With just over a year until England charge out against Fiji to kick off a home Rugby World Cup with ambitions to forever transform the sport in this country, the scramble for tickets begins on Friday amid mounting excitement tempered by nervousness over prices, touting and whether it can live up to its lofty billing.
As talk has turned to how Stuart Lancaster’s squad can best evolve during the coming season to deliver the Webb Ellis Trophy in their own backyard, so the redoubtable London 2012 veteran Debbie Jevans is contemplating similarly high expectations off the pitch.
“I’m feeling that excitement and it makes me even more determined to dot every I and cross every T and deliver the tournament the players and fans expect,†says the England Rugby 2015 chief executive, whose office sits directly opposite Twickenham’s towering East Stand.
While fans besiege the website to register their interest in up to one million tickets of the 2.3 million total, there will be an altogether different kind of scrum on the Twickenham turf on Friday.
As the PR machine whirrs into top gear as part of a blitz that includes a rousing Charles Dance-fronted ad that has already clocked up 1.9 million YouTube views, organisers are trying to stage the world’s biggest scrum to publicise the launch of the ballot.
The tournament’s marketing tagline is Too Big to Miss. For the IRB and the RFU, it’s also too big to fail.
The giant scrum will be child’s play next to the biggest challenge facing Jevans – ensuring tickets for the event, which range in price from £7 to £715, not only balance affordability with accessibility but don’t fall into the hands of touts or end up changing hands for thousands of pounds on the “secondary marketâ€. Jevans lobbied for months for legislation that would put the Rugby World Cup on a par with the London Olympics, the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and every football match in this country and make resale of tickets a criminal offence. But with plans for a “major events bill†running into the long grass and the IRB failing to make it a condition of awarding the tournament, the government refused to play ball.
As such, the Rugby World Cup – arguably now the third largest sporting jamboree on the planet – has long been at the mercy of both organised criminals who will target the ballot via a variety of sophisticated means to secure as many tickets for resale at inflated prices as possible and those who simply fancy making a quick buck.
Jevans says organisers have done all they can. Selling tickets via a ballot, with fans able to register their interest until 29 September, will help. So too will the decision not to send out tickets until next summer and the provision of an “official†resale platform that will allow fans to sell unwanted tickets at face value.
Building on the experience of London 2012, where ticket allocation proved controversial, applicants will be limited to four tickets apiece for most matches and prospective buyers can cap the number of games they purchase tickets for. Ticketmaster, meanwhile, will attempt to weed out the bad guys.
“We respect the fact there isn’t legislation in place. That was the decision the government took,†insists Jevans. “We have put measures in place to ensure that, as far as possible, those tickets go to fans at face value. We have worked with the police. We have done everything we can.â€
The wider picture is further obscured by the fact that many sports bodies have entered into partnerships with websites such as Viagogo and StubHub, which claim they are simply providing a service for consumers who deserve the right to re-sell their tickets at a profit.
Even Ticketmaster, which failed to cover itself in glory during the London 2012 ticket rush but has nonetheless been retained by England Rugby 2015, has its own secondary platform.
Fans could be forgiven for feeling confused. But Jevans and the IRB chief executive, Brett Gosper, insist the message is clear – only buy through official channels and any tickets purchased elsewhere run the risk of being cancelled and their holders denied entry.
“We have to keep hammering home the message that you have to buy from official sources. The delivery of the tickets is quite late in the day,†said Gosper. “That works in our favour so we can identify any problems in the meantime. We will do the best we can to stamp it out.â€
Yet another viral marketing campaign, featuring an excited gaggle of fans visibly deflating as they are refused entry, will ram home the point.
Asked whether unwitting fans who might have paid hundreds of pounds for a ticket from a secondary site will really be turned away at the Twickenham gates, Jevans said: “Our terms and conditions are very clear and give us the ability to do that. The message is very clear: don’t risk it.â€
The sports minister, Helen Grant, on Thursday reiterated her confidence “in the plans that England Rugby 2015 and Ticketmaster have put in place to ensure that tickets end up in the hands of genuine fans for the Rugby World Cupâ€.
Even without any mark up, many tickets are already pretty pricey. Watching England play Australia at Twickenham will cost you at least £75 for the cheapest category D ticket, rising to £160, £215 or £315.
Gosper admits the pricing is “sharp†for the biggest matches at the business end of the tournament but says they are subsidising lower prices elsewhere and still compare well with other major sporting events.
The challenge for Jevans has been to deliver on the RFU’s promise to reach new audiences and grow the game while also bringing in enough revenue to stage the tournament and deliver £80m by the IRB under its hosting agreement.
