The SRU this week announced it was considering selling
the naming rights to Murrayfield Stadium, the home of Scottish Rugby.
In a statement to the BBC, Chief Executive Mark Dodson
said "The single biggest piece of our inventory is our national stadium.
We would like to see if we can monetise that.
"It would be crazy for us not to look at using our
single biggest piece of inventory to drive revenue. We want to get the right
price for it."
Murrayfield - The home of Scottish Rugby
The response has been interesting, with many suggesting
that it’s ‘money for nothing’ and it’s a ‘no brainer’ for the SRU. Those same people argue that whatever the
stadium ends up being called, the history and tradition associated with the
stadium will ensure that people will forever refer to it as Murrayfield, citing Newcastle Football Club as an example.
Others, the traditionalists, are not keen, seeing it as a
sell-out by the SRU, forever condemning the history of the stadium and the
great moments it has hosted to a past era which will be forgotten.
Let’s be honest here – it doesn’t make a jot of
difference. I agree with the first
group. Murrayfield will always be
Murrayfield to those who have experienced it before and to those that are still
to be introduced to it. The tradition of
the game in this country is such that experiences are shared between the
generations and those that will know the stadium in its current guise will
introduce it as such to the next generation of rugby fan.
My first game at Murrayfield was as a nine year old,
going with my mum and dad to watch Scotland beat Western Samoa in the 1991
World Cup quarter final. The physical
transformation that the stadium has gone through since then has been dramatic,
with both north and south terraces being replaced and the West grandstand being
completely overhauled. No change to the
name of the stadium will be as dramatic.
The symbolism of the name will not be lost or forgotten.
But what, other than the obvious
direct revenue, will selling the rights actually give the game, the stadium and
whoever chooses to buy those rights? Does that even matter?
Murrayfield is massively underused. At 67,500 seats, it is by far the biggest
stadium in the country (arguably way oversized) and yet gets an opportunity to
be filled only a handful of times a year.
In 2012, only 4 international rugby games are being hosted at
Murrayfield; 2 in the 6 Nations and 2 in the Autumn International series.
This clearly can’t be enough to sustain a stadium of this
size. Edinburgh Rugby have boosted the
revenue this year with their Heineken Cup run last season which saw them host
Toulouse in front of nearly 50,000 in their quarter final. This however, is not a guaranteed
income. The teams league games attract
around 3,500, a crown drowned by the size of the theatre around them. I can’t help but think the fate of the team
in the league, which has been poor in the past few seasons, is affected by the
emptiness of their home ground on a bi-weekly basis, despite the best efforts
of their fans.
With the refurbishment of an excellent facility at
Scotstoun in Glasgow, even the World Cup 7’s has been relocated from
Murrayfield, losing a weekend’s worth of valuable revenue in a sparsely
populated calendar.
A prospecting sponsor will be hard pushed to be attracted
to plastering their name on a stadium that draws small crowds only up to 20
times a year and large crowds seldomly.
The question then would be whether a company’s name will in turn attract
further events? Unless it can, I see
very little incentive.
Murrayfield currently supplements it’s income by hosting
single one-off events, particularly music concerts but again, these are
seldom. An obvious alternative money
maker is football, the best supported sport in Scotland. But here in lies another problem – for such a
small country, it seems more than a little crazy that we have developed two
separate national stadiums for rugby and football. Each has their reasons for
the way they have developed to what we know now, but the upshot is that both
are underused.
The SRU may entertain the idea of selling the naming
rights, and I believe that it’s only right they do so for every avenue needs to
be explored. However, I really struggle
to imagine any company that would be enticed unless the SRU can attract more
events to fill out their calendar. In my
opinion, it’s a fantastic stadium which struggles with its own inflexibility
and it’s that which may mean it won’t attract any suitors at all.
