The Scarlets have been given an extra 15 years to pay back £2.6 million owed to Carmarthenshire taxpayers, the club’s newly filed accounts reveal.
The money was lent by Carmarthenshire County Council and was originally due to be repaid in 2023. Under the new deal, the club only started paying back the loan itself this April — in equal chunks, spread over the years ahead.
Until then, the club had been paying interest on the debt at 4% a year.
The council has protected its money: the loan is secured against the club’s assets, meaning the council has first claim on them if the Scarlets ever couldn’t pay. The club has also promised not to borrow against anything it owns without the council’s say-so.
The detail is tucked away in the accounts filed this week — the same documents that showed the club losing more than £2m for the third year running.
And they show just how tight things got. On 30 June last year — the day the season’s books closed — the Scarlets had £5,380 in the bank, at a business turning over £10.2 million a year.
The club was also £259,303 into its overdraft.
Servicing its debts is costing serious money: £845,592 went out in interest alone during the year — more than £16,000 a week.
Altogether the club owes £11.5 million to its lenders, most of it to the council and the Welsh Rugby Union.
The WRU is owed around £9.5 million — much of it borrowed to survive Covid. But most of that is expected to be wiped away by the new deal between the union and the four professional clubs, which the accounts say was due to be signed last month.
The club’s bosses call that deal pivotal to putting the Scarlets on a stable footing.
There are real signs of improvement in the numbers. The annual loss shrank from £2.6m to £2.1m, the wage bill was cut by £1.5m, and the club’s backers put in £940,000 of fresh money during the year — followed by further “significant” investment in April.
On the pitch, it was a season of progress too: an eighth-place finish, a play-off quarter-final, and a return to Europe’s top club competition.
For the council, the loan is one part of a much bigger relationship. Its own commissioned report found the Scarlets pump £17.3m a year into the Carmarthenshire economy and support 336 jobs — and then council leader Cllr Darren Price called the club a catalyst for economic growth.
The accounts’ auditors are satisfied the club can pay its bills for at least the next 12 months, though they note it still leans on the support of the WRU, its funders, its directors and its fans.
Hanging over everything is the WRU’s plan to cut Wales’ professional clubs from four to three — leaving the Scarlets and the Ospreys fighting for one west Wales place, a situation chairman Simon Muderack says has created an unsettling backdrop for players, staff and supporters.
For Carmarthenshire taxpayers, the bottom line is this: £2.6m of public money, first lent years ago, now won’t be fully repaid until the 2040s — owed by a club the council itself says is worth £17m a year to the local economy.
