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 impossible Munster fashion. The women’s team have won two of the last three Vodafone Interprovincial Championships.

This upsurge follows a difficult period for the club, aiming to expand while faced with recession, pandemic, and rising costs. CEO of Munster Rugby Ian Flanagan sat down to discuss the club’s development strategies.

Flanagan began as CEO in 2019, after a notable career in sports business in the UK. Originally an academic in Oxford, his career in sports business includes working with England Football and England Rugby as Head of Marketing for CSS Stellar, creating DHL’s global sport strategy, and was the commercial director of Leicester City FC during their Premier League title-winning season. A Cork native, Flanagan noted family pulls as well as a ‘fabulous opportunity’ to be part of a historic club known around the world.

After Munster’s Heineken Cup win of 2008, the club faced difficult times. Despite the expanded Thomond Park capacity increasing revenue in the subsequent few years, by the 2015/16 season there was a ‘significant drop’ (€2.7 million) in gate revenue from the 2009/10 season, according to Munster’s financial controller Phillip Quinn. Rising player costs during this period further inhibited financial stability.

In the beginning of Flanagan’s tenure, the gate not only continued to decrease, but ceased entirely for a time and then limited to 5,000 due to the pandemic. In terms of his initial strategic plans for the club, ‘unfortunately it all ended up being consumed by COVID… simply kept the doors open and the business going’. Funds from the IRFU cut of the CVC purchase of the URC which was marked for specific Munster infrastructure projects were also divested into pandemic-induced measures.

However, the ability to merely keep the business going was an impressive feat in European rugby; across the Irish Sea, four English clubs were forced into administration, including Wasps and London Irish. Flanagan lauded the IRFU and Irish clubs’ system which ‘provided financial safety’, noting the key difference was that the English Premiership clubs were given substantial loans, rather than investment, which some were unable to repay. Although disappointed with the rescinding of growth strategy, the IRFU and Government assistance (an initial €18 million package given to the IRFU for distribution in 2020, followed by subsequent financial aid) was ‘invaluable support.’ The return to rugby was not easy:

‘The long tail of COVID was very long. We got games with heavily reduced capacity and people can forget that now. But it had a real impact on our bottom line… it basically meant it was a very difficult first two years in (that) a lot of the innovations and plans we had were essentially put on hold.’

Compacting these strains were the highly publicised debt from Thomond Park expansion, which remained at €6.7 million at the end of 2020. Flanagan was determined to put a context to this debt which ‘everyone talks about’, stating that the majority repayment in 16/17 years ‘is a phenomenal rate of repayment in such a loan to value ratio’, and that the repayments are ‘very minimal, and in terms of our overall (budget) it’s negligible.’ Flanagan noted the failure of stadium investment during the time period, with football clubs Southampton, Middlesborough and his former club Leicester FC, being pushed into administration and bankruptcy due to repayments when Munster are successfully managing its Thomond Park debt.

Through these trying times, Munster have seemingly weathered the storm, with the club having greatly reduced debt levels. Once cleared, this leaves the club with two huge assets on the balance sheet (Thomond Park and Virgin Media Park). Although acknowledging its effect as a potential financial burden for the club in the past, Flanagan added that ‘ultimately we are future-proofing ourselves as a club and as a business in that we own these assets.’ Non-matchday income with these assets has thus become a fulcrum of revenue for Munster Rugby; last summer saw 11 concerts and 180,000 tickets sold between the two stadiums. ‘It makes us masters of our own destiny in many ways’.

Driving Engagement

Matchday ticket revenue and support has also seen an increase, and growing the fan base is a prerogative for Munster Rugby’s commercial strategy. The core of this, notes Flanagan:

‘is to try and put a successful team on the pitch playing an attractive brand of rugby. I think we've made great strides in that regard. We're playing a really exciting brand of rugby at the moment. We're reigning champions. We won a trophy. We're producing incredibly exciting young players. So people will see us playing well when they come. It's up to us to make the rest of the match day experience as good as it can be. So that irrespective of whether we win, lose or draw, people will want to come back.’

Yet Flanagan laments that for rugby as a whole, a fundamental issue is that *‘we are losing the demographics battle.’*

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.’ Flanagan has lauded the work of Munster’s operational and match-day teams, and this ‘experience’ has seen significant investment, with over €1 million invested into the lighting which can operate pre-game light shows in both stadiums last year.

The next step of the commercial challenge for Munster’s growth of ticket sales is twofold: ‘It’s how we convert people to go to three or four games this season into going to six, and then how we could go from six games to buying a season ticket.’ In comparison to many Premiership clubs, the Munster season ticket holder base is low, and Flanagan states that it is crucial to increase this to stabilise attendance in less-watched matches. Although average attendance is increasing, the total is still heavily influenced by big games such as European matches and the likes of the Leinster Christmas clash.

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, and the club’s recent commercial innovation has been industry leading in the rugby world. The club often ranks third in Ireland in sports for engagement on X and Instagram with national governing bodies ahead (FAI & IRFU). Following the growth of behind-the-scenes sports media, in 2022 the club launched Access Munster, a premium subscription service for weekly videos: ‘it’s groundbreaking in rugby, and we’re the only club in the world to do anything at this level.’ The platform has seen strong commercial growth and positive feedback from the brave and faithful fans. In regards to the unique engagement offering’s development, Flanagan affirmed that ‘it’s important that we push as hard as we can within the budgetary constraints under which we operate.’

