MAKING Scottish rugby less costly was always going to be a simpler task for a high-flying accountant like Gordon McKie, but the SRU chief executive acknowledged yesterday that making the sport attractive is proving to be much harder than he envisaged it to be.
• SRU chief executive Gordon McKie, left, is under no illusions about how difficult a year 2010 promises to be but, with Andy Robinson at the helm, is confident there is also room for optimism. Picture: Ian Rutherford
The recession has bit hard into Scotland and rugby has reverberated to the sounds of cutbacks. McKie likes to provide the media with a briefing at this time of year, often in an obvious attempt to tilt the negativity around results and provide signs of hope in Murrayfield's future. Edinburgh and Glasgow, the professional teams, and Scotland, with their win over Australia, have provided new hope in recent weeks, and he had Andy Robinson, the Scotland coach, alongside him at yesterday's briefing in Edinburgh to further underline the positive feeling developing within the game.
However, he refused to hide from the fact that Scottish rugby is heading for more a more bleak financial picture in 2010, one with Test matches being played with no television coverage nor sponsors. Bank of Scotland Corporate have now gone as autumn Test sponsors and team sponsors Murray, who came on board in 2007 after the withdrawal of The Famous Grouse largely due to the personal friendship between Sir David Murray and McKie, are expected to follow out the exit door next year. BBC TV Scotland's enthusiasm for rugby remains icy cold on the surface with an offer to broadcast the Scotland rugby matches in 2010 so low it compares with rights to show lower-league football. ESPN and Sky are showing no interest, despite the SRU engaging an international media firm to help with negotiations. McKie admitted attempts to court new high- profile sponsors were then hitting a brick wall when the question of what TV coverage any deal might attract is raised.
"We are in the marketplace," McKie said, "but we have not been able to finalise a broadcasting agreement on acceptable commercial or coverage terms. It's an area which is extremely important to us, firstly in terms of finalising our fixtures and, secondly, in terms of being able to tell potential new sponsors where they can watch these games because audience, market share and reach is so important. We're in discussions with BBC, ESPN and Sky, but so far have not been able to conclude anything satisfactory. There has been an indication (from the BBC] of what an offer might be, and we have indicated today that that is unattractive. So, they (autumn Tests] might not be covered at all.
"We are looking at everything. We're working with Argentina to try and influence the kick-off times of the Test matches there next June so that these games don't conflict with football World Cup games from South Africa.
"That all affects sponsorship. We have a sponsor pot that is maturing next year and have much soul-searching to do. Murray's contract is (up] the end of next year and they have a window of exclusivity in which they can indicate whether or not they wish to extend that contract, and until that window expires I have no further comment to wait, but we have started speaking to potential sponsors for the rights to these three (autumn] games, and the first question they ask is 'what channel are they going to be on?' The two are inexplicably linked."
TV companies are also feeling the pinch, but they are naturally swayed by public opinion. The attraction of Scottish rugby is certainly growing in some quarters, with both Glasgow and Edinburgh recording record average crowds over the past two seasons and gearing up for new high attendances at the forthcoming festive derbies. The Calcutta Cup match in March next year is already sold out and tickets for the other home game, against France on Sunday, 7 February, are well up on previous years. However, McKie admitted that Scotland needed more than 100,000 attending the autumn series, as was the case last month with less than 45,000 watching Scotland beat Australia for the first time in 27 years and less than 30,000 at the Fiji and Argentina games.
McKie revealed that the world's top two, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as Samoa will visit Murrayfield next autumn and insisted that the SRU was desperate to persuade clubs to shift league matches off those weekends in a bid to improve the crowd. Only 6,500 tickets were sold by Scottish clubs for last month's series, indicating a malaise through the traditional rugby outlets, and the chief executive defended the decision not to sell tickets on match-day – which cost them when club matches were postponed due to bad weather – by explaining that evidence showed it to be a balance between selling an extra 1,500 tickets, with increased costs, against a potential loss of 10,000 sales.
Underlining how every penny is clearly a hostage in the current financial situation, he said: "We sold 100,000 tickets for all three games in November, and 93,500 turned up, so had those 6,500 not paid in advance that would have been £100,000 we would not have taken, so we have more to lose than gain by changing the policy.
"The truth is that the incremental audience who waken up on a Saturday morning and decide they want to go along to Murrayfield is extremely low."
McKie has been credited with slashing SRU debt by around £10m to under £16m in the past four years, but that is now being viewed as the easy bit – bringing in the money to sustain professional rugby in Scotland is proving to be a whole lot more challenging.
