Munster Rugby in 'a really good place' financially
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The importance of knockout rugby at Thomond Park has been underlined by the latest Munster Rugby accounts with the province set to break even this season after a cashflow loss of more than €600,000 in their URC title-winning campaign of 12 months ago.
Wednesday night’s Munster Branch AGM, hosted by Shannon RFC at Thomond Park as club stalwart Brendan Foley was elected President for 2024-25, was presented with the financial statement for 2022-23 and given a forecast for 2023-24 with chief operating officer Philip Quinn telling the his organisation is expecting to at least break even in 12 months for the first time since before the Covid pandemic.
Munster Rugby did break even during the pandemic but that was due to increased support for all four provinces from the IRFU but the accounts presented to delegates by Branch honorary treasurer Tom Kinirons on Wednesday evening indicated an uptick in what was described as the first normal year post-Covid.
Quinn said the cashflow loss of just over €600,00 was not a surprise and pointed to revenue of more than €18 million, of which gate income and sponsorships represent more than 30 per cent each of that sum.
“We’ve really brought our sponsorship up, which is great, and the big positive post-Covid is gate income really jumping.
Munster’s COO said the South African Select XV game at Pairc Ui Chaoimh in November 2022 proved a big benefit to the balance sheet, playing to a crowd of more than 40,000 in Cork, adding “it was a big earner”.
“The big challenge for us has been losing a home Champions Cup pool game, that was a massive loss, and URC games have dropped from 10 or 11 down to nine as well. But on the back of that it opened up opportunities within the rugby calendar to look at other alternatives.
“We’re lucky, the IRFU have been completely supportive of us and they’ve said yes to the games we’ve brought forward to them. So that South African one was a huge one, even paying a significant fee to the visiting side, the rental and operational costs – the revenue from it was just fantastic.”
What prevented a break-even situation in 2022-23 was the lack of a home knockout game, Munster forced to travel to South Africa to play both the Sharks in the Champions Cup Round of 16 and the Stormers in the URC Grand Final, their league finish outside the top four also taking them to Glasgow and Dublin in the final month of the campaign. It meant the income boost from winning their first trophy in a dozen years was only €100,000 given the overseas travel costs and the loss of their share of a home gate income.
“We did make a small bit on them because of prize money and sponsors’ bonuses but you’re talking less than €100,000, which is not huge money compared to home games. You’d love a home Round of 16 but obviously we didn’t achieve that.”
Earning top seeding this season and home draws for both the quarter and semi-finals, as well as the potential for a Thomond Park decider on June 22 will put a different complexion on the 2023-24 accounts, even though the division of income for the competition-run fixtures sees URC take 70 per cent of all revenues, the home team 25 per cent and the away team five per cent.
“It cost us to go through the knockouts last year but this year, we’re making money on all of our home games,” Quinn said. “It’s all adding to our bottom line.
“We’re going to break even. That has been the be all and end all for us for a long time. Going back to Covid, we had massive losses, minimal income, huge deficits, even when were projecting gate income coming back online we had the loss of EPCR pool matches and URC matches. We were thinking, how the hell are we going to get from where we are right now to a break even position.
“The IRFU have been massively supportive of all the provinces, especially during Covid, we wouldn’t be where we are without them but they were very clear with us, ‘you need to get to a break even lads, you need to get to a financially sustainable model’.
“The easy option is to just rip all your costs out but the whole model falls apart so we’ve been really focused on driving revenue as much as we can, gate income sponsorship income, activity in the stadia – we’ve never been so busy in Thomond Park and Virgin Media Park with nine concerts starting on Friday with MCD at Virgin Media Park and three concerts in Thomond Park in July, they’re all big earners for us in terms of adding into the overall position. But we’re in a place this year, 2023-24 with our gate income, we’re going to have over 250,000 ticket sales for Munster matches.
“Last season was about 220,000 for 22-23 so there are these additional knockout games in that this time which is brilliant.
“We’ve new sponsors coming in and existing sponsors like Bank of Ireland committing for the long term so it’s been very positive. So we’re going to break even in 23-24, maybe even a surplus.
“We’re in a really good place.”