Even before the recent World Cup nightmare, Australian rugby has been doing it tough. Big cuts in media contracts, junior talent leaking to rugby league, Super Rugby clubs on death’s door, and no World Cup or Bledisloe silverware for decades have all been notable features of a bleak landscape.
It’s always easy to sledge sport administrators, and while some of its problems have been self-inflicted, Australian rugby is in intensive care not because of poor governance but because of the game’s poor economics. Wise heads who love the game around the world, especially those around the board table of World Rugby, would do well to ponder its economic problems in this country, as they’re fundamental and global in nature.
Australia is the canary in the coal mine of a dim long-term economic future for rugby globally unless the sport has the courage to embrace change and modernisation. No other rugby-playing country has anywhere near as crowded a domestic football market as ours. In the increasingly winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most nature of sports industries globally, Australian rugby is seriously and increasingly marginalised as the No.4 domestic football code.
The game is going backwards economically because, aside from episodic scintillating moments like the first half of France-South Africa in the recent World Cup, it’s become lousy entertainment, especially at the global level. It’s a boring product trapped in a pedantic and officiously applied rule book that’s gamed successfully by top nations and their coaches. Rugby tragics love it and can explain with certitude the reason why any of the dozens of penalty sins proscribed in the laws of the game merit a three-point punishment. Unfortunately, for the casual observer it’s impenetrable and a total turn-off. It’s no way to grow an audience.
Basic stats tell the story. The average playing time in recent World Cups has been around 35 minutes out of 80. That’s 43 per cent. A good portion of that 43 per cent has been taken up in end-to-end kickathons or waiting for endless box kicks to return to earth. Rule changes to rugby league in recent years to speed up the contest mean games now average over 50 per cent playing time.
In Australia’s most lucrative football code, Australian rules, the ball’s in play for 75 per cent or more of clock time. In soccer it’s higher than that. The AFL continually tweaks the game’s rules to make it more attractive for fans, broadcasters and sponsors, often with the objective of outsmarting the coaches who want to slow it down for tactical advantage. No surprises which codes are winning the commercial contest.
Melbourne Rebels, who are in voluntary administration, were beaten 30-3 by the ACT Brumbies on Friday night. Credit: Getty Images
Should it be of concern to stewards of global rugby that the most successful nation in the game’s shopfront World Cup has landed three of its four final triumphs without scoring a try? (Good luck to South Africa for figuring out that winning formula better than anyone.) That so much of the game’s tactics are now aimed at kicking for territorial advantage and inducing technical penalties within goal-kicking range, to produce scoreboard outcomes worth 60 per cent of what a try produces with a lot more certainty but also less entertainment value? That the predominance of backline tries in the inaugural 1987 World Cup has been largely replaced by crash-over tries by forward packs from within five metres, which spectators can’t see properly? That whenever a speaker at a rugby event these days says the game has become boring, there are choruses of approval from lovers of the game in the crowd?
A well-worn characterisation of this debate is “Northern Hemisphere v Southern Hemisphere”, which has taken the game precisely nowhere for decades. Likewise to say that if Australia wants to make the game more “entertaining”, it can have rules to that effect in Super Rugby. But if our elite players play a format one level below internationals that differs from international level, don’t expect the Wallabies to win very often. Which inevitably trickles down to economics at all levels of the game due to poor media contracts, and less competition globally from one of the sport’s supposed leading nations.
A boring product trapped by pedantic rules: Why it’s time rugby joined the entertainment game
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26.02.2024
Even before the recent World Cup nightmare, Australian rugby has been doing it tough. Big cuts in media contracts, junior talent leaking to rugby league, Super Rugby clubs on death’s door, and no World Cup or Bledisloe silverware for decades have all been notable features of a bleak landscape.
It’s always easy to sledge sport administrators, and while some of its problems have been self-inflicted, Australian rugby is in intensive care not because of poor governance but because of the game’s poor economics. Wise heads who love the game around the world, especially those around the board table of World Rugby, would do well to ponder its economic problems in this country, as they’re fundamental and global in nature.
Australia is the canary in the coal mine of a dim long-term economic future for rugby globally unless the sport has the courage to embrace change and modernisation. No other rugby-playing country has anywhere near as crowded a domestic football market as ours. In the increasingly winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most nature........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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