The Roar Rugby Project aims to document the challenges and opportunities facing rugby at all levels across the nation by tapping into the breadth and depth of The Roar readership’s experience.
Last week’s introductory launch detailed an overview of the challenges facing the game, and in future weeks there will be articles on the need for constitutional change, the support required the community and professional rugby, and improving the quality and consistency of refereeing.
This week’s article canvasses the challenges of raising sufficient revenues to cover the costs of rugby clubs in Australia.
One of the great benefits of being an accountant is the love and warmth with which you are greeted when you join a new club. In addition to the hands-on experience gained in a few stints as Treasurer, I can also look at the finance of rugby through the eyes of a corporate advisor and banker.
Irrespective of how much work I did, it was only a couple of chapters in one club’s history, with my experience restricted to the challenges of the time and the people I worked with. To some extent most readers’ experience will be similarly limited. The purpose of this article is to hopefully encourage readers to share their club’s successes, failures, risks, and challenges.
There will be a critical mass, be it 50 or 100 or more, where we will have covered all the challenges and opportunities facing clubs in Australia today. While it is relevant, I am leaving the subject of what Rugby Australia (RA) should, and shouldn’t, be doing for community rugby, until the fifth article in three weeks’ time.
More relevant today is the fact that RA do not believe they generate sufficient revenue to support community rugby. So instead, we will also look at how they might increase their revenue.
You can’t pretend to be a financial expert without providing a disclaimer. I have been doing this sort of thing for over 40 years and my proof-readers suggested I try and simplify my terminology. I have done my best but please feel free to ask questions in the commentary, I will do my best to answer them. Don’t be put off about asking a “silly” question, in any audience the same concept usually needs to be explained several ways to cover all levels of financial knowledge.
Club Finance 101 – the basic rules
Businesses fail because they are undercapitalised or poorly managed, or both. Clubs continually ride that line, run by volunteers on a not-for-profit basis, with few assets and usually no capital.
While rugby is not a business, income must exceed expenditure with cash surpluses carefully allocated to asset sinking funds, a rainy-day buffer and investment in the clubs’ activities. Where possible playing membership costs will be reduced to ensure they are not excessive.
Most readers will be members of clubs that have had good cycles and bad. Success is usually tightly correlated to the strength and depth of the committee, and the amount of support it secures from the membership. No club will have sustainable on field success if it is poorly run.
Continuing losses will result in the club failing, unless the membership votes to remove the committee, or otherwise acts to financially support the club.
(Photo by Kenta Harada/Getty Images)
The Rugby Club Financial Model – what comes in and what goes out
Unlike business shareholders, club members are not owners of the club, merely custodians. They do not get a return on profits and their main role is to ensure the committee is pursuing the club’s objectives while remaining solvent.
Typically, a business should start with an analysis of its market and customer segments, and projects potential sales of its existing and planned products and services. It can then determine the amount of working capital (cash) and overhead expenditure required to support that level of revenue. Its directors will determine whether there is a sufficient return to the owners, and further iterations may be required.
Many businesses adopt a simpler, but less effective, method by looking back to last year and then adjusting for changes in the environment. In my experience community organisations, such as a rugby club, work in a similar manner.
Typically, they will use the experience of prior years to confirm the costs to be incurred to meet their constitutional objectives and review their regular calendar of fundraising events and projects to ensure that the expected revenues will cover costs with a small surplus.
A rugby club is firstly concerned with covering the annual running costs of fielding teams, recruitment, and coaching. In addition, they will need to look at other periodic costs such as new jumpers or new equipment. A few clubs will also have their own grounds requiring maintenance and improvements.
In terms of revenue, they will rely on the continuing support of core members and sponsors, as well as the relatively predictable returns from an annual calendar of events including match day takings.
Most clubs can, and do, run for years on the smell of an oily rag, hovering around breaking even after covering these core costs. When under stronger management those clubs might be more aggressive, pursuing revenues to invest in expanding the reach and activities of the club, or to build new infrastructure. These plans will be communicated to both members and the local community to gain their support.
