While looking up whether or not Munster still actually had any debt outstanding on Thomond Park*, came across this interview with Ian Flanagan from a year ago:
By News Reporter David Patrick Twomey Last year, Munster Rugby saw its most successful season in a decade, with the men’s team claiming the United Rugby Championship (URC) title, completing a behemoth of a task after a surge in performance at the end of the season, winning games in a traditionally
www.uccuniversityexpress.com
A few snippets I found interesting:
"Munster’s current strategy is targeting spectator expansion geographically and demographically. The recent exhibition games in Páirc Uí Chaoimh have attempted to drive the Cork fanbase to further support the club with notable success: of the 41,000 tickets sold for last year’s match against South Africa A’s, the majority were bought in Cork.
At Thomond and Virgin Media Park,
‘Particularly For first time fans, casual fans and younger generation fans, you know, really wanting to wow then with the spectacle and wanting them to come back. So I think that's an area where we have improved what's on offer in leaps and bounds over the last three or four years.’
...
In a traditional successful sports club, about one third of income comes from matchday; currently for Munster, this lies around the 50 per cent mark. Driving non-matchday income from rugby products (not merely stadium concerts) has been a key pivot is Munster’s commercial strategy
...
According to the aforementioned 2019 research paper, although still coming disproportionately from higher income categories, Munster has the widest economic cross-section and highest participation in rugby in the country. With Munster not having such a schools asset base,
‘we need to find a different way to run our system and to produce players and to produce more world class players’. This is coming through large investment into the province.
Announced in last year’s strategic plan, Munster is developing four regional centres, with Tipperary centre already open and the Cork centre expected to be operational by mid-2025 (planning permission has been acquired for Limerick, with the fourth being in an undecided county).
The new strategy aims to find and develop players from non-traditional areas, to ‘support these kids in Clare and Kerry and Waterford. We are a six-county province.’ This has been done through targeted resource investment: for schools rugby, summer residential programmes offer high level coaching to underage players, costing several hundreds of thousands. A rugby development officer has been appointed for Waterford. Club investment has increased. Such growth in player development programs can be a strain on resources: Flanagan acknowledges that ‘these things might not have a material impact on the team for ten years.’
...
The club’s push has seen impressive metrics. The 2019 percentage of academy players featuring in the URC and EPCR was 58 per cent; in 2023 it was 70 per cent. Although the new strategy requires heavy investment, such a precedent demonstrates the long-term potential to build, not buy, success."
Considering the number of players brought in from external recently, I don't imagine that the number has gone much above 70 per cent, but good to see it's improving.
*they do, but they're paying it down at a tiny rate, €100k a year, it's effectively written off, meaning as a result, the stadium makes a
small profit of €300k a year
www.irishexaminer.com
