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Build it and the money will flow
Rupert Guinness
Rugby Heaven
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Rugby Union Players' Association boss Tony Dempsey has passionately defended the Australian Rugby Championship from its detractors and played down its forecast $2.5 million annual loss for three years as entirely expected.
"It was always anticipated that in the first three years existence of this competition that it would run at a loss," Dempsey said of the competition that kicks off on Friday amid grave doubts expressed about its financial viability.
"It is no different to any other start-up business or competition," he said. "It is expected before the brand name, the image and profile of that competition grows, that there will be a loss … By year four, it is anticipated that the competition will break even and pay for itself."
Dempsey said the Australian Rugby Union board agreed to form the competition on the basis that "it was set to make a loss of around $2.5m a year".
But he said the bottom line would not reflect the standard of the ARC, which was founded to provide Australia with a third tier of competition to bridge club rugby and Super 14.
Dempsey said he and the 75 rugby stakeholders who took part in the three-day meeting in May last year that led to the ARC's creation all believed it would grow in commercial value.
He said organisers aimed for the ARC to be included in the ARU's packaged offer to be put on the table when negotiations for the next SANZAR broadcasting rights deal started in 2010 - much the same as the Currie Cup and NPC competitions are included by the South African and New Zealand rugby unions.
"When interest in the competition grows from spectators, sponsors and television audiences, there will be an opportunity for those losses to turn into a revenue," Dempsey said.
"In three years' time, the SANZAR agreement will be up for renegotiation, and the whole idea was that this would roll into the broader context of that negotiation and have some commercial value to it.
"The Currie Cup and the NPC have commercial values attached to them. And the NZRU and SARU each get a larger slice of the pie in recognition of those competitions.
"That was always the understanding, anticipation and part of the thinking when [the ARC] was approved, and a really important part."
Dempsey has rejected suggestions that the ARC could be overhauled as early as next year, despite some reports that there are plans already under way to have it replaced with a new national competition as early as next year.
Until now, ARU chief executive John O'Neill has said that a review of the ARC will be held after its first season, and he has made it clear that changes will be implemented if necessary.
"What we want to be doing is to continue to monitor and, if necessary, finetune aspects of the competition as it develops; but in no way look to make any fundamental changes at this early stage," Dempsey said.
"A decision of this nature, to alter significantly the structure of the competition, would take a full ARU board meeting with all the knowledge, information and facts before them.
"They have already, with all the information forwarded to them, approved the three-year commitment to the current structure after 76 people attended a three-day lock-in to design the right structure.
"A lot of us would be flabbergasted should there be any significant changes after year one, given that background."
So is Dempsey bracing himself for a testing defence of the ARC?
"It will defend itself. Just as Noah's Ark survived the great tidal waves and floods of many centuries ago, I suspect this ARC will survive the minority dissenters who continue to want to bring it down and sink it," he said.
By That man a beer!
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So there, Growden (and other detractors)