At other times clubs will move ahead of themselves, taking risks to either turn a club around or dramatically increase its success. Commitments are made in advance of the revenues being received. There will be many examples where good management, with member and community support, succeeds.
Probably more often, when poorly managed, a club will move into a cycle of failure until members intervene.
Building rugby revenues – we always need more cash
Any rugby club will basically look at increasing its revenue through membership, match attendance and game day takings, sponsorship, merchandise, functions, and fundraising.
There are only 4 types of rugby customer:
1. core supporter
2. wants to be persuaded
3. can be persuaded
4. not interested, which is most Australians, not having played rugby or been close to someone who has.
The fastest way to leverage revenues is to increase membership, it is the path to sustainability. At the same time, it builds the depth and breadth of expertise and support for the club. Yet most clubs have no plans or discipline around building membership.
The core supporter is at most games and functions, is a long-term sponsor and hopefully a member of your club. Clubs need active focus on developing and implementing plans to identify who is in categories 2 and 3 and move them up the ladder to become a core supporter.
There are always ‘walk ins’, players or rugby supporters who move into an area and actively seek out a club, but you still need to ensure they do not join another club.
The importance of culture – what is important, and how we get things done
Basically, building revenue is a matter of the disciplined approach to making a series of sales. Unless your club is the only team in town, even core rugby supporters must choose your club over others.
The leverage provided by your club’s reputation amongst members and the community is the difference between smooth running success and the enormous hard work of failure.
The importance of vision, mission, values, and the consequent culture of the club in attracting members and customers is often misunderstood or underappreciated, sometimes ignored, and sometimes ridiculed.
Nobody has the time to individually persuade people to come to your club in sufficient numbers, they need to be drawn in, like moths to a light.
It’s your turn – time to Roar
It would be great to hear of the successes your club has had in making itself financially resilient.
Just as important is hearing about failures, and your ideas about why that happened and how it could have been avoided.
Perhaps you have some ideas that you think would be successful for your club or another.
Professional Rugby Finance 101 – the rules are NOT different
It is generally understood that the professional game should also be operated on a NFP basis, breaking even over the four-year RWC cycle, after investing in the growth and promotion of community rugby.
Instead, RA has operated as a significant deficit over the 25 years of professionalism, running down the value of goodwill and squandering the RWC 2003 surplus.
Some would argue RA is bigger and more complex, but the financial model is no different to a large diverse rugby club, albeit covering many clubs, both community and professional. There are the same for categories of customer, and the sources of revenue are very similar.
While continuing to manage Australian teams and international relationships, RA delegates much of the other responsibilities to state unions, super rugby franchises and others. While retaining a significant obligation for funding them, RA earns insufficient revenue to do so.
A more widespread view would be that community rugby is neglected rather than delegated. Possibly the complexity and geographic dispersion is just too hard to manage within the existing governance structures and managerial capability.
Either way there is insufficient investment into grassroots to sustain the game, and in response the grassroots have turned away from professional rugby. What is the point of professional rugby if it cannot operate profitably, and financially support community rugby which provides both its players and its customers?
If RA was a business or a rugby club, owners or members would have voted in a new committee by now.
TV broadcast rights – virtual match attendance, it’s like a Zoom meeting
Whether pay TV or internet streaming, subscriptions and ratings are merely a surrogate for match attendance. Most subscribers would have an interest in attending the games if possible , and are following their team and monitoring other teams in the competition.
Given the significance of broadcast rights to RA financial success it surprises me that they take so little interest in building the TV audience. Equally amazing is the lack of interest of the broadcasters in building match day attendances.
The complete failure of the NRC is hardly surprising given the lack of interest in creating a competition that would attract a game day crowd. Only broadcasting one game per week drastically limits the opportunity of building an audience interested in attending games.
The Professional Rugby Financial Model – is there enough to pay for both professional and community rugby?
A business is usually operated by its directors for the purpose of earning a profit for its owners or members. In the case of RA there are no owners, the directors have no clear purpose in operating the organisation and are accountable to nobody.
