THE REALISED ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE 2011 RUGBY WORLD CUP – A HOST CITY ANALYSIS Sam Richardson1 School of Economics and Finance College of Business Massey University Palmerston North New Zealand Brown Bag Seminar, December 2012 (Work in Progress) Abstract The 2011 Rugby World Cup, hosted by New Zealand, was projected to make an operational loss of NZ$39.3 million, of which taxpayers were to foot two‐thirds of the bill. This was in contrast to profits of A$48 million for the 2003 tournament in Australia and €30 million for the 2007 tournament in France. Part of the justification for incurring these losses was an expectation of significant economic benefits arising from the hosting of the tournament. This paper estimates the realised economic impact on host cities during the 2011 tournament. Estimates show that the aggregated realised impact was approximately 25% of pre‐event projections and the impacts were unevenly distributed across host cities. 1 E‐Mail:
[email protected]; Telephone: +64 6 3569099 ext. 4583; Fax: +64 6 350 5660. 1 1. INTRODUCTION The 2011 Rugby World Cup (RWC) was hosted in New Zealand, and is the largest sporting event held in this country to date. One of the selling points of the successful bid for the tournament in 2005 was that the country was described as a “stadium of four million”, which subsequently became the catchphrase synonymous with the event. In all, 48 matches were played in 12 cities during September and October 2011, while other cities also acted as bases for the 20 competing teams throughout their stay.