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FRIDAY INTERVIEW: PHILIP BROWNE, IRFU chief executive

STANDING IN the IRFU’s plush corporate box that overlooks the pitch at the shiny new Aviva Stadium, Philip Browne wrestles with a designer tub chair before we settle down for a chat.

“The problem with architects and their designs is that you have to lift the chairs if you want to move them,” he sighs.It’s a minor gripe in the context of a €400 million, 51,000-seat development that is meant to be the “financial engine” that will drive Irish rugby forward over the next decade or two.

“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” he says with pride, as we gaze at the manicured pitch.

By rights, Browne should be sitting back and soaking up the praise from an appreciative rugby fraternity. Instead, he’s fighting fires on a number of fronts – from the high price of tickets to a Government proposal to stop it selling exclusive TV rights to satellite broadcasters such as Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB.

In November, the IRFU will host four autumn internationals on successive weekends. Its decision to jack up ticket prices to €100 for general stand seats and to force clubs to buy the four games as a job lot created a storm with recession-hit members.

“Well, it’s 140 quid to go and see Michael Bublé,” Browne counters meekly.

He also argues that clubs want to “cherry-pick” their matches, buying tickets for the games against South Africa and New Zealand but passing on Samoa and Argentina.

“There’s the rugby clubs who generally feel they’ve been put upon in relation to taking up tickets,” he explains. “On the other side, there’s a huge latent amount of people who would like to go and see international rugby but have no access to tickets.

“Quite frankly, they’re not going to be fobbed off with us saying, ‘You can have tickets for Samoa but you’re not going to get tickets to England, France, New Zealand or South Africa’. We’ve got to review how we deal with our tickets. It’s a vital source of revenue for us.”

Browne, who made his name as a rower, also points to the fact that this is the first year that the IRFU has organised four autumn internationals.

“To some extent, we’re fortunate that there’s no autumn internationals next year because of the World Cup,” he says. “There are some warm-up matches in August and we’ll have to price those accordingly.”

While recognising the economic constraints facing clubs, Browne insists the IRFU has to maximise its revenues to maintain the professional game and pay its end of the stadium. “There’s an €8 million budget in Munster against a budget in excess of €20 million in Toulouse and €19 million in Toulon. That’s what we’re up against,” he says. “We’re working off a shoestring at the end of the day. If we start reducing ticket prices to the extent that it actually impacts the professional game, we won’t have competitive teams. If we don’t have competitive teams, we’ll find that we won’t get the support we’re getting at national and provincial level.”

Increasingly, French and English clubs are coming under the control of multimillionaire owners. Would the IRFU consider tapping an Irish moneybags to invest in Munster or Leinster?

“But what are they going to secure their financing on?” he asks. “ We couldn’t allow them to secure their financing on the stadiums. That would be selling your birthright. The only other thing they could control are the players. We’re not going to cede control of the players. Without the players, we’d have difficulty fielding a national team of any quality because they’d be played into the ground by independent owners.”

He accepts some of Ireland’s home-based stars could be tempted abroad.

“Our top players are on competitive salaries,” he says. “But they’re not Dan Carter salaries out of Toulon, getting a million a year. We simply couldn’t afford that.”

This brings us to the thorny issue of television rights. Minister for Communications Éamon Ryan wants Ireland’s home rugby internationals and Heineken Cup games listed for free-to-air broadcast.

This would mean the IRFU wouldn’t be able to sell exclusive live rights to satellite companies. At present, the TV rights are sold centrally by the Six Nations and European Rugby Cup Ltd and divvied up between the unions in Ireland, Britain, Italy and France.

Ireland represents just 4 per cent of this market but gets 15-18 per cent of the pot under the collective agreement. In 2009/10 the IRFU got €16.2 million from the TV deals. But the Irish market contributed €4.2 million.

Browne argues Ryan’s plan would blow a €12 million hole in its income each year and put the professional game at risk. Ryan argues the sport would benefit from being available to a wider audience.

“His fundamental belief is that the game grows by having sport on free-to-air television,” Browne says. “It’s a very simplistic view. What actually generates support in the game is winning teams backed up by resources on the ground to help exploit the interest in the game. Free-to-air TV can assist with that but if you pull away the finance of the sport . . . we’re in real trouble.”

“It’s the success of the provincial teams and the national team that has driven people to the game. It’s not because of free-to-air TV. We won’t have the finance to fund competitive winning teams . . . explain to me how that is going to grow the sport?”

But does it really matter to Sky that it wouldn’t have exclusive rights in the four million population Irish market? Isn’t the UK market its main target?

“Sky look at it as one market. Its business model, as is ESPN’s, is based on the premise of exclusive live rights. If there’s non-exclusive live rights, there’s nothing in it for them. If Sky aren’t in the market in the first place, then you’re stuffed,” Browne says.

“We have to come to the table with a clean sheet, saying here’s our TV rights, you sell them collectively, and give us a fair share. If we come encumbered to the table they may well say, ‘Listen guys, you just keep whatever you can generate yourselves, good luck’.”

Ryan has appointed Indecon to review submissions on his proposal and a report is expected later this month.

Is Browne hoping for a snap general election in the meantime? “Ha, ha . . . I’m not going to give you an opinion on that.”

Rebuilding the Aviva has left the IRFU with bank debt of €38 million. It’s a chunky sum given that the IRFU’s total income last year was €59.1 million.

“We have a tranche of [1,300 premium] 10-year tickets coming through in 2013/14. If we can sell those, and that’s a big ‘If’ in the current market, that would allow us to effectively take the bank debt out of the equation.”

Browne hopes the IRFU will be debt free by 2020 and wants to get the union out of a “continuous debt cycle”, which he says would create huge problems for the sport.

“You’d have to ask if you can afford putting €10-€11 million into the domestic game and can you afford four professional teams.

“Those are the decisions that Scotland had to face up to and they went from four professional teams down to three and then to two and they’ve had a very difficult time over the past 10 years.”

The IRFU hasn’t been immune to the recession. The All Ireland League is without a sponsor after AIB ended its long association and there are still about 11 empty corporate boxes at the Aviva.“We will sell them on a match-by-match basis to visitors from the UK, French or Italian markets,” he says.

Its grant from the Irish Sports Council has been trimmed and a planned state-funded national training facility at Abbotstown is on ice. “We’re continuing to look at how we can be more efficient and more effective,” Browne says.

Browne has spent 15 years with the IRFU and has been chief executive since 1998.We close with Browne’s predictions for the Six Nations and next year’s Rugby World Cup. Six Nations first: “The answer is I don’t know . . . we want to do the best that we can. The Six Nations is about the small things and consistency of performance and Declan will have them well prepared.”

Rugby World Cup? With Australia and Italy in our pool, Browne says the focus is on reaching the knockout stages. “We’d love to get to a quarter final and it’s anyone’s guess after that. It’s down to the teams on the day, who takes their opportunities and who has the balls on the day.”

ON THE RECORD

Job: Chief executive IRFU.

Age: 49.

Family: Married with son (17) and daughter (14).

Hobbies: Hillwalking and sailing.

Something that might surprise: A science graduate and quaternary geographer/ geologist, with a doctorate in quaternary palaeo-ecology.

Something you might expect:Still involved in rowing in spare time, recently completed a coaching course for former international oarsmen.

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