Iain Morrison: Lack of marketing is leaving Scots sides as poor relations of Magners League

Published on Saturday 17 April 2010 20:11

I BUMPED into a former international player a few weeks back at Murrayfield. He'd been to Dublin for the international and made a weekend of it, as you do, arriving on Thursday to take in the Leinster v Glasgow Magners League match at the RDS that evening.

He waxed lyrical about a club match that attracted over 11,000 Dubliners out of their houses, far from the television soaps and the washing up, to watch what was effectively a reserve match. One week later we were both part of the crowd at Murrayfield when Edinburgh squeezed past the Scarlets. There were just 2,762 hardy fans supporting a team that is still in with a shout of a play-off place and it made for a depressing contrast.

First things first. The crowd figures for the pro-teams are going up in Scotland but they are rising from an embarrassingly low base and, over the last five years, they have risen more slowly in Scotland than in the Magners League as a whole. Edinburgh's average gate in the season 2004-5 was 2,718 while so far this season they are averaging 4,342 in the league although that figure is skewed upwards because a host of complimentary tickets were distributed for the Murrayfield leg of the 1872 Cup. (Taking out the free tickets reduces the average below 4,000 but I have left them in presuming that comps were also handed out in the 2004-5 season.)

Over the past five years Edinburgh's gates have risen by 60 per cent (or 41 per cent after stripping out the 1872 Cup giveaways) and the Glasgow figure is 52 per cent. Over the same period the Celtic League average gates have risen from 4,277 to 8,493 which equates to a 99 per cent rise.

It's a frustrating fact that more punters can't be enticed out to watch live rugby especially given the relative comfort of Murrayfield, which is also a large part of the problem. While the national stadium has enviable amenities it boasts all the atmosphere of deep space until or unless the sort of crowd numbers are reached that necessitate opening the East Stand. The 1872 Cup offered a glimpse of what might be when the Glasgow fans filled the opposite side of the stadium. Why don't these same fans watch the pro-teams every weekend?

There are extenuating circumstances behind the miserable numbers. Munster have moved to the 26,000 seat Thomond Park which has driven the league averages upwards and Magners require Edinburgh to play some matches on Sunday afternoon, like next weekend's fixture against Ulster, when the club would obviously prefer to stick to its usual Friday evening slot.

It is easy to blame the SRU for every evil in the world short of the bubonic plague but they have to shoulder at least some of the blame for poor attendances that are due to a lack of imagination as much as anything. The pro-team chief executives are in charge of their own marketing but one wonders why? Where is the expertise, where is "Firework Phil" Anderton when you need him?

Murrayfield's head of marketing is Ruchi Aggarwal who argues for a two-pronged approach whereby "energy" is put into persuading those fans that are already "rugby-engaged" (ie club fans, members, volunteers etc) while the tougher, non-traditional supporters are targeted with money. She obviously hasn't visited Goldenacre or Myreside recently because there are no club fans, at least not in Edinburgh, and far fewer club members than there were ten or 15 years ago. Every adult male rugby player in the country could buy a ticket for Edinburgh's next home match and the crowd would still be less than two-thirds of Leinster's average gate.

The best-supported teams in Europe have attracted crowds of up to 75,000 by appealing to people outside of the traditional rugby market which is blindingly obvious because historically speaking club rugby generated a fraction of those numbers. Amongst others, Aggarwal should be targeting middle-aged football fans who are fed up with junior learning another four-letter word every weekend when the pair of them could be enjoying a beer, a hotdog and some rugby at Murrayfield.

Hearts season tickets range from 260-425 (for 19 home matches at 13.68-22.37 per match) while Edinburgh Rugby will charge adults 170 (for 12 homes matches at 14.17 per match) when they launch next week, 90 for students and just 30 for kids.

Aggarwal talks about a "tipping point" where the numbers watching the pro-teams suddenly reach a stage where they rise very quickly. Looking at the tables above, this sea-change seems to have taken place at the league's two most successful clubs, Leinster and Munster, so actually winning something would undoubtedly help accelerate attendances in Scotland.

The marketing boss reports to board member Eamon Hegarty who is better known as the financial director of the SRU. I don't doubt that Hegarty can read a set of accounts while standing on his head but he is on shaky ground when it comes to sports marketing. When it was put to him that the SRU board could do with some marketing expertise Hegarty's reply – if the board thought it needed someone it would make the appointment – shows up the chicken/egg nature of the argument. There is no marketing expert on the board to argue the importance of marketing to the bean counters that hold sway.

There is an old adage "you've got to spend a buck to make a buck" and on that basis the Union needs to dust off the cheque book because they can't even fill Murrayfield for the Six Nations. There were 5,560 empty seats when Scotland played France back in February. If an average ticket costs 40 then the Union suffered a 222,000 shortfall on the day. The right marketing expert would pay for themselves several times over.

Of course it is difficult to fill the stadium for France on a Sunday but the last time Les Blues visited Edinburgh on the Sabbath was in 2008 when 65,687 people attended the match (4,103 more than this year) and, anyway, that is surely the point. If filling Murrayfield was easy then Daffy Duck could be head of marketing and nobody would care. It is exactly because the Scottish public are resistant to the joys of professional rugby that Murrayfield needs to import someone with real clout.