After Euro 2020 and the Tokyo Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, it is no longer a surprise when the global pandemic leads to an elite sporting tournament being postponed.
However, unlike its aforementioned counterparts which managed to proceed successfully during 2021, the Rugby League World Cup (RLWC), originally due to take place in England in October and November 2021, has been rescheduled for between 15 October and 19 November 2022. This article looks at the commercial and legal implications of the delay on the various key stakeholders involved.
Why was the original event postponed?
The sudden withdrawal by the Australian and New Zealand federations in July left the tournament organisers scrabbling to reorganise the tournament less than three months before the first fixture. Despite serious consideration of continuing the tournament without Australia and New Zealand, a tournament without the reigning world champions, and the only two nations to win the tournament since 1972, ultimately proved to be unfeasible, as well as out of step with the stated ambitions for the tournament to be the best RLWC ever.
The primary reasons cited by Australia and New Zealand for the withdrawal were coronavirus safety and player welfare concerns. However, these reasons seemed contradictory, particularly in light of the Australian Rugby Union team’s agreement to tour the UK at the same time as the tournament. The decision also appeared not to take into account the RLWC organisers’ promise to lay on private charter flights and provide bio-secure bubbles for all competing players. The emergence of a Rugby League Players Association (RLPA) survey, in which 85% of those players who responded were supportive of pressing ahead with the tournament this year, led to speculation that the true reason for the withdrawal lay with the collective desire of the clubs in the premier Australian domestic competition, the National Rugby League (NRL), not to have their 2022 pre-season campaigns disrupted by their star players being forced to quarantine for 14 days upon their return to Australia from the UK.
This was all but confirmed when all 16 NRL clubs released a joint statement supporting the Australia and New Zealand decisions to withdraw from the tournament. This development, which further threatened the viability of several southern hemisphere nations involvement in the tournament, forced the tournament organisers to decide on the “least-worst” option of postponing the tournament for 12 months.
But what are the implications of such a delay on the tournament’s main stakeholders?
The Organisers
When a tournament already four years in the making has to be re-scheduled, this no doubt gives the tournament organisers a headache. Fixtures have to be reconfigured; venues have to be rebooked; sponsorship deals renegotiated, and broadcasting rights revisited. The RLWC organisers have already confirmed that the opening games will remain at St. James’ Park and the double-header women’s and men’s finals will still be held at Old Trafford. However, the absence of a fuller fixture schedule indicates the difficulties involved in reconfiguring a 29-game tournament at short notice.
Rearranging the tournament is also likely to have a significant impact on the RLWC staff. Employment contracts for organising major events like this one are often (as is likely to be the case in this instance) fixed term arrangements. This means that, alongside rearranging the tournament schedule, the organisers will also face the prospect of having to renew or extend its staff contracts, as well as the risk of losing some talented team members to other major events coming up in the next calendar year.
An added complication for the organisers is that one of the tournament’s main financial backers is the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, for whom the tournament represented an opportunity to demonstrate the success of the lifting of the UK’s coronavirus restrictions. The government need to fund the re-scheduled tournament properly and will have noted that the cost of the tournament has increased considerably due to the postponement. Because of the reliance on its funding, if the government were to decide that it did not wish to contribute as significantly to a postponed event, the tournament could still be at risk.
The Players
Despite the stated importance of player welfare, it is clear that the Australia and New Zealand players were not consulted by their respective federations prior to their withdrawals from the RLWC. A large majority of the players supported playing the tournament this year, and the RLPA looked set to campaign vigorously to make that happen before the NRL weighed in to dash any hopes of a U-turn from the Australia and New Zealand federations.
Prior to the NRL clubs’ joint statement, some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s players raised the prospect of temporarily switching allegiance to tier two nations in order to appear at the RLWC. This is permitted under the International Rugby League board’s rules and regulations. Had the RLWC gone ahead, this quirk in the game’s laws could have led to a host of the New Zealand squad temporarily switching to Samoa and Tonga, whilst the Australia full back James Tedesco could have opted to represent Italy once again. This could have resulted in an interesting scenario where the likes of Lebanon could have attended the tournament with far stronger squads than usual. However, barring a further major withdrawal from the re-arranged tournament, that is now unlikely to happen.
Of course, all those players who may have represented their nation this year, but, for whatever reason, are unable to at next year’s tournament, will be disappointed with the decision to postpone this year’s World Cup.
Sponsors
A large pull for the tournament’s sponsors is the involvement of the world’s premier players, who play their club rugby in, and mostly represent, Australia. Their absence would have severely impacted the value of sponsorship deals and could have led to large scale commercial renegotiations. Indeed, Cazoo, the UK car retailer, is reported to have paid the largest sum ever to be the principal sponsor of the RLWC. Would they have been as keen to do so without The Kangaroos’ involvement in the tournament?
A further large draw for the tournament’s sponsors was no doubt the clear sporting calendar after the summer of 2021, with the RLWC set to take centre-stage in an otherwise clear broadcasting schedule. The BBC announced in July that it would, for the first time ever, broadcast all 61 matches across the men’s, women’s and wheelchair tournaments live, which was no doubt a real pull for sponsors. Now, however, the tournament will be sandwiched between the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Although not directly competing, the presence of two significant sporting events either side of the tournament will certainly impact the perceived value of sponsoring the event for a number of the RLWC’s commercial partners.
Super League
It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, the decision to postpone the RLWC has on the Super League season, which has been bedevilled by its own coronavirus issues. Could the absence of an international tournament in October lead to an extension of the domestic season? There would certainly be some logic in taking the opportunity to reconvene some fixtures cancelled because of coronavirus. With some clubs struggling financially, it could provide an opportunity for clubs to take the much-needed gate receipts of two further home fixtures (at the time of writing, Wigan have played 22 fixtures, whilst Hull KR have managed just 17), and lead the Super League to ditch its awkward method of calculating the league table by win percentage.
However, the postponement of the RLWC is likely to have a financial impact on the domestic game. English rugby league has been one of the sports hardest hit by the pandemic, having to secure emergency funding from the government last year. English clubs will have been hoping that hosting an international tournament on home soil would have produced some excitement, increased interest in the sport and, ultimately, a financial injection to make up for the reduced crowds during the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Those struggling clubs now have to wait a further 12 months, which will further impact their finances.
Conclusion
Whilst the decision of Australia and New Zealand to withdraw from the RLWC has been roundly criticised as a self-interested decision made for the benefit of the NRL, it was clear that it would have been a disaster had the tournament gone ahead without two of the sport’s three major nations. The episode perhaps demonstrates that the influence of the international game is becoming dwarfed by the NRL. In order to prevent a repeat of this scenario next year, and to ensure that the tournament which organisers have described as the “biggest and best Rugby League World Cup ever” can live up to its billing after 12 months on pause, the RLWC board may wish to protect the tournament by committing the Australia and New Zealand federations to a binding commitment to send squads to the re-arranged tournament.
What is not in doubt following the actions of Australia and New Zealand is the integrity and professionalism of the RLWC organising committee, who have already demonstrated a pioneering attitude in bringing together the men’s, women’s and wheelchair tournaments into a single event with equal participation payments for all competitors, and they have championed the sport at a really difficult time. We certainly hope that the tournament goes ahead as planned next year and proves to be as successful as the RLWC committee deserve it to be.
