The IRFU, Paddy Power and a whole lot of cash
It might seem a little ahead of ourselves to think about paying Irishmen bonuses for winning the 2015 Rugby World Cup, but the fact is that one team will win it. And they’ll have to pay those bonuses. The IRFU hedge this financial risk by, via an arm of Paddy Power, placing a punt on their lads to win.
Published in the print edition of the Irish Times on Wednesday, October 7th, 2015. I also talked about this on Vincent Wall‘s morning business show on Newstalk FM (Monday, Oct 12th).
Should New Zealand retain the Rugby World Cup each player would be due a NZD$150,000 (€87,000) bonus. Many unions competing in the World Cup carry insurance against the prospect of paying a multi-million euro win bonus to a tournament-winning squad. The IRFU is no exception.
Each year the IRFU forecasts a certain level of performance for the national team and provinces in order to budget for potential win bonuses being due to players. The World Cup is different. It’s a separate deal. No agents are involved. Each players’ association, where there is one, negotiates a contract with their union that covering the fees payable to their players for the competition. In Ireland’s case this negotiation was carried out by IRUPA.
Whether Tadhg Furlong or Jamie Heaslip the contract is the same. The IRFU pays each Ireland player a basic fee for making the Rugby World Cup 2015 squad (between €30,000 and €40,000). Irish success would then bring bonus payments, understood to be heavily weighted towards reaching marks that no Ireland team has reached before. Should an injured player have to be replaced they would split monies due with their replacement on a pro-rata basis.
If Ireland were to win it all, the Irish Times understands that the total bonus payable on top of that initial squad fee would amount to over €100,000 per man. That would be a €3.1m bill for the IRFU, a significant financial risk that the union manages via Paddy Power.
While the thought of the IRFU chief executive Philip Browne wandering from Lansdowne Road to a Baggot Street bookies with a briefcase full of cash might be an intriguing one, the process is a little more nuanced…
