Q+A’s Paul Holmes Interviews Martin Snedden, Rugby NZ 2011 CEO

Points of interest:

- World Cup boss reveals 135,000 travel and hospitality packages already sold
- Tournament organisers aim to sell 1.2 million tickets in New Zealand. Snedden: “I feel pretty confident we’ll get there or get pretty close”
- Auckland waterfront stadium “Would have been a really good option”, but Eden Park “better than expected”
- Dunedin’s new stadium “will go right to the wire”
- Snedden: “Rugby’s in a volatile state”
- RWC tickets will range in price from $15-$1250
- 16 of the RWC matches will be “expensive”
- The “World Cup experience” will draw even non-rugby fans to games

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

MARTIN SNEDDEN interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL The Rugby World Cup Chief Executive, Martin Snedden, is with us from Wellington, good morning Martin thank you for joining us. John Tamihere said to tell you, you blokes are the biggest beneficiaries in the country at the moment.

MARTIN SNEDDEN – CEO, Rugby NZ 2011
Yeah well I have a feeling we are beneficiaries, we're beneficiaries of the goodwill of New Zealand towards the support of this tournament, and I think that'll be one of the key success factors of it.

PAUL Very good, so the marketing campaign Martin begins on Tuesday, what form is it going to take?

MARTIN Well the first few weeks are designed really to make people aware of the fact that – not just the fact that the tournament's coming, but also where the games are being played, what the prices of the tickets are and how they can get hold of them. So we figure it'll take about three or four weeks to warm people up to that, and then towards the end of April we'll get cracking with the actual sales process.

PAUL Are there some advance sales of tickets already?

MARTIN Yeah there are, actually they’ve been pretty encouraging, the official travel and hospitality packages have been out there since January, and they're run through a different company called Rugby Travel Hospitality, but they sent me a note last night saying they'd already had pre sales of about 135,000 for those, which is they tell me more than the total amount sold in Australia for the entire World Cup in 2003, and well ahead of what they were doing in France. On top of that we've been having some priority offers out there for venue box holders and members, the people who gave up their rights at the venues and season ticket holders, they’ve still got a week to run, but that’s going pretty well.

PAUL Just want to move on to some of the challenges you're gonna be facing I spose to fully market this and sell these seats. Is there an international marketing campaign going on as well being conducted by the IRB media in the rugby countries?

MARTIN Yeah it is, this is a global campaign, so there's a few different facets to it, but our campaign if you like as well as being targeted at New Zealanders going internationally, and we do that directly through websites and Face Book and what not, but we also have Rugby Unions feeding out information, we have the commercial partners doing the same, so there'll be a reasonably strong awareness I would have thought through the international rugby world.

PAUL How many tickets are you going to need to sell in New Zealand alone?

MARTIN Well there's a total of about 1.6 million tickets that'll be on sale, I figure we'll probably sell about 1.2 million of those in New Zealand. We've got a challenge on our hands, there's no doubt we've got a challenge there Paul.

PAUL Well that’s one in four of the population isn't it?

MARTIN Yeah but don’t forget some people will be buying multiple tickets, so whilst it is a challenge I feel pretty confident that we'll get there or get pretty close to it.

PAUL When you say it's gonna be a challenge, are you actually worried about this, times being what they are, the unemployment numbers rising?

MARTIN Yeah I'm glad we're not holding the tournament this year or last year, I think the economic recession would have made it even more difficult for us, but it does seem just that we are slightly coming out of that and we're seeing signs with that with the pre sales elsewhere, so I think the timing's not too bad for us now.

PAUL No I spose the biggest worry the Rugby fans have around the country is that your ticket prices are going to be prohibitive, can you give us some idea, we understand perhaps north of a thousand dollars for the final, or perhaps for the semis in Auckland, can you give us an idea of the range of ticket prices.

MARTIN Yeah what the promo said was that the dearest ticket to the final is about 1250 bucks, there's $390 tickets also for the final for about 25% of the ground. The range goes from $1250 down to $15 and 25%of our total ticket pool is in the really low range. So we've deliberately set it up that there are prices there for everyone. Now 48 matches, 16 of them are expensive, 32 of them are not, so it's just trying to strike that balance.

PAUL Trying to strike the balance, exactly so. The next question I spose is, is everything going to be ready, is Eden Park – I understand that’s a bit ahead of schedule. Is the covered stand in Dunedin going to be ready, I understand there's a worry about that?

