Ian Mallon: 2022 was a year in which normal rules no longer applied
LEGENDARY FIGHT: Katie Taylor celebrates winning her mega fight with Amanda Serrano in April. Pic: INPHO/Gary Carr
There's no stock price for the Irish sports business sector as a single market – but if there was such an index, 2022 would present a sporting ISEQ of unpredictable volatility and trend-changing movements.
In financial markets the Whipsaw is a label placed on stock valuations which suddenly shoot off in an opposite directions from the route they were moving.
Such wild patterns changes are not only impossible to predict, but so completely out of the blue they change the value and the worth of a stock in an instant, sometimes with devastating effects and occasionally with positive outcomes.
Who, for example, would have thought the GAA would crash its own value by effectively cutting a championship season in half, or that the FAI would slice almost €1m off its own sponsorship valuation?
Moving in a sharp upward trajectory were the Irish rugby team and Rory McIlroy who will welcome the New Year sitting as ‘world number one’ in their respective codes.
And who would have thought that the most viewed Irish (peak audience) soccer match of the year would go to the Women’s National Team?
Leona Maguire and Seamus Power’s journeys, while more impressively steady than sharp, are certainly noteworthy trends as they head into what should be an extraordinary 2023 for both.
While Katie Taylor even bucked her own stellar standards by being the most watched woman in boxing history thanks to a 6m global audience on DAZN for one of the sporting epics of the year, her fight against Amanda Seranno in Madison Square Garden.
Welcome to the Year of the Whipsaw, a time when the normal rules no longer applied and a sharp bucking of trend impacted across all major sports business assets.
Imagine the PGA Tour, the Premier League or the NFL voting to cut its core competitive rosters, wiping out two months – or almost half of its season schedule. The GAA has done that with catastrophic effects to its commercial brand and sponsorship valuation, where its elected members turned the All-Ireland championship into an early summer blitz, ending inter-county competition long before the once-golden days of August and September.
Just before the peak interest in the golf season – the US Masters at Augusta – Irish tech upstarts Wayflyer burst onto the global sponsorship scene by investing in its highest profile investor. Shareholder Shane Lowry’s addition of the Wayflyer logo to his suite of multi-million dollar sponsors – Srixon/Cleveland, Teneo, Bank of Ireland and Kingspan - was an exceptional activation, particularly given the Offaly man’s visibility throughout a barnstorming Masters performance and a subsequent BMW Championship win. The Irish fintech company has hit choppy waters with an almost halving of its global workforce in the last month, but has $1 billion valuation to fall back upon.
The PGA Tour now rates Rory McIlroy as its second most valuable brand after Tiger Woods, following an astonishing year of visibility and engagement across broadcast, social media and brand recognition. A return to World Number One status and tour championship winning titles in the US and Europe have sealed Rory’s overall worth close to one billion dollars in value.
The most intriguing story in sports commercial values continued through another difficult year for the FAI as it surpassed a series of sponsorship landmarks. It has now spent more than three years looking for a partner for the Men’s Team, and during the summer it slashed the asking price from €2.5m to €1.6m. The devaluation has not worked and the soccer body may have to rub another €300k off its annual fees in 2023.
In a year which saw leading English rugby brands Wasps and Worcester hit the skids financially, Munster and Leinster demonstrated levels of economic fair play unseen across any sport. Both organisations are in break-even levels of financial performance, extraordinary so soon after the disastrous effects of Covid and despite Munster’s up and down year on the pitch, as well as Leinster’s devastating last gasp loss to La Rochelle in the Heineken Champions Cup Final.
It’s hard to fully appreciate the impact that the Irish Women’s National Team has had on the Irish public until you look at the numbers. In 2022 the most watched live performance by a peak television audience for a game of football was for the Women’s National Team, and their historic win in Scotland. An average audience of 382k viewed the game, peaking at 593k. The most watched Men’s match was also against Scotland, in September, when an average of 393k saw Ireland go down 2-1, peaking at 515k. 2023’s Fifa World Cup will smash all previous records for women’s sport.
While it always needs to be stressed, betting needed to be fixed to prevent the personal and financial destruction of problem gamblers. It is also important to point out that the necessary regulation also needs to support professional and recreational gamblers, who are black-listed and prevented from gambling due to their success. With a new regulator appointed from outside of the betting industry this year, the concerns and suspicions are that the gambling regulation authority will be just another quango - either way the year ahead will reveal the true value of regulation.
While most NGB’s and sporting federations were working on their survival a tiny number of organisations entered the digital space and invested in technologies to back up their future business strategies. The GAA has advanced plans to issue NFT’s of landmark GAA moments, where a limited number of fans could own a piece of digital history – an original piece of footage which no other fan could own. Leinster Rugby, meanwhile, had taken its own journey with the creation of a Leinster Metaverse, a virtual home for fans and stakeholders, and Munster Rugby created its premium content platform – Access Munster - offering exclusive behind-the-scenes content to subscribers.
