Rugby World Cup to draw 85,000 visitors

http://www.redmandarin.com/resources/evaluation/why-cumulative-tv-audiences-dont-add-up here's an interesting article on cumulative TV audiences. "Why Cumulative TV Audiences Don't Add Up There's strength in numbers. It's an expression we've all heard many times and in different situations. One of those situations involves a rights seller telling a potential sponsor that the scale of his or her property's cumulative television audience cannot be matched. But is there really strength in numbers as they relate to televised events? Such numbers wow many of potential sponsors, primarily because they are advertising people who think in terms of ratings. The problem is that not all television viewers are the same. They think about the property differently and their viewing patterns are not alike. Of course, there are the usual suspects. Take a motorsports property that boasts over 300 million television viewers worldwide for EACH race. Are they all quality prospective consumers of your products? Nope. So what should you think about when considering cumulative television audiences? Remote Control: Wouldn't you like to get into the heads of every one of that motorsports property's viewers? Many of them follow their favorite drivers and don't focus or concentrate on the car splashed with the logo of your company. With digital platforms, pay-per-view and new technologies like TiVo, viewers control the viewing experience - not the property, not the broadcaster, and certainly not the sponsor! Market Quality: Not all television markets are created equally. If your primary markets only include certain countries in the property's television universe, many of those millions of viewers are inconsequential to you. The property is selling you on the numbers, but how can you get excited about numbers that originate in Denmark or Uruguay if you don't do business in those countries? Your logo means nothing in those countries and you certainly aren't going to buy advertising on broadcasts in those locales. And what about markets where you actually have operations. Are the property's viewers of the same quality to you in each country? They probably are not. Law of Averages: Let's say you're considering a sponsorship of NASCAR in the U.S. or Formula One in Europe. Don't look at the average television audience size. Instead, analyze the numbers for each individual race. You will find that there are marquee races and there are less popular ones. If you spread your advertising equally across the race schedule or position your logo on the car similarly for each race, you will end up wasting your money. What Competition? If the sponsorship covers a long season of games, matches or races, you are putting yourself at the mercy of competitive balance - or imbalance. If the winner is determined with half or a third of the schedule remaining, that cumulative audience is going to shrink. Even worse, the remaining viewers are not going to be glued to their sets like they were earlier in the season when every second of the action had meaning. The bottom line is that the days of measuring sponsorship impact by logo exposure and scale of television audience are long gone. There's only strength in numbers when those numbers represent a high quality audience.

That's the spirit Joh, nothing like fact to spoil a perfectly good story!! I think 499 000 of em are on the Gold Coast!! lol

Its difficult to measure exactly how much double counting occurs. I'm more than aware that it does. However, these figures are compiled by an independent agent as are the Soccer WC and then used by broadcasters in the decisions in which event and what content to acquire.

The actual figures are around 500,000 Kiwis living in Oz and around 65,000 Aussies living in Enzed.

You're right: the idea of cumulative viewing figures is not that difficult to comprehend. But did it occur to you that they did in fact *comprehend* it and were actually *criticising* the concept by mocking the double (multiple in fact) counting that goes on? I understand perfectly well what a figure of 4 billion cumulative viewers means. I just find it a somewhat misleading metric of an event's true popularity. The figure is fine in so far as it goes but I also want to know how much double counting is going on.

850,000 Kiwis in OZ? I dont think so.

Brett I agree it's spin but New Zealand is a small nation most of the stadiums being used for the event are only capable of holding 20 000 to 30 000 people not world class by any standard and we refuse to build bigger stadiums because they would never get used so the numbers are accurate. The loss has always been expected from the moment we bid for the competition so to have things on track as projected is a good thing. The World Cup event is becoming to big for a small nation like NZ to host and we will probably not see the event back in NZ in my life time so I'm glad we are spending out the cash to do it again.

Great news. Should be a cracking atmosphere, especially in some of the smaller regions.

I'm not sure about that Brett. The NZRU never expected to be able to cover the IRB fee even when it first bid for the tournament. The NZRU and the NZ Government felt that hosting the tournament was important enough for NZ rugby and for NZ in general that they were both willing to subsidise the bid to an expected level of $NZ40m. Now if you're Martin Snedden running the tournament you are probably happy that the massive economic crisis worldwide hasn't left you with eg a NZ$100m deficit to fund. I'd say he's pretty happy.

For the uptenth time its culminative across hundreds of hours of broadcasting. Its really not that difficult to comprehend.

Why not? FIFA already claims 10 billion- 4 more billion people than actually exist. Don't 60 million Australians watch AFL?

Bigger stadiums mean more ticketing revenue so the French union made a profit as well as the IRB. A very tidy one, I believe. The NZRU won't make a profit by any means, but the country as a whole will when you take into account tourist spending, hence the govt underwriting the tournament.

Because the IRB didn't charge a ridiculous $150 million to host the cup in 2007. So yes, IRB makes a huge profit, hopefully NZRU and NZ will also make a profit.

Er - a cursory glance would reveal this bit... "That prompted Snedden to deliver his optimistic forecast that the loss would be contained to the $39 million initially predicted. Ticket sales are the only source of income for host countries with the IRB clipping the ticket everywhere else from hospitality packages to broadcasting deals to sponsorship arrangements. The international body will net a profit of close to $200 million from the event." So overall, the tournament is forecast to make a $160 million profit.

Link, that's spin at it's best, isn't it, that they're "on track to meet the forecast deficit" It's hardly something to talk up, however you say it!! "We're only going to lose as much as we thought we'd lose!!"

How many billions will the IRB claim watch it on TV? 60 billion?

So is the IRB making a profit or what? Will they be making any money at all? How come the 2007 RWC made a huge profit.. And yet the 2011 RWC will be a loss for the NZRU? Even if all tickets are sold? Can someone answer this question?

Actually, the NZRU only meets one third of the loss, with the tax payer picking up the remainder. But you knew that having read the article...

No you're wrong. Even a cursory glance of the article would show this, but hey who needs to check things its not as fun. RWC 2011 as a tournament to lose $40m. NZ tax payers to pay for 2/3rds of it NZ RU the rest.

Today the Rugby world cup, 2026 the Football world cup!