England players set to receive a massive bonus if they beat the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
England players set to receive a massive bonus if they beat the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
England players will share a jackpot of over £1.2 million (NZ$2.4 million) after defeating the All Blacks in their Rugby World Cup semifinal tonight.
After reaching their first World Cup final since 2007, it is believed Eddie Jones' men will receive the biggest single bonus payment for a test match.
It is understood the Rugby Football Union (RF) will pay out £41,298 to each member of Jones' 31-man squad – a total of £1.28 million.
The RFU pay-out is more than double what New Zealand's players would have earned. Steve Hansen's squad would have received just over £17,000 per player for reaching the final – a total of £536,300.
Should England go on to win the World Cup, the players will share a bonus payment of £2,560,500, a total of £82,597 each.
Victory in the semifinal has triggered a 25 per cent payment of the entire bonus payment available to the players, having already earned £768,150 - £24,779 per player – by defeating Australia in the quarter-final in Oita to reach the semifinals.
Qualifying for the quarter-finals had already earned the squad £512,100 - £16,519 per player - with a payment made for the pool match against France even though it was cancelled because of the impact of Typhoon Hagibis.
England players set to receive a massive bonus if they beat the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
The players have already earned £13,656 for each of the four group games, a total of £420,515. A World Cup win would trigger total payments of almost £7 million for the England squad, around £225,000 per player.
The World Cup winners receive £325,000 but over the four-year cycle the Six Nations unions and SANZAAR receive a total of £10 million.
The RFU has taken out insurance that would pay out more than £6 million to cover the costs of the players' fees should England win the World Cup.
The fee structure was agreed between the Rugby Players' Association and the RFU in November 2016 as part of the new players' deal for payments that saw match fees rise to £23,000 per player for Six Nations, autumn Tests and World Cup warm-up matches.
The payment structure for this World Cup is a potential rise of around £1 million from four years ago, had England won their home tournament.
The 2011 squad were eventually paid a tournament fee of £1.25 million – just under £42,000 per player for reaching the quarter-finals.
That would have risen by £100,000 if they had won the World Cup, including a win bonus of £2.5 million.
