Rugby World Cup set for success, say organisers

General view of England team during training Action Images via Reuters

Argentina’s Agustin Creevy (L) and Horacio Agulla (R)during the welcome ceremony 

France’s Uini Atonio takes a team selfie after the presentation during the welcome ceremony Action Images via Reuters

Reuters:  As fans pore over fixture lists, administrators smile at balance sheets, with the 2015 Rugby World Cup promising a record payday for the sport.

New markets and record attendances will help the event, starting in London on Friday (18 September), pull in some 240 million pounds ($ 369.94 million) in revenue, said the chief executive of World Rugby.

Sixty-five percent of that figure will come from TV rights, boosted by new growth markets and mushrooming interest, Brett Gosper told reporters.

“It certainly will be a record breaker on many fronts but for all of us we’ve never really lost sight of the fact that we want to make it the best possible experience for the teams and for the fans arriving of which there will be close to 500,000. Certainly it’s going to be the most accessible tournament Rugby World Cup ever,” the Australian said on Tuesday (15 September).

“In addition to the record ticket sales that Steve had mentioned it will be the most viewed Rugby World Cup with with 103 broadcaster licensees in 205 territories carrying 23,000 hours to 772 million households worldwide. That’s about 15, upward of 15% increase on the previous World Cup 2011. We favoured reach and engagement through free to air platforms. We’ve worked very hard at that we want maximum exposure in particular in markets like India, China, Brazil and the USA. Worth noting that will be for the first time 24 live matches in Germany, 22 live matches in China.”

Gosper said organisers had focused on free-to-air broadcasters to maximise reach. The action will be accessible to a potential reach of more than 770 million households.

World Rugby Chairman Bernard Lapasset emphasised that his body’s mission was to grow the sport.

“England 2015 will be the biggest ever Rugby World Cup. We also believe that it will be the best. Over the next six weeks the world’s top players from the world’s best teams will showcase their talent and skill and rugby’s character will bring values to record audiences. It’s rugby’s moment to shine and we are collectively converting our opportunity. Thanks to the commercial success of Rugby World Cup we are making record investment in rugby from the playground to the podium to support a thriving, growing, competitive and global international game,” he said.

England, who are hosting the tournament for the first time since sharing responsibilities with other northern hemisphere sides in 1991, are looking to set a new landmark in terms of hosting a major event.

Chief Executive of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) said he was hoping for a “festival” of rugby.

“I think our first and major objective at the moment is to be a great host. So we hope you enjoy the tournament, we welcome all rugby fans from all around the world. We think there’s going to be nearly half a million coming from all over the world and we want them to have a great time. We want the teams to have a great time, we want the spectator engagement as Steve was talking about to be excellent and never forget that this is all about enjoyment and fun,” he said.

“There is a very serious side to the competition of course there is but for everybody this should be a great festival of world rugby and we certainly want to do all we can we’re very proud to be the host we want to be the most welcoming host we can manage.”

The 18 September-31 October World Cup, hosted across 13 venues in England and one in Cardiff, has sold 2.25 million tickets – 95% of those available.

This record figure has helped projected commercial revenue jump 60% from the last edition, staged in New Zealand four years ago.

A lucrative World Cup spells good news for players of all levels worldwide.

“We believe that the tickets are competitively priced. They haven’t gone up other than inflation for the last two world cups. I think that the demand would imply that we’ve priced them at the right levels given that we’ve sold getting up towards 2.4 million in tickets and so on. We’ve bench marked against some of the biggest tournaments that there are whether it be FIFA, Olympics, Wimbledon, we’re incredibly competitive with that. There are children’s tickets available, which is not the case for all international rugby tournaments. So we believe we’ve made this as accessible as we possibly can. A million tickets are priced under a 100, 500 thousand priced under 50 pounds and so on. So yes we think we’ve worked very hard to have a very balanced ticketing policy that’s provided very strong accessibility,” said Gosper.

World Rugby said it would commit an anticipated injection of more than 180 million pounds ($ 277.45 million) between 2013 and 2016.

Part of that is to fund participation and increasing competition across the 120 national member unions, World Rugby said.

England kick off the 2015 Rugby World Cup on Friday night with a Group A game against Fiji.