Australian Rugby announces strategic plan: Grow the grassroots!

The Australian Rugby Union has announced its vision for the next five years, setting some ambitious performance and viewership targets for the national team and Super Rugby.

While grassroots is said to be the focus of the plan, the decrease in club XVs player base as revealed in the ARU’s 2015 Annual Report, and the recent conversation about investment from the national body into Sydney clubs is sure to be a sticking point for some.

To the plan, which was hammered out with the help of a third party and over 8000 fans taking a survey, among other parties.

With the recent influx of $270 million from the newest Super Rugby broadcast deal, the ARU are looking to put the money to good use. Comparative to last year, where they recorded an overall near-$10 million deficit, the ARU are flush with cash.

Not only are they looking to invest around grassroots, where they will increase development staffing by 50%, but there is a ‘future fund’ in the works as well, which is targeted to be at $10 million by the end of the five-year period.

It seems on the surface to be a great idea, and is something that has been thrown around in various forms by the other top codes in Australia.

The pillars of the ARU’s strategy revolve around growth of the women’s game, and the new ‘non-contact’ version of rugby, Viva 7s. For all those unclear, Viva 7s is basically touch football, but with a rugby alignment (touch in Australia aligned with rugby league some years ago).

All of this is made relatively clear by some of the numbers from the ARU’s annual report last year, which shows the growth of the women’s side of the game and in junior ranks is the key opportunity for the game in Australia.

Underlying the plan are the following four areas, which the ARU has attached a tagline to:

1. Make Rugby a game for all – Our Community
2. Ignite Australia’s passion for the game – Our Fans
3. Build sustainable success in the professional game – Our Elite Teams
4. Create excellence in how the game is run – Our Administration

To run through them one by one, the community side of things is boosted by a 50% increase in the development workforce across the country.

This will give additional resourcing to areas that need it, and possibly help the ARU combat the ‘land grabs’ from other codes it laments in its annual report.

Whether it can be successful is fully up to the implementation and the ideas, as more bodies isn’t necessarily a solution by itself.

A key area will be to “address declining participation rates”, for as much as we talk about the growth of Sevens, the XVs version of the game is no doubt the lifeblood in the community, and the financial juggernaut – with the Wallabies and Super Rugby providing the majority of the revenue in Australia.

Addressing female participation is another pillar of the plan, with the ARU saying that women’s sevens is the biggest growth area for the game.

How they will get to a goal of 356,500 participants across the three formats will be interesting to see, though the touted increase of female participation rate to 15% of all participants seems achievable given the rhetoric around the growth of women’s sevens.

“We believe there is a place in our game for all Australians,” ARU CEO Bill Pulver said.

“Australians usually follow a range of sports, not just Rugby, but our vision is for every Australian to enjoy Rugby however they choose to connect with the game – as a fan, spectator, administrator, volunteer, or player.

“As a country we are changing, and Rugby must evolve and challenge its traditional thinking to continue to be relevant and financially sustainable in arguably the most competitive national sports market in the world.

“To encourage more men, women, children and people of all different backgrounds into our Rugby clubs and to follow the game, we need to provide new formats of the game and improve the way we connect with fans by providing better digital and match day experiences.”

Viva 7s and the ‘Game on’ program are more focussed on getting kids involved in the sport, and let’s face it, are more likely to be used to pad out numbers. XVs participation has to be the focus – there’s no metric more important.

On the fans side, the ARU is talking about a re-design of their website, as well as their social engagement with fans. There’s no doubt their social media team is doing something right with the Wallabies Facebook and Twitter brands, and the idea of creating a centralised news hub on their website is probably long overdue.

Their goal of a million visits to the site a month is achievable, though will be a stretch over the summer.

Some of the other goals are less substantiated, but perhaps more interesting:

• Average Australian TV viewership of 100,000 for every Super Rugby match played in Australia
• Average Australian TV viewership of 1 million for every Rugby Championship match played in Australia
• Retain 100% of full season members year on year
• Achieve 1.1 million ticket sales for Wallabies Test matches over the period 2016-2020
• Achieve 1 million visits per month to Rugby.com.au and Super Rugby team websites and generate a loyalty subscriber base of 500,000

Given plenty of current figures are substantially less than these numbers on the Super Rugby end of things, it’ll be interesting to see how they manage to boost that viewership.

Being a strategic vision, there’s no indication on how precisely they want to achieve things like 50% year-on-year growth for Super Rugby interest, but the reveal will be intriguing.

Making the Wallabies the number one sporting brand in Australia, and making Super Rugby franchises in the top 40 worldwide rugby brands all seems like something we should expect, rather than be working towards, from down here.

The key competitors in Australia are big clubs like Collingwood and national teams like the Socceroos. To achieve a groundswell of support is no doubt the ARU’s priority, and the performance at the 2015 Rugby World Cup is a great start to that momentum.

Fans will be less thrilled to hear that winning the Bledisloe Cup is on the agenda, but as a one-time thing if the wording of the plan is to be believed. The Wallabies remaining in the top 3 seems like it should be achieveable, along with medals for our men and women at the 2016 and 2020 Olympics, as well as the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

My expectation is, after seeing our Olympic sevens training setup, the we will go bloody close to winning gold or silver in both. Bronze is a pass mark.

