England must do its duty to lift ITV's world rugby show
By John Goodbody
ONE of the most relieved people when England recovered to beat Wales in the rugby union World Cup last Sunday was Brian Barwick, ITVs Controller of Sport. With the commercial channel having exclusive access to the tournament, ITV is hoping that England will beat France on Sunday and so reach the final the following weekend for the first time since 1991, when it attracted a television audience of more than 14 million.
This should make up for the solid but unexceptional figures so far. Despite the immense publicity in the written and electronic media, the general public, as opposed to the usual rugby audience, has not responded in large numbers. Most results have been too predictable and some of the games ludicrously one-sided, such as when England beat Uruguay 111-13.
So far, the highest average audience in Britain has been six million with a peak of 7.1 million for the final 15 minutes of the England versus Wales game. Yet, this is fewer than the numbers that watched the Boat Race this year, which had a peak of 7.7 million for the event.
Barwick insists that for many people there will be an empty space on Sunday mornings after the end of what he describes as a cracking tournament. He points out that if many of the results have been predictable, the pattern of several games has not.
ITV has also tried to increase interest by educating viewers, explaining the rules of the game. Despite this and the extensive promotion by ITV, with 200 advance trailer slots, much of the British public has yet to become enamoured. In the other two quarter-finals screened on ITV 1, the average audience was 2.85 million, while the fourth game between New Zealand and South Africa drew 710,000 on ITV 2.
It is true that these were being shown early on weekend mornings, when ratings are usually low, but the public will still watch events that grab their imagination. At the 2002 Winter Olympics, there were 5.6 million people watching BBC 2 just before midnight on a Wednesday, when Britain took the gold medal in curling. During the football World Cup last year, six matches, several of them screened on weekday mornings when most people are usually at work, had peaks of at least 11.6 million. ITV also screened the fixtures live so the total number watching at home was much higher.
Barwick points out that there is an increasing desire to see the matches at the rugby World Cup in pubs and clubs and so the at home ratings do underestimate the actual number of people watching. However, this has become true of several sports, such as football and Formula One, and many pubs now have the television tuned to the days principal sports event.
Barwick says: For ITV, the aim is for the tournament to be watched by everyone. However, it undoubtedly does attract the elusive upmarket male audiences, particularly for the big games. This is why the World Cup is such a useful vehicle for advertising and valuable for ITV.
Kevin Alavy, research analyst at Initiative, an international media agency that specialises in collating global ratings, agrees. The rugby World Cup has been pretty successful in the UK, where the key thing has been the quality of the audience, he says.
However, what must worry the International Rugby Board and the World Cup sponsors are the low figures in other countries, with the exception of France, where the highest figure has so far been an average of 5.7 million for the pool game against Scotland. Although there have been comparatively large figures in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, these countries have relatively small populations.
The Australian Rugby Union (ARU) proclaimed on its website before the first game, Australia v Argentina, that a billion people would watch the opening ceremony. Alavy says: We have collated the TV figures from all 20 countries taking part. The final figures have yet to come in from South Africa, Japan and Tonga but we now do not expect the total from all these markets to exceed ten million. One wonders how the ARU can justify its statement.
Alavy says: Rugby has a few core markets but it lacks the global breadth of sports such as football or Formula One. This years grands prix had average viewing figures for every race in 38 key markets of 39 million people. In marketing terms, rugby suffers because those countries with huge populations, such as China, India, Russia and the US, have little interest in the sport.
ITV spent £10 million on the UK rights and can consider that it has been money well spent but sponsors of the rugby World Cup, which include Visa and Coca-Cola, will be scrutinising the independent global TV audiences to see if they are reaching enough people to justify their investment at future competitions.