I think it is reasonable to assume RA’s budget process might look like this:
• Major revenue items such as broadcast, sponsorship, and other commercial rights are multi-year arrangements and are relatively predictable in advance
• Seasonal revenues for match attendance and other commercial activities are estimated. Based on the comparison of strategic plan objectives for 2016 to 2020 to actual results, I would be very concerned that the estimates are optimistic.
• RA ’s core costs are then estimated, seemingly on a “last year plus new staff and initiatives” basis and including distributions to super rugby franchises and state unions.
• Presumably RA considers its “core costs” to be professional rugby and administration while community rugby costs are optional.
• Presumably when projected revenues do not materialise there will be no money for community rugby development. Instead, the common perception is that community rugby is now required to contribute levies to support professional rugby’s costs.
To meet its objectives a better approach would be to proceed as you would with your local rugby club, estimating the total expenditure required to achieve its objectives for growing and promoting all rugby in Australia and determining what revenues must be earned to cover them.
These revenue targets must be achieved with detailed plans to achieve them. If for some reason there is a shortfall, that should inform next year’s budget, with a shortfall covered through debt. Let’s face it, even though RA is not investing in community rugby it is still “coming up short” and being forced to borrow anyway.
The primary objects of Rugby Australia are:
a) to act as “keeper of the code” of the Game of Rugby in Australia from the grassroots to the elite level; and
b) to foster, promote and arrange Rugby throughout Australia.
There is no option to not invest into community rugby because you are unsuccessful generating the surplus revenues required.
Time to Roar again – are you ready to support professional rugby?
I feel I have drifted into the “wants to be persuaded” sector. I am tired of being taken for granted, being offered inappropriate and long since redundant membership packages, and being encouraged to donate by being a “supporter member”.
It is this disregard for the rugby community that irks me most and is alienating large sectors of the supporter base. There is so little value in the highly priced products offered to the supposedly high net worth rugby supporter.
If professional rugby is to succeed, and provide funds to community rugby, it will require your support. What type of customer you think you are? What type of promotion do you think would encourage you to attend professional rugby matches, subscribe to broadcasts and by sponsor products?
Rugby Australia’s Financial Hole – how to lose money and keep digging
It appears to me, that since 2003 RA has been mainly concerned with pursuing the large number of Australians not interested in rugby, at the expense of alienating those close to the game. RA and its affiliated states and franchises now appear to be substantially in debt and operating with an annual deficiency.
The RA Constitution and manner of operation is different from both a business and a rugby club, without any of the built-in controls. There are no owners or members to hold the board accountable and ensure that RA is achieving its objectives and managing its finances.
The big balance sheet financial challenges are to refinance current debt, maximise the windfalls expected from the 2025 Lions and 2027 RWC, and invest them wisely in the growth of the game to make it financially resilient.
Debt, Windfalls, Lessons Learned and other myths – the new Part 3
A second disclaimer: I did not want this article to be too long, and this subject is too important to gloss over quickly. So now there will be seven articles, at least you will have plenty to read over the festive season.
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
Damn, the old disappearing comment. In summary Stan is doing a good job but agree they are no longer focussed on maximising the rugby audience. There needs to be more incentive for both parties to build match attendance and ratings. Superior coverage to Fox and Kayo. Hope you will still get dragged in, most sports are the same in this respect, and you have lived it in soccer. You might find the Arbib report interesting to read instead, and follow that through to the actual constitution implemented. You may feel that there is important observations to be made. The only thing not written down anywhere is that "independent" has been interpreted as not having any ties to any rugby constituency, this being considered an anathema to good management. This is one major departure from the contents of Arbib's report.