More interesting is the targets set in relation to women in the Australian Rugby workplace, particularly with 30% of board roles to be taken by women by 2020. It seems like responsible corporate governance practice in the world we live in, though I’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts.

Overall, the plan contains some tough goals, and perhaps not as much detail as many were looking for on how to achieve them. However, with the financials of the ARU taking a turn for the better, it’s good to see arresting the grassroots slide is high on the agenda.

What do you make of the plan Roarers? What’s your take on all of this?

The full release is here:

Australian Rugby Union (ARU) today announced the Australian Rugby Strategic Plan for 2016-2020 underpinned by a vision “to inspire all Australians to enjoy our great global game”.

The five-year plan was built collaboratively by the Rugby Community with input from all state and territory member unions and constituents, over 8,300 fans, sponsors and the Rugby Union Players Association (RUPA). It provides the framework for Australian Rugby to achieve its vision, by focusing on four key areas over the next five years:

1. Make Rugby a game for all – Our Community
2. Ignite Australia’s passion for the game – Our Fans
3. Build sustainable success in the professional game – Our Elite Teams
4. Create excellence in how the game is run – Our Administration

The public release of the plan, which was facilitated by leading professional services company, Accenture, comes after the ARU announced its 2015 results at the ARU Annual General Meeting in Sydney yesterday.

It also follows the announcement in December, 2015, of a new media rights arrangement that will inject $285m into the code over the next five years (2016-2020).

Central to the plan is grassroots development, with the ARU set to increase its development workforce by 50% across the country to drive new programs in schools and Rugby clubs, to address declining participation rates, encourage more girls and women to take up the game and diversify the game’s player base.

“We believe there is a place in our game for all Australians,” said ARU CEO Bill Pulver.

“Australians usually follow a range of sports, not just Rugby, but our vision is for every Australian to enjoy Rugby however they choose to connect with the game – as a fan, spectator, administrator, volunteer, or player.

“As a country we are changing, and Rugby must evolve and challenge its traditional thinking to continue to be relevant and financially sustainable in arguably the most competitive national sports market in the world.

“To encourage more men, women, children and people of all different backgrounds into our Rugby clubs and to follow the game, we need to provide new formats of the game and improve the way we connect with fans by providing better digital and match day experiences.”

VIVA7s, a new fast-paced, non-contact version of Rugby Sevens was launched in 2015 to give Rugby three distinct formats of the game – traditional fifteen-a-side Rugby, Rugby Sevens and VIVA7s.

A national schools program ‘Game On’ was also launched, teaching the basic skills and core values of Rugby, and will continue to be rolled out in public and private schools across the country to give children their first taste of Rugby and to encourage them to develop an interest in playing and watching the game.

Off the back of impressive growth in its digital channels over the past 12 months, in particular during the Rugby World Cup, Australian Rugby’s official website rugby.com.au will be re-launched as a news hub for the latest Rugby stories.

The ARU’s new digital strategy is fan-focused with exclusive behind-the-scenes stories and imagery, insider information, statistics, and commentary from some of Rugby’s most high-profile personalities forming the key content to fuel the ARU’s suite of digital platforms.

“This is a strategy for Australian Rugby, by Australian Rugby. Every part of the game has contributed to the plan, including over 8,300 fans and members of the Rugby community who completed the Australian Rugby Survey in May, 2015,” said Pulver.

“An Australian Rugby strategy group, including the CEOs of all of the ARU’s member unions, representing all of the various unions, competitions and clubs across the country, has been formed to oversee the delivery of the plan.

“Additionally, we are delighted that each of the ARU’s state and territory member unions and RUPA have signed the National Charter that will guide the collaborative decision-making across the game for the next five years,” he said.

At the elite level, the strategy aims to deliver a cooperative high performance environment across all elite teams, including the Qantas Wallabies, Wallaroos, Sevens teams and national under age teams that recognises the importance of performance science, technology and coaching development and ultimately strengthens the game’s elite pathways.

“Ultimately the future prosperity of the game is dependent on the success of our elite teams. We need successful Wallabies, Wallaroos, Super Rugby and Sevens teams. The professional game generates over 90% of the revenue for the code and provides the impetus to invest in other areas of the game,” said Pulver.

The Australian Rugby Strategic Plan sets out some ambitious targets for 2020, including but not limited to the following:

• 356,500 participants across the three formats of Rugby – XVs, Sevens and VIVA7s
• Increase female participation rate to 15% of all participants across three formats
• Average Australian TV viewership of 100,000 for every Super Rugby match played in Australia
• Average Australian TV viewership of 1 million for every Rugby Championship match played in Australia
• Retain 100% of full season members year on year
• Achieve 1.1 million ticket sales for Wallabies Test matches over the period 2016-2020
• Achieve 1 million visits per month to Rugby.com.au and Super Rugby team websites and generate a loyalty subscriber base of 500,000
• Achieve >85% of players in national programs having graduated through state and national pathway programs
• Wallabies: win the Rugby Championship, Bledisloe Cup and 2019 Rugby World Cup and at all times retain top 3 world ranking
• Wallabies: ranked number one as Australia’s most recognised national team brand
• Olympic (2016 & 2020) and Commonwealth Games (2018) Medals for men’s and women’s Sevens teams
• 30% of women in Board roles, senior management roles, and 30% women in ARU staff
• Growth of a future fund to $10 million by 2020