RFU Media Briefing
20 November 2006

Attendees - Paul Vaughan, Business Operations Director

Black Market tickets briefing
Paul Vaughan outlined the RFU’s objective of trying to reduce the number of tickets sold on the black market, in line with the Strategic Plan.  He highlighted the importance of the ticket revenue stream, which is this year forecast to bring in 29% of the RFU’s total revenue, approximately £20-25million of its £80million turnover.
 
The RFU’s distribution of tickets philosophy continues to try to maintain the growth of the game and participation.  “It’s important that being a member of a club has benefits, including access to Twickenham international tickets,” he said.  “This is a policy that has been supported by the RFU Council for a number of years.

Talking about the RFU’s recent activity, he said that in 2006 the RFU had introduced new ticketing terms and conditions.  It was now against the rules to advertise tickets for resale and that there was now a formal returns policy enabling ticket holders to get a refund if returning their tickets at least 48 hours before a match.

He also explained that this year there had been a major crackdown on illegal ticket sales on auction websites that meant not only were the tickets cancelled but that there was no refund for the purchaser.  The mystery shopper programme is also continuing, whereby the RFU employs people to go into the marketplace and buy tickets or hospitality. 

“We currently have 27 clubs and individuals undergoing a challenge in terms of their Six Nations tickets.  They have a right of appeal, which lasts 28 days, but at the beginning of December we will be announcing those who have been sanctioned.  The penalties range in severity and are judged against the severity of the case in terms of the number of tickets and factors like whether or not they have offended before.  The sanctions are all approved or changed by the Management Board and all the clubs and individuals will have the chance to appeal to Jeff Blackett.”

This autumn as a result of the crackdown, the RFU is currently dealing with in excess of 120 cases involving tickets which have been found where they shouldn’t be. 

The RFU, during the year, completed its battle against Westminster Hospitality, although one month ago the case collapsed after the company was taken into administration.  Vaughan confirmed that the work that was done will be used for the future and that the RFU is prepared to “fight its corner” on the issue of unofficial hospitality.

On the positive side he said that the licensed scheme was working well and that, from a consumer point of view, it was by far the safest route to buy hospitality.

Retail briefing
Retail sales were up year on year despite the South Stand building work and the performance of the team.  The win on Saturday had an immediate positive effect on the revenue pattern in the stores afterwards. 
Year on year, sales of the England shirt were up 29%, equipment sales up 17%, children’s wear up 31%, ladies’ wear up 38% club shirts sales were up 51% year on year.

Official England licensed product is now sold in Harrods, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Waterstones, Borders, WH Smiths, Amazon, Mothercare, Asda and numerous rugby specialists.

This Friday the York Street Rugby Store will reopen after a huge revamp, having been closed since July.

In other areas, despite the current state of car parking within the stadium, sales in Greene King’s new Rose and Crown pub in the west car park were up 50% on the previous year.

With 300 days to go until the 2007 RWC, England Rugby Travel has sold over a third of its allocation of 10,000 packages for England games.  Although there is still some way to go it is expected that this will improve with England’s performance.

Question and Answer session
Asked how many tickets reach the black market each match, Vaughan said that there were an estimated 4,000 tickets out there for a number of unofficial hospitality venues. 

When it was suggested that the punishments handed out to clubs in the past had been minor and why were they not being more vigorously pursued by the RFU, he said that the RFU was working closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to crack down at the sellers’ end as well as concentrating on who the ticket was originally allocated to. 

Although at the moment it is not illegal to resell tickets in rugby or other sports, as it is in football, talks with the DCMS were going well and that the RFU, along with concerts, theatres, cricket, tennis and rugby league, were putting a case together.  It was felt that the Government would be prepared to bring in legislation if a strong enough case was presented.  Another summit with Tessa Jowell was being held in December, this would be the fourth such occasion.

Asked if black market ticket sales had reduced, he said that in 2001 an estimated 8,000 tickets reached the black market and although this went up and down depending on the year, roughly speaking the figure had halved.

