Lions must demand bigger slice of tour TV revenue
The players and management delivered when the need was greatest and in doing so have bought time for an historic institution that continues to defy logic in the ever-demanding world of professional sport.
Last Saturday night in the ANZ Stadium was one of the great sporting occasions, with even the sports-mad Australian public blown away by the passion, commitment and never-say-die attitude of the Lions — and that was only the supporters.
On the field the Lions were superb, buoyed by that magnificent start when racing into a ten point lead which helped settle the nerves and instil the belief that they could finally put away a willing but ultimately flawed Wallaby side. That said, it wasn’t all plain sailing as Australia, as is their wont, fought their way back into the contest.
Just imagine for a second if Australia, having clawed their way back from a 16 point deficit, somehow managed to win the third Test and the series. When they scored 13 unanswered points in a seven minutes spell either side of the break to reduce the Lions lead to three, that’s all I could think of. The Lions concept would have struggled badly to recover from that.
The fact that the never-say-die attitude of the players shone through at that point, epitomised by a goal-line stand under enormous pressure from the Wallaby attack, has done an invaluable service to the Lions concept — I hate the term ‘brand’ as it tends to portray the Lions as a business rather than the unique sporting entity it represents.
That said, I do recognise the circus the Lions has become off the field, which is a bit much to take at times. This time, between players, management, team support staff and commercial back-up, the entire party numbered 87 people.
The support staff did a magnificent job, with the medical team under Dr James Robson playing as big a role as any of the coaches. Irish team doctor Eanna Falvey was another to contribute massively and their efforts in keeping Tommy Bowe and Jamie Roberts on tour was instrumental in winning the series.
However, there is something not right about marketing and brand representatives of the various sponsors, along with security staff, swanning around in the official Lions number one gear. A Lions blazer is treasured but to see so many on the periphery on match-day, masquerading as Lions, was a bit strange. Some even went in the lap of honour by the players at the end when they sought to show their appreciation to the thousands of Lions fans who had spent a fortune following them.
Perhaps it was the Wallaby camp who needed the security staff, if for nothing else than to protect Kurtley Beale and James O’Connor from themselves. It has emerged since Saturday’s shattering defeat the pair missed the team bus for training last Thursday, having been photographed in a fast-food restaurant in the early hours. The senior players are sick of them and Robbie Deans’ tolerance towards them. That was a big factor in the likeable Kiwi losing his job on Monday. The Lions hit this Wallaby team at the right time.
This series win will enhance the profile of the Lions further and with an always demanding tour of New Zealand next up in four years time, it was vital for the party to return triumphant this time out.
Writing my first piece on this tour back in May, I quoted Warren Gatland who offered the following concern’s before leaving.
“Hopefully going forward, if we’re going to take the Lions seriously, we need to make sure there is enough preparation to make a fist of it”. Thankfully, that lack of preparation didn’t hamper the party too much on this occasion but it was interesting that Gatland choose to make the same point immediately after the series win last Saturday night. He has that New Zealand tour in his sights already.
He mentioned the various post-tour reports presented by former managers, highlighting the fact that if the four home unions continue to pay lip service to the concept and not offer adequate time to prepare, the prospects of winning a series would be fatally compromised.
Once again we had players joining the party after playing for their clubs in the Rabo Direct and Aviva Premiership finals, with the management praying that nobody would be injured. Of course that was never going to happen. Rob Kearney’s tour was compromised from the start when he strained a hamstring in Leinster’s warm-up for that Rabo final and Northampton’s Dylan Hartley was sent off in the Premiership final against a Leicester side with six tourists on board.
The Lions is a cash cow for the host country and its importance to Australian rugby is highlighted by the fact that the $18m deficit the ARU accumulated over the last two seasons can be written off after this tour. Yet the Lions, and by extension its shareholders, the four home unions, only receive a minimal dividend from the entire exercise.
It is estimated that the full cost of running the tour this time out is a staggering €16m and the fact that the Lions get little or nothing from the television rights is crazy. Apparently that is set to change after 2017, but I was told the same after the 2005 tour and that didn’t materialise.
Last week new ARU chief executive, Bill Pulver told the home unions to forget any idea of sharing the profits of a Lions tour in future. He said the only chance of that happening would be if all the major unions on the IRB agreed to look at how gate receipts from the matches against each other were divided up. In other words, they would seek a share of the receipts our unions receive when they travel for the tests in November.
The issue here is the crowds attending internationals in the northern hemisphere considerably outnumber those Down Under, the Lions being the exception, because they bring so many supporters with them. The key is a fairer distribution of the television money that attaches to a Lions tour. The unique nature of that tour in the modern era should allow that to be the case and separate it from the standard end of season efforts by the individual countries. If the Lions don’t get a fair share of the revenue when the next agreement is thrashed out, they should simply refuse to travel.
Increased television revenue would reduce the burden on those charged with balancing the books and having to take on so many commercial partners to make the tour economically viable. While nobody was prepared to admit it, the fact that the Lions had to decamp in the boiler house conditions that accompanied the opening game in Hong Kong, primarily for commercial reasons, it could have derailed the tour before it even started.
Former Munster and current Brumbies coach Laurie Fisher made the point to me that when the Brumbies play an opening season exhibition game in Darwin in very similar conditions to what the Lions experienced in Hong Kong, they don’t train their players for a week in order to recover properly. Unfortunately, that option wasn’t open to Gatland but apart from all those soft tissue injuries early on, thankfully they got away with it.
In the circumstances Gatland and his management team did a brilliant job while the players, who carried themselves superbly on and off the field throughout the tour, did the tradition proud. Roll on New Zealand.
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