This was on a Fairfax site earlier this week, and will soon disappear behind a paywall. So, I'm posting it here:
A boring product trapped by pedantic rules: Why it’s time rugby joined the entertainment game.
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.
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.
Rugby is full of passionate, informed and opinionated supporters. Ask 200 people what rule changes would improve the game and you’ll get 200 different answers. No one person can or should play God with what the rule book should say, even if they’re providing the funding. The game belongs to the people. What World Rugby should do is establish a game development and modernisation commission, with an independent chair. This commission should comprise game legends, referee and coach representatives with a balance from the northern and southern hemispheres, plus broadcasters and some of the private equity investors who’ve taken positions in the game surely seeing the commercial potential in an improved game product. Their mandate would be to recommend to World Rugby and fans worldwide a new slimlined rule book governed by a set of simple overarching principles designed to make rugby more entertaining without abandoning basic principles of the game that have stood for generations.
So, by way of example, what rule changes would need to be made to ensure that ball-in-play time is at least 66 per cent of clock time? To have points from tries exceed points from penalties? To have fewer end-to-end kickathons or basketball competitions from box kicks? To see more running rugby that fans love?
There’ll be a presidential election at World Rugby later this year. The recommendations from this commission should be up for public debate before then. Rugby fans deserve to hear presidential candidates’ views on these matters before someone is anointed behind closed doors. While the number of countries with a seat at the table makes change difficult, the sport needs to heed the lessons of the Australian market. Reform and modernisation of the game product is desperately overdue, to improve the sport’s economics and broad market appeal in an ever-more cutthroat sports entertainment industry.
This was written by John Wylie, chair of the Australia Sports Commission from 2012 to 2020.
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