Phil Kearns might not have played in the 2003 Rugby World Cup, but the former Wallabies captain still has vivid memories of the last time the event visited Australian shores.
“I remember the colour,” says Kearns, who represented his country on 67 occasions, speaking to SportsPro in early March. “It was amazing to look up in the crowds and see the different colours from people all around the world, wearing all the rugby jerseys.
“I think the colours and the crowds and walking around the cities and embracing our nation was something that really woke Australians up to how important and how big this tournament was.”
Nearly 20 years on, Kearns is leading a bid committee that is tantalisingly close to bringing rugby union’s flagship international tournament back Down Under for the third time in its history. In November, World Rugby handed Australia exclusive preferred candidate status for the 2027 Rugby World Cup under a new partnership approach to awarding hosting rights that will see the global governing body enter a period of exclusive, targeted dialogue with its favoured destination.
At the time, Rugby Australia (RA) chairman Hamish McLennan described World Rugby’s decision as “a huge step forward” and a “great reward” for the bid team’s efforts so far. But just as any elite sportsperson would, Kearns is guarding against complacency.
“The way I’ve been describing it is we’re 20 points up with five minutes to play,” he explains. “So we’re keeping it in the forwards for the last five minutes to make sure we get everything right, get the attention to detail right.
“For us that means finalising our negotiations with state and federal governments, which we continue to do, but we feel we’re in good shape. We’re confident with everything else, so we think we’re in good shape.”
Former Wallabies captain Phil Kearns (left) with Rugby Australia chief executive Andy Marinos
Indeed, landing any major event needs state backing and Kearns says local government has been “enthusiastically embracing” the opportunities that would come with hosting the tournament, which the bid committee estimates would attract more than two million attendees, including 200,000 international visitors, delivering a AUS$2.5 billion boost to the Australian economy.
Attempts to garner that support started in earnest in 2019, when RA took a group of tourism representatives from both federal and state governments to the World Cup in Japan to give them a glimpse of what the tournament would look like. Also aiding those efforts has been the bid’s influential advisory board, which is chaired by Sir Rod Eddington and is a who’s who of individuals highly familiar with the politics of major events, including John Coates, the president of the country’s national Olympic committee, and former Australian prime minister John Howard.
“That’s one of the benefits of operating in a country like Australia,” says Andy Marinos, RA’s chief executive, “because there’s such familiarity with having to host and engage on major events. The states and certainly the federal government are quite well versed in it, so they understand that once you put a very compelling economic impact assessment in front of them, the decision-making process is relatively straightforward.
“It’s about how do you add benefit back to the region? How are you going to drive tourism? How are you going to drive bed nights? How are you going to drive the economy in each of those individual states? So that’s important.”
The way I’ve been describing it is we’re 20 points up with five minutes to play. So we’re keeping it in the forwards for the last five minutes to make sure we get everything right.
Phil Kearns, Executive Director, Rugby World Cup 2027 Bid
For its part, World Rugby will no doubt have been impressed by Australia’s existing infrastructure, which has only improved since the country last hosted the World Cup at the turn of the millennium. Kearns refers to the new Optus Stadium in Perth as “an absolute cracker” and also highlights the soon-to-be-completed 45,000-seater venue in Sydney, as well as the refurbished Adelaide Oval. Then there is also the fact that Australia has proved itself to be a supremely reliable host of major international sporting events both prior to and during the pandemic, including the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, which also staged the SportAccord World Sport & Business Summit in 2019.
If nothing else, Australia is confident that its ‘maximum revenue, minimum risk’ approach makes it a safe pair of hands.
That isn’t to say that getting to this stage has always been straightforward. Australia officially launched its bid, known as ‘Game On’, in May 2021, when the world was still trying to map its route out of the Covid-19 health crisis. Securing a World Cup in any sport is often a deeply political affair, one that has traditionally involved jetting around the globe to curry favour among voting nations. Travel restrictions meant all that couldn’t happen over the past 12 months, not that Kearns necessarily sees that as a bad thing.
“In a lot of ways it was a better process, it was a much cleaner process,” he considers. “There’s no thought or risk there of us spending money in areas that we shouldn’t be spending money – or any bidder in that case – so I think that made a really clean, fair, logical process. So if there’s one benefit of Covid, that might be it.”
Australia is confident that its bid represents a safe pair of hands
This has also been a different kind of procedure for World Rugby. Confirmation of Australia as preferred candidate for the 2027 Rugby World Cup coincided with the news that England has been awarded the same status for the women’s event in 2025. Those nations are now engaged in a period of targeted dialogue with the global governing body under a new process designed to give tournament hosts greater flexibility in deciding how to approach the staging of the event, rather than imposing a fixed World Cup model upon them.
By aligning on areas such as budget, cost savings, and sporting, social and environmental goals, the idea is that the new, collaborative approach will help to maximise revenues both for the local organisers and World Rugby.