Women’s Rugby

According to Flanagan, ‘Women’s sport is our biggest opportunity. It is also our biggest challenge.’ The opportunity lies in supporting women’s rugby’s high growth in recent years: according to a 2019 research paper by The Economic and Social Research Centre, one tenth of adult rugby players are women, but this doubles to one fifth of children. For Munster, recent investment in the Women’s game has included two new development officers and two new pathway officers. Flanagan is ‘immensely proud’ of the women’s team recent success, stating that ‘Game level is really high, but what hasn’t followed suit is the public appetite and the public showing up in significant numbers and buying tickets; that is obviously what attracts the commercial revenue that sponsors are interested in.’

And herein lies the challenge; low engagement makes it difficult to attract sponsors and marketing return, and where Munster and the IRFU want the women’s game to be (having a URC League and EPCR; this echoes URC Chief Executive Martin Anayi’s comments on developing these women’s competitions) cannot currently be done profitably, requiring ‘transformative investment’ which cannot be supported by the current senior men’s revenue despite increasing investment. Flanagan would be hopeful of further government support for these transformational sums, as this change ‘doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen without significant input from external sources.’ Despite the challenge, Flanagan is aiming to push increased sponsors to ‘drive change’ rather than drive profits, and the Women’s game is a steadfast cog of the club’s core strategy in the new plan: in ten years’ time, Flanagan wants Munster Rugby to be part of the country’s women’s game aiming to become the standard bearers worldwide.

Investing on the Pitch: Munster’s Development Program

‘In terms of the Academy players, it's something on which the Munster identity is based. We’re really proud of our track record in our history of bringing young players through and that's something that you say there's an economic part of who we are.’

Munster’s capability to nurture homegrown talent is ingrained in the club’s culture. However, in 2019 the percentage of academy players featuring in the URC and European games declined to 58 per cent. With many high-salary non-academy players increasing the club’s short-term costs, long term investments in Munster’s homegrown development have been implemented for the sustainability of the club.

A savvy hiring was bringing home the highly regarded Ian Costello, formerly assistant coach for Wasps Rugby, to become the Munster Rugby Academy Manager in 2021. Last year, he moved to a newly created position as Head of Rugby Operations. Costello’s role, says Flanagan, ‘is to ensure there’s an alignment. Between the very top of the club… right down through the Academy, right down into the national talent squad, into the player pathway into the schools and clubs’. Academy player development has a rather unique format, with the players training every day with the senior team to gain experience and comfortability within the senior system. The Munster Academy has also increased time in bringing in ‘Players who we might have missed through traditional routes’ including those who have already left school, with Flanagan expressing the importance of Costello being ‘very open’ and ‘incredibly creative’ to fold such talent into the academy. The increasing success of Munster Academy players in coming through the Irish system is, according to Flanagan:

‘The objective validation of what we're doing and the quality of the players that we're producing, and we're building on some of the great work done in the Academy before. But our big challenge now is to increase the resources we can put in this area. Increased the number of boots on the ground in terms of rugby development officers. Going out to schools, working with schools to develop theirs, going to non-traditional schools, getting out to non-traditional areas.’

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.’*

Investing in schools and clubs is far more important than rivals Leinster, as Flanagan notes that the private school system of Dublin and the funding which these schools put into their rugby program are not at the same level in Munster. Such secondary schools, many with directors of rugby, have acted as vital feeding schools for Leinster’s abundance of elite homegrown players. 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). These facilities are costly, with Munster finding external funding to afford the building costs of the Cork centre. However, Flanagan is unshakable in their potential influence, stating that ‘this is a key part of what I say in terms of our ability to help our clubs and schools and to help our grassroots develop and thrive. To create these kinds of facilities that they obviously don't have access to at the moment.’ Munster’s strategy of targeting a wider rugby base has continued to reap rewards. Before Flanagan’s appointment, the growth of Academy players from throughout the province through expanded development programs saw some great success, notably in West Cork where core team players such as John Hodnett, Gavin Coombes, Fineen and Josh Wycherley, and current talisman Jack Crowley have emerged as leaders of Munster’s new generation.

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.’ But finding and developing homegrown players from throughout the province plays an important role in the heart of Munster Rugby. 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.

Munster’s Future

Flanagan became CEO in the middle of executing the erstwhile strategic plan (2018-2021). The main issue to Flanagan was that the key metric to judge its success was the men’s senior team winning a trophy in that period. Because they didn’t, he notes that everything else in improvements implemented by his acclaimed predecessor, the late Garret Fitzgerald, were often disregarded.

‘Winning a trophy is a really narrow lens through which to measure how well a club is doing and I'm delighted we won a trophy last year, but even if we hadn't, I would still be convinced that we are moving in the right direction. And moving very quickly in the right direction.’

The new plan focuses on the sustainable development of Munster Rugby, from an increased focus on the women’s game, increasing ticket sales and fan engagement, and drive player development from the grassroots rugby to the senior team. From the hour conversation with Ian Flanagan, supporting the Munster players and supporters, regardless of level, location, or gender, is clearly something which he is integrally passionate about. The plan is ‘very ambitious, but it’s also realistic and achievable.’ With the club on stable financial footing and non-matchday revenue expanding, Munster’s recent on-pitch success supported by continued financial improvements looks to be a long-term platform for the future, despite any recent performance fluctuation. However, although winning silverware is not the sole lens of commercial and developmental long-term success, CEO Flanagan quickly added:

‘Don't get me wrong. Don’t get me wrong. We know winning trophies, we love winning trophies, and that's what gets everyone out of bed in the morning. Yeah, that’s why we're in this. We're in this to win.’ While adding commercial and sports-business expertise to the club, Flanagan has clearly not lost any of the Munster DNA.