Certainly the most extraordinary retail story in sports business came in August when a technical glitch at the Aviva Stadium during the NCAA clash between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and North Western Wildcats resulted in €500k worth of free pints being given out to college football fans. Neither the Aviva nor its hospitality provider Levy UK+I accepted blame. That instead went to SumUp payment provider whose technical failure led to almost 100k free pints being handed out to thirsty patrons.
In March Rachael Blackmore achieved more than any female athlete in history. She dominated a sport which for centuries was owned by men, adding a Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle to her Grand National and other Champions Hurdle heroics of 2021. The other big winners, along with Henry de Bromhead’s stables, included Dornan Engineering, The Jockey Club, KPMG, Tipperary Fresh and Audi who will all have paid substantial bonus payments for the enhanced ‘Brand Blackmore’. Blackmore Racing Ltd’s company profits for 2021 stood at €367k, more than double on the previous year. A trebling in value for 2022 might seem like a big ask, but then this was a massive year for the Tipperary superstar.
The most life-changing activation in Irish Sport came in 2022 when Carmel Naughton of Glen Dimplex invested a chunk of her personal fortune into the Camogie Association. The value of the five year investment is unknown but The Pitch forecasted that it works out at approximately €5m over its seven year lifetime. The organisation has funds like never before and is currently undergoing a major rebrand.
Just before the Masters at Augusta The Pitch introduced you to Ross Garvey, the boss of Airton Risk, a Flutter-owned Dublin company which invests in the failure of a gold standard of the world’s leading (PGA Tour and DP World Tour) golfers, football teams and other athletes. Garvey buys up pre-tournament bonuses and prize purses from agents and commercial partners at reduced rates, betting on outcomes from that thin, but highly lucrative line, of success or failure.
One of the most surprising, if not valuable, investments at county board level in 2022 came with the Sports Direct sponsorship of Cork GAA. Following his sale of Newcastle United to the Saudi’s, Mike Ashely’s brand strategy saw €2m being invested in Cork over the next five years. Expect hefty bonus payments for All-Ireland and National League successes.
The shrewdest bit of business by any sports brand over the previous decade was completed by the savvy and exceptional team at Punchestown racecourse, led by Conor O’Neill. Before Covid, O’Neill invested in an insurance bond to protect against future exceptional events, securing the national hunt headquarters for its festivals and meetings to the tune of €12m annual turnover. Winner alright.
The K Club in Straffan, County Kildare will forever be etched in the history books thanks to the epic 2006 Ryder Cup, and while it certainly had not declined into ruin, it merited an ongoing profile and legacy befitting its majestic presence in Irish sport. That came in the summer when Michael Fetherston, who purchased the resort from Michael Smurfit in 2020 for €70m, was on hand to see the venue awarded three of the next five Irish Opens, and all sponsored by Horizon.
In the space of less than a year Cycling Ireland was an organisation which was under investigation by An Garda Siochana for alleged fraud – falsifying government grant applications – to the darling of Irish sports. In November the NGB was awarded a €60m velodrome and HQ at the Irish Sports Campus, in a state-of-the-art facility which will also house Badminton Ireland.
Katie Taylor’s title fight with Amanda Serrano was the biggest female fight in history. What that did for women in sport, Katie Taylor and DAZN was simply extraordinary. The Pitch revealed in May that 1.5m million people watched the event on the streaming service, live from Madison Square Garden – with an average of three others watching alongside.
When the Irish Examiner revealed in 2021 that a Fifa World Cup bid by Britain and Ireland was not an option that Uefa would consider as its representative at FIFA, matters moved quickly towards the Euros in 2028. That formal process kicked on in March with only one other rival bid on the table - from Turkey (after a Russian bid was thrown out). Next September a united UK and Ireland attempt will be ratified by UEFA, despite recent tantrums from Europe’s ruling body over payments and benefits it expects from the ‘home countries’.
Former Limerick FC, Cork City and Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper Noel Mooney was the most relevant sports executive of the year, leading the Welsh FA and Gareth Bale into Qatar 2022. While Wales went out at the group stage of the competition, the team and its manager Rob Page left a significant impact on a nation whose only previous World Cup appearance was 64 years ago. Wales pocketed $9m for their efforts too.
The end of match ‘Up the ‘Ra’ shenanigans which threatened to blot Ireland’s historic qualification for Fifa World Cup 2023 was a lesson in keeping a cool head in times of crisis. That came largely from Chloe Mustaki’s calm interview with Sky Sports News anchor Rob Wotton, the morning after – who when questioned whether the Irish players needed to be educated in history, delivered a game-changing ‘thanks, but no thanks’ response. Sky Ireland, sponsors of the team since 2021, heaved a collective sigh of much relief while its British colleagues squirmed under the beat of social media outrage.