MARTIN Not a worry, I think yes everything will be ready, Eden Park's looking fantastic now and I think it will be one of the surprise packages of the tournament, Christchurch and Napier are finished, New Plymouth, Whangarei, Nelson, are well on track for finishing this year. Dunedin will go right to the wire Paul, but we do have the backup at Carisbrook if we have to, but I have a feeling that the motivation of the people down in Otago will be such that the stadium will be finished, and it will be read on time

PAUL If you were really honest with me right now, would you say that you are disappointed, or were you disappointed Auckland didn’t go with that waterfront option when Trevor Mallard found what half a billion dollars for it?

MARTIN If the time had been available, if the cohesion had been available to build that in time, the funding, then I think that would have been a really good option, and that’s come home to me in the last couple of years living in Wellington and understanding how the stadia there interacts with the city. In the end they made the right decision because there wasn’t enough time, there wasn’t enough certainty, and the upgrade of Eden Park is far better than what I expected it to be, and I think as I mentioned earlier it will be one of the surprise packages of the tournament.

PAUL What about Party Central, have the Auckland Councils let you down on that?

MARTIN No I don’t think they have, it's certainly been interesting watching the whole discussion go on, but there'll be an interim solution there that by the looks of things, and I don’t know with absolute certainty what it is, but just that it's shaping up to be pretty good I think, and the whole Downtown waterfront region for Auckland will be fantastic, I think people are completely overlooking the fact that the waterfront isn't just Queens Wharf, it goes right along, and particularly with the upgrade of the Wynyard Quarter and tied into the Viaduct Basin, there's a lot of good stuff that'll be down there to keep people happy.

PAUL Eden Park looking better you just said, than you thought it was going to look, it now gets a capacity doesn’t it of about 60,000 people. Can you tell us access to Eden Park will not be a nightmare?

MARTIN There's a traffic management plan that’s been put out there last week which I think to the delight of all of the experts that have been working on it for a long time, has received very strong support, what I can say is yes I think it will be fine for the tournament.

PAUL Martin how can it not be a nightmare. It was a nightmare in previous tests when it had much less capacity.

MARTIN There's a whole lot of work that is going into this tournament that hasn’t gone into previous events, and the upgrade of the Kingsland to Britomart Station, the traffic management plan, the upgrade of Eden Park which improves transport around it a lot, there's a lot happening Paul that is different for Rugby World Cup, than has been the case in the past.

PAUL Much is being spoken about the Rugby World Cup next year putting New Zealand on show to the world, we're talking about – I don’t know how they make these estimates – but four billion viewers apparently will tune in at some point and see the teams playing, and probably see a bit about New Zealand. How many visitors are you expecting from overseas?

MARTIN I still think it's roughly around the 60,000 mark that seems to be consistent with the information we're getting through, and if we do more than that great, but if we get 60,000 that’s still two or three times more than what came for the Lions tour, and that felt pretty big, so I think that'll be a health number.

PAUL Yet the Lions tour also defied predictions and brought a few fewer people than we thought were going to come, didn’t it?

MARTIN Well I wasn’t directly involved at the time, but that’s not my understanding of it, it's hard to know the exact numbers but I think it was 20,000 plus.

PAUL What kind of energy are you starting to see from the Rugby fans, I mean anecdotally what's your feeling about how the country's going to adopt the World Cup?

MARTIN I think it will work, you know I've seen some of the prelims you’ve done for this, and Rugby's in a volatile state, there's no two ways about it, and has been I think for about ten years. I think the professionalism of the sport has driven something of a gap between those at the top and the grass roots, I think Rugby World Cup presents the best possible opportunity that Rugby in New Zealand will have to close that gap and to get Rugby on to a stronger footing. I think it will work, I think the decisions we're making in terms of spreading the tournament right around New Zealand, spreading the teams, creating a festival around the tournament, is driving it into the grass roots far more than a bilateral tour can do, and I think if people take advantage of that, then Rugby's gonna come out of this pretty well.

PAUL Big crowds turning up, tens of thousands of people for Soccer matches, are you worried about what that tells you about people's relationship with Rugby?

MARTIN Quite the reverse actually. I live in Wellington and I've been absolutely heartened by what's been happening with the All Whites there and Phoenix, because what I think it shows is that people are incredibly interested in the experience, and the Rugby World Cup experience is what I think will draw people to go and watch the matches here, even people that are not interested in Rugby.

PAUL There have been some questions about security at the grounds, is security going to be adequate Martin, or is it going to become oppressive?

MARTIN No, I think again, it's a bit like the ticket prices, we've gotta strike a balance of – you know clearly we followed closely what the Sunday Star Times was doing a couple of weeks ago, I don’t think it was apples for apples, it wasn’t a Rugby World Cup match, we've just gotta make sure there's good security, but we also have to make sure that we don’t ruin the experience for those people attending the matches.

PAUL And there we will have to leave it, Martin Snedden I thank you very much for your time and good luck with the campaign and the planning and so forth.

ENDS

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