AFTER TWO LONG years, Leinster Rugby are finally preparing to return home to the RDS.
The redeveloped stadium, now rebranded as the Laya Arena, is undergoing the finishing touches ahead of the start of a new rugby season, with Leinster having spent the past two years playing their home games a short hop down the road at Aviva Stadium.
It’s a welcome return with ‘Aviva fatigue’ notably setting in as attendances dropped last season. During the week, a handful of media were given a behind-the-scenes look at the stadium and new facilities, alongside a media event with Leinster CEO Shane Nolan, who ran through some of the numbers behind the project and fielded questions about Leo Cullen’s impending exit and a host of other talking points at the province.
Leinster will use a pre-season fixture against Zebre as a test event, with their first home game of the new season coming against Cardiff on 10 October. It will be a slow bedding in process, as Leinster won’t then return to the Laya until 19 December, with home games against Munster and Sale Sharks (Champions Cup) expected to be played in the Aviva. Nolan says season ticket sales have been “healthy” at over 15,000, while acknowledging some of the contributing factors to last season’s attendance slump.
“The previous year (2024/25) was our record year ever, and it was our first year out of the RDS,” explains Nolan.
Leinster Rugby CEO Shane Nolan. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
“If you think, in that year we played Munster in Croke Park, 80,000, one of the biggest club records for a game. Last year we played in Croke Park, 55,000, still a massive crowd, but obviously down from the previous year, you can see the novelty had worn off a little bit.
“Our (European) last 16 game the prior year was Harlequins in Croke Park, 50-odd thousand. This year it was Edinburgh, a URC team we play every year and who we’d only beaten six weeks earlier. It was on Easter Sunday at 5pm. So there’s a number of factors. Our two big attended games were non-comparable with prior years, so that contributed.
“And then generally there was a fatigue around playing in the big stadium. We know that for sure; the fans have told us that.
“But we still turned out being the second-biggest attended team in the URC after the Stormers and the second-biggest in Europe after Bordeaux. So not all bad, it just was a particularly high year the prior year.”
As we stroll between the stands, a list of stats and facts from the project are listed off.
Take the new seats and lay them side-by-side, and they’d stretch all the way to the Ha’Penny Bridge. Of the old seating, 2,500 were donated to local sports clubs.
The project came in on budget (€52 million) and required 527 tonnes of structural steel, the steelwork equivalent of around 40 double-decker buses. The single largest piece of steel used was 2.5 tonnes, roughly the same weight as 26 rugby players, or 40 kegs of Guinness. On that subject, we’re told about quicker delivery times at the new and improved bars, with one bar on the Anglesea Side available to deliver a quicker pint through something labelled ‘beast mode’. A glance at the signage has a pint of Guinness priced at €7.70.
The spacious new Grand Stand is the focal point of the ground, but work has also gone into updating changing room and hospitality facilities on the Anglesea Road side of the venue. The roomy home changing room includes a large space for showers, with two ice baths. As you’d expect, the cosier away dressing room is less accommodating.
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Behind the Anglesea Stand, a deconsecrated church now serves as the Grand Hall, offering hospitality facilities for players and their families. Players will also enter from the Anglesea side, having previously entered at the Grand Stand. The creaking old media room, which was located between the Grand Stand and South Stand, has been torn down, with the space now to be used for a large, covered fan zone with a capacity of over 1,000, who can choose from 20 food trucks for the pre-game feed.
There are six rows of terracing at the foot of the Grand Stand, with cardboard cutouts and stand-ins used to help get sightlines right for those who will have a standing viewpoint at games.
The Grand Hall will provide hospitality facilities.
Capacity at the redeveloped ground is now 20,600, up from 18,500. This is an important change, with putting bums on seats still the driving force when it comes to generating cash.
“A key driver of our revenue is ticket sales,” says Nolan.
“It’s probably too big of a percentage, but it’s a key driver of any club. If you look at any sport, ticket sales is a huge part of it. So obviously what we have behind us is now the opportunity for us to make sure how do we make this a really booming attendance, that for every single match, it is a must-see ticket.
“So that’s a key part of our revenue model. Our sponsorship, we pride ourselves on having a very healthy sponsor portfolio, but we will continue to grow that. And then there’s a whole series of other (things), so merchandising, streaming, broadcasting, a whole bunch of other revenue streams that I think we need to continue to put fuel on the fire.
“So it will be looking after our basics, which is our ticketing revenue, and absolutely the key to that is having our home stadium redeveloped and the excitement around that.”
Leinster’s chief commercial officer, Matthew Dowling, is able to expand on this.
“I think Covid was a big lesson for sport in general, that if you get hit on tickets, you’re in a bit of trouble,” says Dowling.
“So we’re one of the few clubs – I can’t speak for all clubs, but we’ve got a specific role around strategic growth, which is something we take out of the day-to-day of running matches and selling tickets and sponsorship, which can be all-consuming, to look at opportunities in markets in relation to data-driven marketing, as well as some opportunities we have, for example, with our partnerships with Syracuse University, where we’ve got staff on the ground and are running camps and things like that.
“So there’s an active focus of trying to find the new growth areas that will be able to grow at a faster rate than what’s there already, to take us to the next level.”
“Aviva Stadium has been very, very good to us,” says Nolan.
“It’s been great to be just move a kilometre up the road, but it hasn’t been home for us and we just can’t wait to move back into our home stadium.
“Significant developments and improvements have gone into the whole arena in terms of not just the new stand, but the facilities, the accessibility for fans, the food and beverage, the sight lines. So much has gone into that, so what we hope is that this will become one of the best stadiums to play club rugby in Europe.
