RUGBY’S FINANCIAL CHALLENGES
Robinson, who has sat on the World Rugby board for the past eight years, will be involved in crisis meetings in September with the game’s powerbrokers to discuss plummeting cash flow across the landscape.
“The member unions are finding it very difficult, outside of us, unions in the north are finding it challenging so they acknowledge there is a need to do something about it,” Robinson said.
“They understand it’s not impacting others around the world, but it’s also impacting on them.
“So the meetings we’re having, firstly with the unions, then obviously we need to extend that out to the club owners – because we all need a sustainable system – ultimately it’s pretty simple, if we have revenues that aren’t actual, they’re underpinned by discretionary expenditure or philanthropy, is not going to sustain us because that can come and go.
“It’s about the sustained revenues that the game can actually support through the product that we have to work to.
“If we just keep squeezing, someone will win in the short term, but like any system you get bitten in the end.”
ENGAGING YOUNGER AUDIENCES
One of the big frustrations for rugby fans, and those who could potentially engage with the game in future, is the varying rules of an already complex sport.
The Rugby Championship features law variations designed to speed the game up, including shot clocks for penalty kicks and scrum re-sets, and 20-minute red cards, but these are not part of Six Nations games or between north and south teams.
“[RFU boss] Bill Sweeney said to me that the existential threat we face is becoming irrelevant to the next generation of rugby fans and players, and he is so right,” Robinson said.
“There is sincerely an alignment around the issues at the moment which is fantastic, we can move collectively faster.
“We’ve got to be uniform, we clearly can’t have different types of the game being played in different competitions.
AUSTRALIAN RUGBY
As the inaugural captain of the Brumbies, a 16-Test Wallaby and former Australian rugby board member, Robinson is well aware of the challenges here.
Pressure from the NRL and AFL, bungling management of the game, and increased competition for eyeballs has put rugby in a perilous position in Australia.
But Robinson remains positive.
“I’m a glass half-full kind of guy,” he said.
But while some have viewed Robinson’s nomination as a potentially saving grace for Rugby Australia, his remit will only be to make decisions for the good of the entire game, not his home nation.
“As you see in Sydney, the health of the community game is really thriving. But we’ve got work to do on our competition models, at a high performance level.
“To be fair, that’s not an issue we’re alone with. If you look around the world, in the Celtic nations with the URC, in the [English] Premiership, in New Zealand, South America, Africa, the provincial competitions of many nations are under real pressure.
“Some of the challenges we face here, while they’re elevated in comparison to our competitors, if you talk to the member unions – which I have – they are suffering similar challenges.
“The challenges the game needs to address as a whole is provide financial macroeconomic drivers around revenue generation, while also managing the cost base.”