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
The Arbib report is 45 pages and should be easy to find (I did in Feb 20) “Strengthening the Governance of Australian Rugby”. In case Roarers are unfamiliar- http://footyindustry.com/files/constitutions/Constitution%20of%20the%20Australian%20Rugby%20Union%20Limited.pdf
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
Agree that RA could do a lot more via Stan to build audiences. Channel 9 actually started off very well in early 2021, no doubt because they needed to build rugby momentum from zero. I think I even read somewhere that V'Landys criticised Channel 9 for promoting rugby so much. Needless to say, he didn't need to worry for too long because the NRL has dominated the news since March 2021. I guess 9/Stan have achieved signing up most rugby subscribers so now think that the job is done. Having said that, Stan has provided a lot more rugby content during the course of the year when they could have got away with not doing anything else so I'm really happy with Stan rugby content. Stan has also been impressive in getting into tennis and European soccer - indirectly that should help keep some shakey rugby subscribers on board because they will feel like they are getting good value for money that's not 100% dependent on rugby content. But back to the initial issue, yes, RA could do a lot more via Stan to build audiences. By the way, I won't be making too many, if any, comments on the Roar Project Part 4. Topics like governance and politics leave me cold. As I've mentioned, looking out for the greater good comes naturally to me so I find it sad/unsatisfying to focus on controls that need to be in place to achieve the greater good because other people are focused on power and self-interest!
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
Looking forward to your comments this week and next. I am sticking with "reactive". I will only say that neither RA or Stan are making a lot of progress on building a long term audience. They seem oblivious to the need of having a joint strategy to build audiences at the game and on TV. There is good reason they believe they just need to pay to get more stars back into their "entertainment business". Equally the Giteau Law has been under constant attention since it was first implemented. While it seems DR knows what he wants, it could just be my impression. As a whole there is no objective or identified pathway towards ensuring our best possible team is at the 2023 RWC with several seasons playing and training together under its belt. COVID pushed everyone, including the Japanese clubs, to move one step forward. Then we paused, hesitated and everyone ran in different directions. As for World Rugby, maybe it is stuck in a pre 1995 time warp. The main thing is to be elected and then be seen to be doing stuff. It is probably affecting the whole Tier One post professionalism.
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
Thanks Allan, the fact that I see things as positive while you see things as reactive is to my mind simply a product of the different paths we have taken to be a rugby supporter. Hindsight is the best management tool - if there is one thing I would wish for in the world, it would be a time machine so that we could try an option, rewind and try a different option, then compare results and go with the most successful one. Although we'd also have to travel forward to determine which option provided the best long term results. By the way, I feel about World Rugby similar to the way you feel about RA. To me World Rugby has been and still is a dinosaur. When World Rugby does something, like change eligibility rules, I see it as reactive. So there you go! I am happy to keep contributing because you make this a constructive debate where different views are welcomed, despite the fact that emotions can run high! Have a well deserved relaxing Christmas break :happy:
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
Thanks World I would still see those 'positives' as being purely reactive, but lets not get too bogged down in that, unless you are curious. The important thing is that you are back. From your experience in soccer the article which I am sweating on finishing tomorrow, for Saturday, should resonate, and I am sure you will have a lot to contribute the following weeks on the needs of both community and professional rugby.
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
Allan, I really appreciate you taking the time to understand my point of view. The Roar is an interesting forum in that your point of view dominates while mine is in the minority. I put that down to the fact that most supporters who are interested in the professional game and don't participate in community rugby probably don't actively participate in forums (in fact, I only got involved since I retired earlier this year and now have more time on my hands). Or maybe this is an example of confirmation bias on my part. Confirmation bias is the biggest threat to getting to the truth in all debates, the Roar Project being no exception! I have written one article so far for the Roar and my opening line was "Rugby union in Australia is the toughest gig in world sport." I truly believe this and view everything that happens in Australian rugby bearing this in mind. If RA makes a decision that sounds imperfect then my initial take is that perfection is impossible and the decision may be the best possible under the circumstances. I have had faith in RA since May 2020 because since then I have agreed with just about everything that has happened and been said. I was pleasantly surprised when the 9/Stan deal was announced because I thought it would be a game changer, and it has exceeded my expectations. When the Giteau law was relaxed this year, it played out to me like a positive pragmatic approach that resolved difficult Covid challenges while also strengthening the Wallabies, yet not being just the latter which would definitely have been open to criticism of being reactionary. Prior to 2020, I wouldn't say I drifted away from rugby, rather I would say I was still a big fan albeit less enthusiastic. This was because rugby has become almost invisible in mainstream media and the quality of Super Rugby had dropped off. This began to change for me from May 2020. Because I was not disillusioned and did not feel neglected, I was able to shift gear from less enthusiastic back to 100% enthusiastic very quickly