“Where I think we’ve ended up is fair and proportionate. You’ve got some top-end prices but £7 and £20 tickets at the bottom end,†she insists. “It ensures accessibility and also that we can deliver the revenue to stage a top-quality event and pay the fee that we’ve promised the IRB.â€
Yet if the huge demand for tickets highlights a big challenge, it also represents the scale of the opportunity. Even with more than a year to go until the tournament kicks off, Jevans is supremely confident that all 48 matches across 13 stadiums in 11 cities will sell out.
Unlike London 2012, where many venues had to be built from scratch, the only new construction required for the Rugby World Cup is the rebuilt Olympic Stadium. Jevans visited on Wednesday and insists work at the stadium, which will host five matches, is “on trackâ€.
From Exeter to Newcastle and Leeds to Leicester, Jevans maintains a quiet conviction that the tournament will capture the imagination of the nation, despite the fact that only London and Cardiff will host matches from the quarter-finals onwards.
Nor does she buy the argument that tickets for some of the more unattractive matches on paper will prove hard to shift, particularly outside rugby union strongholds.
“If you look at this over the history of the Rugby World Cup, some of the most exciting matches have involved what are regarded as smaller nations – Samoa, Tonga, Canada, Japan,†she said.
“We are encouraging people to look beyond England and Twickenham and be part of the Rugby World Cup. The momentum is gathering and the excitement is building.â€
On a recent visit to Darlington’s Mowden Park, one of 41 training bases that will be used during the tournament and home to the All Blacks, Jevans said plans were already under way to welcome the team with a mass haka.
Taking several leaves from the London 2012 playbook, where she was director of sport, Jevans insists that the carefully calibrated campaign to stoke the public mood is on track. “We’ve got the trophy tour, which is going really well and has visited 14 countries. We’ve interviewed 5,000 volunteers so far and the turn-up rate is over 90%, which is an extraordinary statistic,†she says.
“The enthusiasm is immense. That is something that is very rewarding to us – the interaction we’re having with the stakeholders, the interface with everyone from the cities to the local authoritiesâ€.
For those not trained to translate the lingua franca of sporting blazerdom, that means everything is pretty much on track.
For an RFU that three years ago was convulsed by one of its periodic bouts of self-harm, the success of the 2015 Rugby World Cup has become an article of faith for the new regime that emerged from the wreckage. Fanning out from Lancaster’s avowed intent to be judged on England’s performance in 2015, the RFU chief executive, Ian Ritchie, has spoken endlessly of its potential to deliver lasting change.
“The fact that the legacy is an integral part of the planning is crucial. The women winning the Rugby World Cup was fantastic news for them and for us. What is exciting is that the plan has longevity,†says Jevans.
A flurry of initiatives have emerged to encourage more women and girls to play and watch the sport, to accelerate growth in state schools, to improve grassroots facilities, to boost mini-rugby, to put rugby posts in public parks. And on and on.
Steve Grainger, the RFU’s development director, is the man responsible for ensuring the mistakes of the RFU in 2001, the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2005 and the London Olympics of 2012 are not repeated when it comes to translating an upsurge of interest into long-term involvement and participation.
“We launched three years out from the final because we know we have to be ready the day after the final. That was about building capacity – investing in club facilities, referees, coaches and volunteers. And making sure we’ve got more schools offering rugby,†he says.
The RFU has invested £7.5m in club facilities, while more than 35,000 coaches and referees have attended courses.
The All Schools programme to bring rugby union back into state schools has signed up 300 schools and will be at 400 by next summer. More than 16,000 people are now playing touch rugby socially at 230 new centres, with another 150 planned by next year.
“We’ve talked and listened a lot – I was in New Zealand in the summer talking to people involved in 2011,†says Grainger. “The big message you pick is that you need to invest up front. The inspiration will happen, you’ve got to make sure the foundations are strong. The only way you’ll do that is to put them in place up front.â€
Which is all very well, but if the computers collapse and all the tickets end up in the hands of touts, all that goodwill is threatened. Likewise, if Lancaster’s players fail to emerge from a tough group, those foundations will crumble.
Gosper is honest in his appraisal: “The economics will work wherever England get to. But to really get that magical atmosphere and the home population behind it, it would be great for the host side to go all the way.â€
As Dance says in his knowingly preposterous speech: “We’re going to grasp this moment with both hands. Stand together and this will be the biggest and the finest and the most glorious Rugby World Cup ever.†For Jevans and Lancaster, for Gosper and Ritchie, it is time to deliver.
Rugby World Cup 2015: Debbie Jevans confident every game will sell out
