IN ALL FAIRNESS - Pandemic highlights broken sporting model
If there is one positive from the Covid-19 pandemic which caused the shutdown of virtually every sport for a period of time, it highlighted the sports that were running an unsustainable model and has provided an opportunity for a re-set.
Rugby and soccer are the two sports that spring to mind considering the almost daily reports from both, of the trouble they are in financially and the need not only to get back playing but doing so with fans in the stands.
Now, clubs and administrators in these sports can be forgiven in that what has happened over the last three months came at them without much warning and little chance to prepare for it. However, they were running on thin ice as it was with income generated going straight out the door at the other end, particularly in terms of wages. Now provides the perfect opportunity for the whole sports industry to have a look at itself and for someone to shout stop to what is going on.
Rugby and soccer are only in the halfpenny place to sports in the United States where the salaries being handed out to players are obscene. Worse still are the salaries handed out to coaches, particularly at college level where the highest paid coach, Dabo Swinney of Clemson, earns €9.3 million per year in what is essentially a teaching position for between twelve and fifteen American football games per year, depending on how well they do. Now many colleges are cutting the less money-making sports such as golf, wrestling etc…instead of cutting some of the crazy salaries some of the high profile coaches are on.
Now, we have all become aware of how messed up the United States has become in a lot of aspects of their society and their focus on money and it has crept across the Atlantic over the last decade with soccer players now demanding high salaries, even for the most average player.
It hasn’t been helped by the vast amounts of money the likes of Sky and BT are paying for rights to show English Premier League games but you suspect that we may have seen the peak of it as viewers at home are moving away from subscriptions in their droves and clubs won’t be able to hand out these massive pay packets as they once did.
What money does in all aspects of life it is provides comfort and when you are comfortable your hunger for whatever you do is reduced and it is no different in sport where players can jog around a field and not give their best and still be handsomely rewarded at the end of the week.
That is unlikely to change when sport starts getting back to normal but while players deserve a fair share of the money-making pie that the Premiership is, they don’t deserve doing it as the expense of fans who are paying exorbitant prices in stadiums while the viewer at home are seeing their subscriptions going up each year, for what?
The Premier League is in the fortunate situation where they could play games behind closed doors every week and it would still be a financial success as match-day income is merely only pocket change.
That isn’t the case for League of Ireland clubs who have no incentive to come back as with no tv income, the only revenue generator is match-day income and fans coming through the turnstiles and without that coming back is not worth the clubs while.
Provincial rugby in Ireland isn’t much better off and while they’ll be able to get back to playing in the short term, their financial model is very suspect indeed where tv money from isn’t much and rely on big internationals to fund the professional game, and without them for the foreseeable future, Irish rugby will be in a perilous position.
Could it be Irish rugby may have to go down a part-privatisation route and allow benefactors to purchase a stake in each province. Take Munster for example, paying the salaries to attract World Cup winners Damien D’Allande and RG Snyman doesn’t come cheap and certainly with crowds down at Thomond Park, apart from the three European Cup games and the Leinster home game each year, the remainder and those at in Cork aren’t enough to fund a province in a sustainable manner.
When you see the IRFU quote the sale of land and their cut of the deal from CVC to purchase a stake in the Pro14, that’s all well and good but what happens in the next economic downturn when that money is all spent and there is nothing in the rainy day fund, where do they turn to then?