and easily. Regarding my involvement in rugby, it has always been purely as a fan. I am not an ex-player, have not mixed with ex-players and have not participated in community activities. I'll admit to being a volunteer in junior soccer. After starting off as a reluctant volunteer coach for my son's U6 team, I would never have dreamt what would lie ahead. In my second year, I joined my local club's committee. In my third year, I joined my local association's committee because I thought team grading at the start of the season but in particular regrading during the season for non-competition age groups really sucked! Too often winning teams would keep winning while losing teams would keep losing. Then I saw how little effort the committee put into grading/regrading. I made sure my age group was done much better simply by putting in the effort. A couple of years later, I started interacting with the draw master and computer guy, and I even created a formula which would regrade automatically based on match results. How good that proved to be. My formula is still in use today. I actually received a President's award from my association for my overall contribution over 10 years. Anyway, I don't wish to blow my own trumpet, rather I want to illustrate that I am driven by the desire to improve things for the greater good. I think it's fair to say that about 20% of grassroots volunteers are in it simply because they are good people and not interested in competition per se but just want to make a contribution to the community. Most of the remaining 80% of volunteers are in it for self-interest which usually means ensuring that their kid makes the A team or that their kid's team gets graded appropriately. I guess I was unique in that I wanted to make a (big) contribution for the greater good. This may explain why I seem to be unique as a rugby supporter in that I don't represent the soul of the game but I do care for the greater good which means I must care for the soul. Most supporters of the professional game of rugby who have not come through grassroots would not care about grassroots because grassroots has no impact on them. These people should find it easy to shift to 100% enthusiastic if they see an improvement in the professional product. Even people who have come through grassroots in NZ, South Africa, UK, etc and have had no involvement in Australian community rugby should find it easy to shift to 100% enthusiastic if they see an improvement in the professional product because they wouldn't be disillusioned by past RA failings. I think there could be half a million people in Australia like this. I feel like I'm representing these half a million fans who mostly don't take the time to jump onto forums to voice their opinion. My time as a junior soccer volunteer showed me that there is a silent majority who are also interested in the greater good but are just not as passionate about prioritising their busy lives to make a contribution themselves. Don't think I have answered all your questions but hope this helps.
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
As per my other comment, I probably mixed your two comments together. What do you see as the positive developments? The details of this discussion are important.
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
I am confused again. A and B are too different groups of supporters, albeit that the same person is potentially an A customer and potentially a B customer. The accessible market is predominantly people who have played rugby, family or close friends. To use your terminology that means I, as a former player (almost certainly largely due to being the son of a player) I might be a A1, A2, A3, B1, B2 or B3. I am never a 4, either A or B. I am probably still a core supporter of A, but drifting, heart is ruling the head still. I might be a B2, but even the fact that I am pursuing this at all probably betrays me as a whinging core supporter. A rugby club has four types of customers. Due to a lack of resources and the fact that "familiarity also breeds contempt" they probably ignore their core supporters but somehow stumble along with their support together with those that are on the fringes of wanting to be persuaded. Those that need to be persuaded contribute a bit by attending the occasional game and function, and any one else probably turned up at the ground mistakenly thinking they were somewhere else. Elite rugby has four types of customers too. Post 2003, RA was very clear that it was out to secure the support of category 4 customers, based on the interest they showed at the 2003 RWC. A big part of the post RWC strategy is the same, to capitalise on the interest generated to grow the game. There is one lesson not learned, and I would also say another example of their reactive thinking. They just continue to alienate rugby people, steadily driving them away, or down categories 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4. I hesitated over the last statement and think a 1/2/3 that has drifted to "not interested" is relatively easily dragged back, but not if you are just treating them as a generic 4 who has no interest in the sport at all. The Strategic Vision is actually a doubling down on that view. I don't know what was in place before 2015 but that is the basis of the strategic plan and indicative of the RA thinking of that era. This is the basis of the annual announcement of the "success" of the schools program where xx,000 kiddies were compulsorily exposed to our game. That counts as "enjoyment" and an achievement for RA. All we should be interested in is, how many kids were so enthused that they joined a rugby club to play the game. Not only is that growing the game but taking a step towards creating a life time customer. I am curious about what your involvement in the game has been, why you drifted away and why you think RA is taking positive steps. I have seen some good things too, but mostly they are reactive e.g. they temporarily canned the Giteau Law. However, there is no rational explanation of why or even whether it is a good idea or what we will do in the future. We were so inept we did not engage in any sort of meaningful manner with the Japanese employers of the players. I am no expert on Asian culture and negotiation but I did have the very firm impression that they are very big on "respect". A bit of that would not have gone astray when commenting on the integrity of the players either.
