Henry Pollock is set to demand a substantial increase on his current Northampton contract to stay at Franklin’s Gardens, with agent Eddie Hearn suggesting annual earnings of £1m are the going rate for the 21-year-old star.

“He’s certainly a seven-figure player,” said Hearn, who met with Pollock on his yacht off Monaco last month, to the Daily Telegraph., external

“The way rugby’s going and what Pollock is doing, his value over the next couple of years will skyrocket, and I think the value of rugby will.”

Pollock’s current deal with Saints, signed in December 2024 and set to expire in summer 2027, is thought to be worth £150,000 a year.

Since agreeing those terms, the back row has made his England debut, toured with the British and Irish Lions and was a key part of the Saints side that reached the Champions Cup final last year and won the Prem title in June.

His exuberant on-pitch persona, relishing confrontation and celebrating tries with rehearsed routines, has attracted attention and a legion of young fans.

Northampton’s ability to match Pollock’s wage demands may be hampered by a league-wide £6.4m salary cap and their own generation of young stars.

Each team can have one marquee player whose pay is exempt from counting towards the cap. Fly-half Fin Smith is thought to currently occupy that place on the Saints’ payroll, while Tommy Freeman, who has reportedly signed a lucrative new extension,, external and scrum-half Alex Mitchell could also make claims to it.

Northampton failed to reach agreement with club captain George Furbank on a new deal last season, allowing the England full-back to leave for Harlequins as they sought to make space under the salary ceiling to improve the terms of young stars like Pollock.

The latest salary cap report, external – which detailed payroll from the 2024-25 season – showed Saints did not pay up to the £6.4m limit, with salary spending higher at Bath, Leicester, Sale, Harlequins and Saracens.

It also showed Pollock’s reported earnings being below average for both his position, with the average back row earning a mean of £192,000, and Test experience, with players between 11 and 20 caps around £224,000.

While Bath fly-half Finn Russell, another of Hearn’s clients, is believed to be the league’s highest earner on a deal worth about £1m a year, few clubs have the resources or space in their salary structure to accommodate such a highly paid figurehead.

Newcastle Red Bulls, recently taken over by the Austrian energy drink giant, are one of the exceptions.

Bristol, who place a large emphasis on the marketability of their players, external and have signed Louis Rees-Zammit, Ellie Kildunne and Ilona Maher over the past couple of seasons, could be another.

Hearn said that Pollock would not consider a move overseas, given it would stall his international career under England’s current policy of only picking domestically based players, and that the back row was keen to stay at Northampton in an ideal world.

“Henry Pollock drives season ticket sales,” added Hearn.

“Henry Pollock puts bums on the seats. Henry Pollock drives viewership on TNT or wherever it’s going to be. Henry Pollock sells shirts, right? That’s the difference. So you can actually put an economic value over having Henry Pollock on the team, and that has to be recognised, regardless of the want from Henry.

“He cannot stay at this club on the money that he’s on.”

Hearn added that Pollock was keen to play Sevens for Great Britain at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

France’s captain Antoine Dupont successfully switched to the format for Paris 2024, helping his nation to their first gold of the games and massively boosting his profile in the process.

Great Britain’s full-time Sevens programme was cut last year, with both the men’s and women’s sides dropping out of the top-tier of international competition this summer.

While routes still exist for them to qualify for the Games, their lack of exposure to elite competition is far from ideal build-up.