Hosting the 2023 Rugby World Cup?

19/11/2013

By Robbie Butler

The idea that Ireland is to bid, and could potentially host the 2023 Rugby World Cup, is an exciting prospect for any Irish sports fan.

In the past decade international sporting events such as the Special Olympics World Games (2003), Volvo Ocean Race (2009 & 2012), Tall Ships Race (2005, 2011 & 2012) and most notably the Ryder Cup (2006) have been held in Ireland.

The prospect of one of the world’s major sporting events coming to this country has led to speculation regarding upgrading of national infrastructure, the economic impact of the event and legacy benefits in the years after the tournament is held (see John Considine's earlier post here).

While hosting the 2023 RWC will make people happier (see here), the economic benefits accruing from hosting the 4th biggest sporting event in the world, are very much debatable. In fact, Ireland is likely to join a long list of states that loses money from hosting major sporting event.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar stated on RTE’s Primetime that the potential benefits to the economy from hosting the 2023 RWC could be up to €800 million (nominal terms). It’s unlikely the event will generate anything in the region of this. However, if you include the ‘happiness factor’, or the pride that hosting the event would bring to the Irish people, the benefits will run into billions of euros.

I'm behind the bid from a sporting perspective. We need to accept that the event will be a net drain on the state. More to follow on this…

2 Comments

Brendan Kennelly

27/11/2013 12:44:28 am

Robbie,

Have you ever seen anybody trying to quantify the happiness factor that you refer to above?

One research project that the government or (less likely) the IRB might fund is a contingent valuation study on how much people in Ireland would be willing to pay to have the event here. I vaguely recall such a study being done in Minnesota a few years ago about how much people were willing to pay to keep the Vikings in Minneapolis (which might be zero or even negative at the moment).

As regards the economic benefits of the Rugby World Cup I think the key problem with similar events in other countries is that large expenditures on infrastructure are very unlikely to pay off in the long term because they won't be utilised very much. So far the story here seems to be that no new facilities will be built and that all that will be required is some money to be spent on 'upgrading' the likes of Fitzgerald stadium. What might be more worrying is if the government starts to suggest that we need X thousand more hotel rooms to cater for the 300,000 people who might come to Ireland for the event. That would leave us with a lot of expensive empty hotel rooms.

Robbie

27/11/2013 10:32:16 am

Thanks for the comment Brendan. Yes, Georgios Kavetsos & Stefan Szymanski had a paper published in the Journal of Economic Psychology.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487009001214#

I think the size of investment required will be far more than people anticipate. It will be interesting to see the published report. Hotel rooms would be a concern but I'm more worried about the number of visitors they expect and the estimates of expenditure per visitor. I can assure you, we will go nowhere near the expected (nominal) €800m 'benefit'. More to follow on this so watch this space.

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Hosting the 2023 Rugby World Cup?

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