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
Thanks Ken, I do hear what you and Allan are saying and I do agree with it. The point I'm making is that I believe there are a lot more fans like me than you may think, but having said that it doesn't detract in any way from what you are saying. I am even more optimistic knowing that there are so many disillusioned fans who still care enough that they are fighting for the future of the code in Australia :happy:
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
Back in the day I had a number of spare tickets to each game, and the main challenge was to figure who missed out, who got to go once or maybe twice. Another step up was an invite into a box, preferably one of the indoor ones. I never knocked one back myself and people would often be talking about the fact they were going, or had been. The only stories I hear nowadays is people ruminating whether they will bother accepting, or lamenting that they did. I did the outdoor box thing at the SFS a couple of times, hugely overpriced. Getting worse. The size of the disconnection is such that making a sweeping statement that RA never comes out of its marble tower at Moore Park is no exaggeration.
Ken Catchpole's Other Leg
Roar Guru
“ I feel the solution has to come from within the community club tier itself” Hence The Roar Rugby Project, Step 1. acknowledge and define the problem.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Ken, that's why I keep saying they need to get a pro comp done correctly, and the dire SR comp should've been scrapped a dozen years ago! I read someone on else here state that they literally couldn't give away free tickets to watch the Waratahs, as the kids at the juniors games don't care about Waratahs & SR. There's a huge cultural disconnect between the fanbase and the pro game/administrators.
Ken Catchpole's Other Leg
Roar Guru
Thanks for your engagement here WIU. I appreciate your considered challenge, and the market ‘breakdown’ you have outlined. I agree with the generic principle of questioning first assumptions. But I don’t care though if fans played the game or not. I did. I watch across all levels from subbies to Test level. But many of my club mates do not. For too many the pro game is alien. Australian Rugby lives in a cultural vacuum. The local subbies club TV tunes into the NRL before Super, even if there’s alumni in the Super side. All assumptions demand scrutiny, especially the ones that RA make on our behalf.
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
"chasing 4’s...has become RA’s focus with their Strategic Vision" This is a big issue for you and many others, and rightly so. I just wonder if this is really the case, or maybe it was the case until 2019. Since May 2020, my perception is that RA has been looking after customers like me, and I think there are a lot of customers like me. 2021 has been the best rugby experience I have had for many years, mainly due to the fantastic Stan coverage, but I also like the choices that RA has been making for the professional game at Wallabies and SR level. This is why I feel optimistic - 2021 has been a positive experience and I believe we are headed in the right direction, although I absolutely acknowledge there is more pain to go through than I had initially thought :happy:
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
I don’t think you need to cross the markets to figure out specific strategies for each individual Agree there don't need to be 8 or even 4 specific strategies, but there do need to be 2 strategies because I think you agree that RA has looked after B customers but not A customers. Most (ideally all) A customers are also B customers so by not looking after A customers, B customers have also dropped off and RA may not have expected this to happen. Another way of looking at this is that you have convinced me that there are a lot more A customers who have turned away from the game than I had initially thought, but I wonder if I have convinced you that there are a lot more B customers who have never been A (or A1 to be exact) customers than you initially thought. A week ago I thought that maybe you wanted RA to focus on community rugby and you didn't care whether professional rugby got weaker but your comments in the Roar Project Part 3 have shown me that the latter is not true so all good :happy:
Allan Eskdale
Roar Rookie
Correct. It just went a little deep for me. When I started to compare clubs to RA it was aimed at trying to demystify RA's business model, my main frustration is that they just keep spinning their performance and many supporters just assume it is big and complex, so failure is not RA's fault. What surprised me was my concluding assumption that the models are just about identical and RA fails because it does not understand how a rugby club works. I don't think you need to cross the markets to figure out specific strategies for each individual e.g. is he a A3/B2? It matters to RA whether you are a 1/2/3 for their product while the club is only concerned whether you live in their catchment and are a 1/2/3. No club would invest too much effort chasing 4's, it has become RA's focus with their Strategic Vision.
