Reaching out to the Irish diaspora, and especially in North America, was one of the major selling points in the Ireland 2023 bid for the Rugby World Cup six years hence when the IRFU spearheaded the two-day fact-finding mission by the five-strong World Rugby Technical Review Group.
The review group, led by World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper, were hosted by the President Michael D Higgins, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the IRFU, the GAA, government agencies from North and South, politicians, sportsmen (Brian O'Driscoll, Bernard Brogan and Henry Shefflin) and business people.
In the process they visited Croke Park, the Aviva Stadium, Áras an Uachtaráin and Government Buildings.
This evaluation team, which also includes Ross Aitken (World Rugby cities and venues manager), Alan Gilpin (head of Rugby World Cup), Linda Hoey (bid manager) and Robert Brophy (chief financial officer World Cup) have been to South Africa and will visit France next week.
They will make their recommendation to World Rugby, while the three rival bids will make presentations to the board of Rugby World Cup and the council of World Rugby in late September, before a decision is ultimately taken by the latter in November. In the interim the three rival bids will thus continue to lobby the 37-strong council of World Rugby.
Speculating that the delegates from the various member unions and federations on the council will "go with their gut instincts" as to which bid will deliver the best World Cup, the IRFU CEO Philip Browne said: "It's up to us to persuade the voters that we are a new host territory. If World Rugby wants new host territories in the future, they need to encourage new territories to bid, and so that's an important element.
“Another important element is going to be accessing markets that rugby has maybe struggled to access in the past. We have a diaspora of 70 million – 35 million of whom live in the US, and another 4½ million in Canada, who, as we know, activate around all things Irish. And we already have some significant plans to not only bring them to Ireland, but to also bring the World Cup out of Ireland to them. So there are lots of things that we can do which are quite innovative.”
To that end, Browne added: “We had a fantastic presentation today from Jonathan Cannon, who was responsible for The Gathering, and Hugo McNeill, who is here, also was involved in that.”
Concrete foundations
“That actually put structure and shape, and some concrete foundations to how we would actually try and activate the diaspora, particularly North America, which is a key market for World Rugby. It’s something that no other union in the world can actually do.”
The Irish Government having underwritten the tournament fee to World Rugby of €127 million, Browne is confident a World Cup here would be as commercially viable to World Rugby as the rival bids.
While the number of ticket sales were “the big variable”, Browne added that “none of that money goes back to Rugby World Cup. That [ticket sales] actually covers the cost of the tournament.”
World Rugby sells the television rights and sponsorship, and while France and South Africa are in similar time zones, Browne again cited Ireland’s reach into the USA.
Of the dozen proposed stadia contained in the Irish bid, eight to ten would be used in hosting a World Cup, and all would require at least some upgrading to reach the requisite standard.
As to the projected costs of these upgrades, Browne said: “I wouldn’t really like to say at this point in time, but it’s covered within the tournament budget. In other words, it’s covered in the ticket revenues.”
Pending ticket sales, as to where this money would come from all he would say was: “That’s simply a commercial cash flow scenario.”
A World Cup in Ireland would have a direct economic impact of €800 million, “a conservative estimate” according to Browne, with the projected 445,000 visitors from abroad constituting the largest number of visiting fans for a World Cup heretofore.
Browne was adamant Ireland would have the infrastructure to cope.
"We had the chief executives of the National Transport Authority and Translink in today, and they gave an excellent presentation, not only of what's in place today, but what's coming on stream over the next few years."
Tourism infrastructure
There was also a presentation from
Tourism Ireland
.
“Ireland is in the top 15 per cent of countries worldwide for tourism infrastructure,” said Browne. “We’d 10.5 million visitors in Ireland in 2016. We’ve 11.5million bed nights in Ireland annually. We’ve 2.5m bed night available across the tournament. There’s no problem with accommodation.
“In terms of infrastructure, it’s two hours by road to anywhere from Dublin, in terms of Cork, Limerick, Belfast, every other destination we’re picking is on the road or rail network.”
One potential caveat in the Irish bid is, of course, the unknown consequences of Brexit.
“While it wasn’t asked directly we covered it off indirectly,” said Browne, before adding: “No one knows at this stage how Brexit is going to manifest itself.
“The one thing that we do have is a commitment from the governments in the Republic of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Executive and indeed Whitehall in the UK to ensure that nothing will stand in the way to make this a seamless competition on both sides of the border.”
A significant coup for Ireland is that the STH Group – they are a joint venture business between Sodexo, a global service company with a turnover of over €19.8 billion, and the Mike Burton Group, one of the UK's leading sports travel and hospitality businesses – who have overseen the sale of the commercial hospitality rights for the past four Rugby World Cups, will exclusively work for the Irish bid.
