LAST UPDATE | 26 Oct 2022
IN LIGHT OF the fates that have befell Worcester and Wasps in recent months and widespread concerns about the financial viability of the sport, Wednesday’s Rugby Weekly Extra podcast for The42 members was a special episode focusing on the economic state of the game globally.
Our Monday and Wednesday crews of Eoin Toolan, Bernard Jackman, Murray Kinsella and Gavan Casey joined forces to break down among other things the longstanding issues facing English Premiership clubs, the Welsh regions’ current cashflow problems, the gold-standard French system, and whether Irish rugby is properly positioned to survive and advance past a precarious period in the sport’s 27-year professional history.
Toolan, Jackman, Kinsella and Casey also discussed the lack of growth in the sport, and how the only ways to shore up its future are to appeal to a broader audience and, equally pertinently, to the younger generation of fan without whom the sport simply will not survive in its current guise.
🗣️ "We're in a bad place. It genuinely is."@bernardjackman on the crisis rugby finds itself in financially across the world.💲
— The42.ie (@The42_ie) October 26, 2022
🗣️ "I think we are in a very precarious situation."
Listen to Rugby Weekly Extra 🏉https://t.co/gmmE7ikY55 pic.twitter.com/4xV0eMkMDw
Here is a brief sample of that conversation, beginning with former Ireland, Melbourne Rebels and Kintetsu Liners performance analyst Toolan suggesting a global calendar as paramount to improving rugby as a consumer product.
“For me, it comes back to alignment and pushing towards a similar outcome, and then ultimately driving a better product,” he said.
“I think at the moment, everyone has their own vested interests in domestic competitions but if the world professional game is going to move on, there has to be an openness and a willingness to move to a global season and have our best players playing less games but higher quality games. We can’t have them play more games — we’ve got to reduce their seasons but ensure the games that they do play are really good, high-profile spectacles that draw crowds, draw eyes from a TV perspective.
“Ultimately, drive TV money. That’ll be invested into the game. You invest that in your talent identification, your pathways, and make sure your foundations and your infrastructure at a younger level are sound so that the game can thrive at an elite level.”
Picking up on Toolan’s point that rugby needs to more cleverly market itself, former Ireland hooker and current Bective boss Jackman replied: “We’ve lots of young kids — boys and girls — who are playing rugby now, right? But realistically, what are they talking about on their Snapchat, or who are they following on TikTok, Instagram, et cetera? It’s not rugby players.
I just saw an article yesterday, SportsPro published their list of the 50 most marketable athletes from the past year. Basically, that measures social media metrics, endorsement values, so it’s not the be-all and end-all but it’s what attracts young kids to an athlete. There’s no rugby player in it. There’s actually no rugby player in the top hundred. So, we actually aren’t capturing the imagination of the next generation in terms of generating those stars.
“So, Johnny Sexton is a star, right?” Jackman continued. “One of the best rugby players who’s ever played for Ireland. Corporates love him. But are we really selling him to the 12- and 13-year-olds? I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job of bigging up the stars. And, again, I don’t know how to do that — it’s totally outside of my comfort zone — but I do think we’re failing in that regard. And this time period, now, is where the middle-aged fans of 20 years’ time are coming from. If we don’t engage with them now, we won’t actually have them.
“We were very focused on teams as kids. I’ve liked Man United since I was seven, unfortunately. But now it’s [Kylian] Mbappé. It’s the individuals that the next generation follow. My own son is 14. They follow individuals, personalities, characters — even if they’re flawed.”
😡 "It pisses me off when I hear it."
— The42.ie (@The42_ie) October 26, 2022
💬 "As a sport we have absolutely quashed that individualism in people." @Murray_Kinsella on how rugby holds itself back from self-promotion.
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The42 rugby journalist Kinsella replied: “I think this is where rugby’s ‘values’ — or sense that it should maintain and uphold these nonsensical values — pisses me off when I hear it. Absolutely, be a good person, be a good teammate — but you’re allowed to be yourself as well. And as a sport, we have absolutely quashed that individualism in people.
Even if you look at New Zealand, one of the biggest threats to rugby is the NBA and the growth of basketball over there. They love LeBron [James], they love their superstar players over there, and that sport has absolutely harnessed the power of that. They’ve promoted and celebrated the individuals. Whereas rugby players, still, because they want to be a good teammate or a good squad-mate, they absolutely shiver at anything that remotely looks like them promoting themselves or putting themselves ahead of the team, even though it’s never, ever that.
“In fact, them being more individualistic does help to promote the team and to promote the sport and grow it. So that nonsense around ‘old-school rugby’ needs to be shed, and that’s probably part of the image which makes people see rugby as a kind of elitist sport. And that needs to go as well.
“Growing individuals will grow the sport,” Kinsella added.
Special pod today for The42 members (https://t.co/QCkUQflMn1):
— Gavan Casey (@GavanCasey) October 26, 2022
A state-of-the-game address by @Toolan82, @bernardjackman and @Murray_Kinsella on rugby's precarious financial position and shedding 'bullshit values' in order to Grow The Game™.
Tough topic but hope you enjoy. pic.twitter.com/D9X8ZFSgRe
“That’s specifically how you do grow a sport and it has ever been thus,” host Casey responded. “You mentioned the NBA, there, Mur: if you go back to the late ’70s/early ’80s, the NBA was in the absolute doldrums in terms of public interest in the States. Along came two men named Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and the league, to an exploitative degree, harnessed — and nearly manufactured — a personal rivalry between them. They put them in TV ads, they had them on merch, and they became two massive personalities that ultimately lifted the profile of the entire league.
“I cover boxing, right? Boxing is probably even more so a minority sport than rugby on a global level. Nobody really gives a shit about it. And yet, if there’s a pay-per-view fight between two big personalities, everybody in the sporting world is going to be talking about it and everybody is going to want to watch it even if they have no interest in the sport itself.
You mentioned that marketing list, Berch. Katie Taylor is the only Irish athlete [along with Rory McIlroy just behind her] in the top 50. Now, Katie Taylor doesn’t even say a great deal but she’s put herself in the public consciousness enough — in a sport that, again, really nobody cares about — where she has become one of the faces of boxing, and absolutely the face of women’s boxing. And rugby needs more faces to be the poster boys and poster girls of this sport if it’s going to be driven on.
👀#RELENTLESS https://t.co/6596ZBV4mI
— Connacht Rugby (@connachtrugby) October 25, 2022
“That documentary that Connacht are releasing is exactly what we need to be doing in Irish rugby,” Casey added. “If you have a couple of episodes of that where people get a glimpse of the actual personalities behind the scenes, and not just the players who are giving front-facing interviews after games or at press conferences which are so stagnant and boring, if we’re honest; that’s how you’ll garner fans of a young age. They want to be able to see what these people are actually like.”
The full conversation about rugby’s financial health, and ‘growing the game’, is available on Wednesday’s Rugby Weekly Extra for The42 members. To become a member, and gain access to Rugby Weekly Extra every Monday and Wednesday, visit members.the42.ie.