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
Allan, I suspect you've been head down in composing tomorrow's Part 3 article but before the new flood of comments come in tomorrow, it would be great if you could provide your thoughts on the above. Just a quick 1-2 sentence summary would do the trick :happy:
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
Allan, I've now brought together all my previous thoughts in a way that may be more useful for you. And yes, I'm still optimistic :happy: You have described 4 types of rugby customer: 1. core supporter 2. wants to be persuaded 3. can be persuaded 4. not interested This is fair enough but I think there is another customer dimension that is equally important: A. Community rugby supporter B. Professional rugby supporter I believe that A and B are very different although many supporters straddle both. Each of A and B contain your 4 types of customer which results in a total of 8 types of customer. Sounds like you used to be equally spread across A1 and B1 but now you're B2 (and I presume still A1). You've also mentioned that most rugby people you know used to be A1 and B1 but are now B3 or B4 (and hopefully still A1). I'll admit to being B1 (and A3) while most rugby people I know are B1 and B2 (and also A3). Discussions we all have with rugby mates will significantly influence what we think about the state of rugby and where majority and minority thinking may lie. As I've mentioned in a previous comment, I had underestimated the number of rugby people who had drifted to B3 and B4 simply because I haven't had sufficient interaction with them. Since joining the Roar a few months ago and particularly after reading comments on this project, I have adjusted my thinking. RA are meant to serve the entire rugby community and prioritise focus according to the magnitude and urgency of needs in the entire rugby community. I think your primary issue is that RA have spent way too much focus on B customers and completely neglected A customers. I absolutely agree this is true but as I've previously suggested, to determine what needs to be done right now, it would be more constructive to judge RA from May 2020 onwards, as hard as that may be. The Australian rugby situation in May 2020 was that RA were deep in the red, there was massive uncertainty around Covid, Super Rugby was disfunctional, and community rugby was neglected. Naturally the immediate step was to drastically cut costs and that meant cutting a lot of staff. Next step was to focus on customers. Focusing on revenue streams was critical and this meant focusing on B customers. Because of this, and also based on past disdain for RA, A customers believe that RA chose not to doing anything for them. My view is that with no money and limited staff they have kept A customers in view. They held their ground in signing a broadcast deal that included Shute Shield and Hospital Cup. They have also promised to exploit the potential windfalls from the 2025 Lions tour and 2027 WC to support grassroots (I believe the lessons of 2003 have been learnt but of course I appreciate that most A customers have no faith). Action for community rugby is still needed today but the question is what can RA do in the short term with limited money and bare bones staff? This is a clear opening for the Roar project to add value by coming up with possible solutions, the urgency being that every passing day risks further customers sliding from A1 to A2 to A3 to A4 and most likely also B4. If we don't think RA is aware of how serious this problem is then perhaps we can provide supporting data by running a survey not just for Roar readers but get it out to all community club members. As we know, RA did focus on B customers because something had to replace the old Super Rugby in order to bring in revenue. Perhaps RA don't appreciate that by not doing anything for A customers, many A customers will become B4 customers despite RA doing something for B customers. This is the impact that has hit home for me this week. I'll stop right here and see what you think!
The World in Union
Roar Rookie
I'm still optimistic. I'm just confused that you are driving this project if you are not optimistic about the future. Or are you aiming for a future more appropriate for Australia, like strong grassroots and tier 2 professionalism?