“That’s our aim and that’s our focus for the next number of years. And it obviously brings commercial benefits that will then go back into funding the professional game and the amateur game as well.”
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527 tonnes of steel and 'beast mode' pints: a behind-the-scenes look at Leinster's new Laya Arena
AFTER TWO LONG years, Leinster Rugby are finally preparing to return home to the RDS.
The redeveloped stadium, now rebranded as the Laya Arena, is undergoing the finishing touches ahead of the start of a new rugby season, with Leinster having spent the past two years playing their home games a short hop down the road at Aviva Stadium.
It’s a welcome return with ‘Aviva fatigue’ notably setting in as attendances dropped last season. During the week, a handful of media were given a behind-the-scenes look at the stadium and new facilities, alongside a media event with Leinster CEO Shane Nolan, who ran through some of the numbers behind the project and fielded questions about Leo Cullen’s impending exit and a host of other talking points at the province.
Leinster will use a pre-season fixture against Zebre as a test event, with their first home game of the new season coming against Cardiff on 10 October. It will be a slow bedding in process, as Leinster won’t then return to the Laya until 19 December, with home games against Munster and Sale Sharks (Champions Cup) expected to be played in the Aviva. Nolan says season ticket sales have been “healthy” at over 15,000, while acknowledging some of the contributing factors to last season’s attendance slump.
“The previous year (2024/25) was our record year ever, and it was our first year out of the RDS,” explains Nolan.
“If you think, in that year we played Munster in Croke Park, 80,000, one of the biggest club records for a game. Last year we played in Croke Park, 55,000, still a massive crowd, but obviously down from the previous year, you can see the novelty had worn off a little bit.
“Our (European) last 16 game the prior year was Harlequins in Croke Park, 50-odd thousand. This year it was Edinburgh, a URC team we play every year and who we’d only beaten six weeks earlier. It was on Easter Sunday at 5pm. So there’s a number of factors. Our two big attended games were non-comparable with prior years, so that contributed.
“But we still turned out being the second-biggest attended team in the URC after the Stormers and the second-biggest in Europe after Bordeaux. So not all bad, it just was a particularly high year the prior year.”
As we stroll between the stands, a list of stats and facts from the project are listed off.
Take the new seats and lay them side-by-side, and they’d stretch all the way to the Ha’Penny Bridge. Of the old seating, 2,500 were donated to local sports clubs.
The project came in on budget (€52 million) and required 527 tonnes of structural steel, the steelwork equivalent of around 40 double-decker buses. The single largest piece of steel used was 2.5 tonnes, roughly the same weight as 26 rugby players, or 40 kegs of Guinness. On that subject, we’re told about quicker delivery times at the new and improved bars, with one bar on the Anglesea Side available to deliver a quicker pint through something labelled ‘beast mode’. A glance at the signage has a pint of Guinness priced at €7.70.
The spacious new Grand Stand is the focal point of the ground, but work has also gone into updating changing room and hospitality facilities on the Anglesea Road side of the venue. The roomy home changing room includes a large space for showers, with two ice baths. As you’d expect, the cosier away dressing room is less accommodating.
Behind the Anglesea Stand, a deconsecrated church now serves as the Grand Hall, offering hospitality facilities for players and their families. Players will also enter from the Anglesea side, having previously entered at the Grand Stand. The creaking old media room, which was located between the Grand Stand and South Stand, has been torn down, with the space now to be used for a large, covered fan zone with a capacity of over 1,000, who can choose from 20 food trucks for the pre-game feed.
There are six rows of terracing at the foot of the Grand Stand, with cardboard cutouts and stand-ins used to help get sightlines right for those who will have a standing viewpoint at games.
Capacity at the redeveloped ground is now 20,600, up from 18,500. This is an important change, with putting bums on seats still the driving force when it comes to generating cash.
“A key driver of our revenue is ticket sales,” says Nolan.
“It’s probably too big of a percentage, but it’s a key driver of any club. If you look at any sport, ticket sales is a huge part of it. So obviously what we have behind us is now the opportunity for us to make sure how do we make this a really booming attendance, that for every single match, it is a must-see ticket.
“So that’s a key part of our revenue model. Our sponsorship, we pride ourselves on having a very healthy sponsor portfolio, but we will continue to grow that. And then there’s a whole series of other (things), so merchandising, streaming, broadcasting, a whole bunch of other revenue streams that I think we need to continue to put fuel on the fire.
“So it will be looking after our basics, which is our ticketing revenue, and absolutely the key to that is having our home stadium redeveloped and the excitement around that.”
Leinster’s chief commercial officer, Matthew Dowling, is able to expand on this.
“I think Covid was a big lesson for sport in general, that if you get hit on tickets, you’re in a bit of trouble,” says Dowling.
“So we’re one of the few clubs – I can’t speak for all clubs, but we’ve got a specific role around strategic growth, which is something we take out of the day-to-day of running matches and selling tickets and sponsorship, which can be all-consuming, to look at opportunities in markets in relation to data-driven marketing, as well as some opportunities we have, for example, with our partnerships with Syracuse University, where we’ve got staff on the ground and are running camps and things like that.
“Aviva Stadium has been very, very good to us,” says Nolan.
“It’s been great to be just move a kilometre up the road, but it hasn’t been home for us and we just can’t wait to move back into our home stadium.
“Significant developments and improvements have gone into the whole arena in terms of not just the new stand, but the facilities, the accessibility for fans, the food and beverage, the sight lines. So much has gone into that, so what we hope is that this will become one of the best stadiums to play club rugby in Europe.
“That’s our aim and that’s our focus for the next number of years. And it obviously brings commercial benefits that will then go back into funding the professional game and the amateur game as well.”
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Leinster moving home Rugby Shane Nolan