Asked how retail sales compared to those post Rugby World Cup, he said that although retail was up year on year, the RFU had experienced a huge dip in sales after the World Cup, when sales were down by about a third, but were now pulling that back up.

Asked how the black market affected the RFU’s revenue, Vaughan confirmed that there was no affect on revenue, only on the growth of the game and on who gets the opportunity to come to Twickenham.

Asked how clubs were allowed to package their allocated tickets, he confirmed that clubs were allowed to look after genuine sponsors.  “You would expect clubs to be able to raise revenue.  You don’t expect them to go out there and advertise to the general public to buy corporate hospitality.  A genuine sponsor is defined as someone who has had an involvement with the club and intends to sponsor it for at least a year.”

Asked what the loss was to the RFU of black market tickets if not revenue, Vaughan replied, “We price tickets in a way that makes them accessible.  If we decided as a Union to make the most money possible to put back into clubs, we would price them at say £100 rather than our current top price of £70, to take the profit out of reselling them. 

“Our official licensed operator scheme allows clubs to make money by dealing with the licensed perator direct and agreeing a price between themselves. The operators pay royalties that are also put back into the sport.” He also confirmed that the only way that official operators can get tickets is via the clubs as they do not get an allocation direct from the RFU.

Asked about ticket distribution, he confirmed that RFU policy had not changed and was available from rfu.com, but that 51% of tickets available went to clubs, with the rest allocated to the opposition, debenture holders, corporate hospitality, boxes, schools and referee societies amongst others.

Asked how many tickets were allocated to the opposition, he said that for the southern hemisphere teams the allocation was 4,000 per match.  For Six Nations it was based on a reciprocal arrangement, for example with France the reciprocal arrangement is 7,500, with Scotland and Wales it is about 6,500.  For Croke Park it will be 6,500, whereas with Lansdowne Road the figure is 5,500.

Asked whether the RFU would consider doing a one day blitz on touts by buying up all tickets offered on the black market, Vaughan replied, “It would be very expensive and I’m not sure it would solve the problem.”  Asked what money the RFU spent on its mystery shopper programme, he said that the RFU had budgeted £50,000 per year to police the market, but that this included advertising etc.

Asked what difference football style legislation would make he confirmed that it would make it legal for the RFU to take all the tickets offered by touts without paying for them and that this would be ideal.  However at present this legislation was specific to football and had been introduced for reasons of crowd safety given the crowd segregation.

Asked how tickets were allocated to clubs, he replied that the number of tickets allocated to a club was proportional to the size of the club, its membership, number of teams run and number of players.  As a result the Premiership clubs, with season ticket holders boosting member numbers, received more tickets than other clubs.

Asked about retail takings on match days he said that at last weekend’s match against South Africa the Rugby Store had taken somewhere in the region of £160,000 on the day.  This compared to approximately £130,000 for the loss against Argentina.

Asked about the takings for the Rose and Crown pub in the west car park, he said that the single tent was taking approximately £22,000 on a match day.

Asked about revenue from conferencing and banqueting, he said that at the moment, with very few rooms available, it was somewhere in the region of £1million per annum.  However with the south stand development complete, Twickenham “would have the capacity to seat 5,500 merely for lunch inside the building, seating 800 in the biggest room alone.  Completing the 156 room London Twickenham Marriott hotel and Virgin Active Classic gym, plus a theatre for community events and conferences, would turn the stadium into a 365 day a year operation which would be very good for ongoing business.”

Asked about the size of the resale problem posed by the internet, he said that of the 120 cases being investigated over the last four weeks, approximately 80-90 of those were internet cases. 

Asked whether the RFU had received a higher than expected number of returns for the autumn games he said that only the returns for the New Zealand game (a total of 6000) were surprising, but that these had mainly been the result of the fixture taking place on a Sunday when it had originally been thought that it would have taken place on a Saturday.  This would have affected people’s travel plans.

Ends