“From my experience, I think it’s actually been a lot better,” says Marinos, who previously served as the chief executive of Sanzaar, which oversees the southern hemisphere’s Super Rugby and Rugby Championship competitions. “I think the benefits of this is it automatically forces both World Rugby and the host country to sit around the table and work through a model and share experiences and share opportunities and be a little bit more provocative and creative around what other additional revenue opportunities you can bring to the table that’s going to be for the benefit of both parties.
“In the past, there were clearly defined roles, and all you had to do was make sure you maximised those verticals that you were given and make a positive contribution to the overall tournament.
“I just think back on some of the conversations we’ve had over the last 12 months as we’ve got deeper and deeper into the process. When arguably you’d be getting into the more intricate and delicate and more difficult components, we’ve just found the spirit of collaboration a lot better, and the conversation a lot more free flowing, which I think has been a positive.”
Rugby Australia believes that the 2027 World Cup would inspire 30,000 people to take up the sport
World Rugby is due to announce the outcome of those conversations in May, when it will also award the hosting rights for the 2025 tournament. Should Australia be confirmed as the destination for the 2027 edition, it would give organisers a five-year runway to market the event both locally and internationally. According to Kearns, that will not only mean selling the occasion as a sporting spectacle, but also promoting Australia as a holiday destination by creating other unique experiences that showcase the country’s art, food and wine.
The expectation is that those efforts – combined with the fact that, by the time the tournament rolls around, it will have been more than two decades since the competition last took place in Australia – would lead to unprecedented demand both at home and overseas.
“I’m absolutely convinced it would be [embraced even more than in 2003],” says Kearns. “We’ll do a much bigger and better job of marketing the tournament, but also when people see the new stadia that we’ve got for them to watch games in will attract them as well. And I think after Covid, people will see this as a great opportunity to say, ‘we’re going on the road, and we’re going to travel’, and save up their money for this.”
With that being said, RA is not blind to the fact that hosting a World Cup would provide a generational opportunity to breathe fresh life into rugby union in Australia, an active, sport-loving nation where there is constant competition with other sporting codes like Australian rules football, rugby league and cricket.
In addition to the men’s event, it was confirmed last week that Australia has also secured preferred candidate status for the Rugby World Cup in 2029, which would be the first time the country has staged the women’s tournament. Having a men’s World Cup just two years after the British and Irish Lions are due to tour in 2025, and a women’s edition in 2029, would therefore create a unique window to bring in a new wave of fans and players. Indeed, RA believes that putting the sport centre stage in 2027 alone would inspire 30,000 people to take up rugby union in Australia.
To hit that target, Marinos is well aware that the foundations – at both the community and elite level – need to be in place sooner rather than later.
“Something I’ve been saying to my team,” he says, “is that the legacy doesn’t start at the end of the World Cup in 2027. It starts now, so that you build momentum, so that by the time the event takes place we’re well positioned, we’re well poised and we can deliver.
“The second point is just from a high performance perspective. It’s so important when you host a World Cup that you’re going to be in the hunt right up until the final, as we saw in 2003. We’re really confident that with a good runway like this, we can be dominant and make sure that we go right the way through.”
Beyond inspiring a new generation of players, the 2027 Rugby World Cup would no doubt play a key part in RA’s post-pandemic recovery. Like all unions the national governing body suffered significant losses because of the pandemic and has been linked with private equity investment to help navigate the aftermath of Covid-19.
But the organisation is adamant that this will be a tournament for all of Australia, helping to rebuild communities that have not only been hit hard by the pandemic, but also by bushfires, floods and drought. To that end, Kearns says that the bid committee has identified 74 training facilities across the country that would potentially be able to host visiting national teams during the tournament.
Something I’ve been saying to my team is that the legacy doesn’t start at the end of the World Cup in 2027. It starts now.
Andy Marinos, Chief Executive, Rugby Australia
The 2027 Rugby World Cup would also join a run of major international sporting events set to boost the Australian economy, including the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane and the 2023 Women’s Fifa World Cup, as well as a potential Commonwealth Games in Victoria in 2026.
Yet it’s also worth noting that by the time 2027 comes around, rugby union’s flagship event won’t have been held in the southern hemisphere since 2011, when New Zealand staged the tournament. So while all those aforementioned gatherings will undoubtedly come with major benefits for Australia, RA believes that the impact of the 2027 Rugby World Cup would also be felt throughout the surrounding region.
“As we come out of a post-pandemic world that has had a significant impact across a lot of our metrics, the opportunity to have a World Cup, coupled with a British and Irish Lions tour and an Olympics on the back end of that in 2032, really does set up and position the sport incredibly well for future growth and sustainability,” Marinos reiterates.
“But it’s not only for Australia, it’s for the region. And that expands into the Pacific, which is strategically really important for us as a country but also for the rugby community. Those island communities are going to have a direct and indirect impact of having a successful World Cup in our market.
“This is the one opportunity – we’ve spoken about it so much – that if we do it properly, we can reset the rugby landscape.”
This is a feature from the forthcoming issue of SportsPro magazine. To find out more, click here.
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