Not a direct one at least. If you can leap from third to second you benefit from that valuable home semi-final but going from sixth to fifth is worth nothing. Nor is making it into Europe a particularly valuable prospect especially if you have to play a South African team away from home. Unfortunately, success isn’t really rewarded. Which leaves one avenue for Pollock to be genuinely worth a million, his image.

Pollock is undoubtedly popular. In a sport where most normal people struggle to name more than a handful of players, he is breaking into the wider discussion. That means he can be used to sell things the Saints want to sell. This year they are sponsored by DPD, if they want to use Pollock individually to promote DPD then they have to pay for his image.

This is common in football where popular players are used to promote the team’s sponsors. Image rights can be paid into a company, whereas salary needs to be paid directly to the individual and therefore correctly taxed. Paying into a company represents a tax saving for both the player, and club who don’t need to pay national insurance. Hearn could make a compelling case that Pollock is so uniquely popular that his image rights should attract an enormous sum. There is nuance here, we are only talking about the rights Saints have not Pollock’s broader endorsements. This is just the cost the sponsors of the Saints, and the club themselves, would pay to use Pollock in their promotions. Unfortunately for Hearn and Pollock, HMRC have capped these payments at around 20% of the total salary cost. That means that even if Hearn can make the case that Pollock is so popular that a 30% cap is more realistic then he would need to get a base salary of upwards of £700,000 - which would be difficult.

One of the reasons why this would be difficult is because image rights are included in salary cap calculations, as Leicester Tigers found out to their cost. All that takes us to the salary cap. In 2027-28 we don’t know what the salary cap will be but even if we assume it increases by a similar level to what it increased between 2024-25 and 2025-26 then it will be around £7.6 million. A million pounds to Pollock would represent a 13% cap spend - the highest paid player in the NFL represents 11% of his team’s cap.

The Saints are in a position where they could designate Pollock as a marquee player. That would remove him from the salary cap calculation and allow him a more realistic shot at getting to the million. The problem is that Saints are the only team who can offer him a marquee spot as he needs to either be at a club for two seasons (as he is with Saints) or come from outside the league (as was the case with Russell). Unless Pollock is willing to go to France, which would end his England career and probably cut his career earnings, he has one club who can make him a marquee signing but they don’t need to.

Conclusion

When I first heard the news about Pollock aiming to be paid £1 million per season I thought it was ridiculous. I still think it’s a stretch and I wouldn’t be paying it if I were part of the Saints’ set-up. However, it’s not such a ridiculous amount and it has precedent. The problem is that Pollock’s on pitch product, while excellent, is not comparable to those other players earning £750,000 plus per year.

I think he will end up signing for around £650,000 per year. That is a combination of image rights and salary which would put him in the top handful of earners in the Prem. At that point he would be accessible to other Prem teams who can’t select him as a marquee player. That would push his value up as he would then be part of a bidding war among the other clubs. However, I think it’s very likely that Pollock will become one of very few players who earn more in endorsements than they do in salary. This is common in tennis and golf (replace salary with winnings) but incredibly uncommon in rugby. If he does do that he’ll make over £1 million, he doesn’t want get paid it by Saints.

Did you enjoy this? If so, I have a book out called Attacking the Space, you can get it in any bookshop or follow the links below:

Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/attacking-the-space/sam-larner/mike-prendergast/9781399625098

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Attacking-Space-Inside-Tactical-Revolution/dp/1399625098