Rugby League World Cup: Jon Dutton on the tournament's good and bad moments

The Wheelchair final at Manchester Central on Friday night and the men’s and women’s double-header at Old Trafford on Saturday afternoon will bring down the curtain on the 16th and unquestionably biggest World Cup in history.

Lop-sided scorelines and several low attendances have been offset by the quality and drama of the knockout matches and eye-catching TV viewing figures while organisers have been thrilled with the impact made by a wheelchair competition that has gripped the imagination of a new audience.

“There are many learnings and some things we didn’t do as well as we could have done but we couldn’t have planned for the challenges of pandemic and postponement,” said Dutton.

Dutton admits his organisation never fully recovered from the effects of the postponement, forced on them in August 2021 when Australia and New Zealand refused to travel, citing lingering safety fears over the pandemic.

Dutton was forced to operate with a threadbare backroom team after losing 60 per cent of it due to the 12-month delay and, for the first time, has lifted the lid on the huge impact of ticket refunds.

“We refunded 20 per cent of people who had purchased at the time of postponement,” he said.

“And in the main, that was the new audience we were trying to attract, such as the event-goers in particular from London and the south.

“Some of those people didn’t re-purchase and that really hurt us. We think it’s somewhere between five and 10 per cent. There’s a revenue impact but an impact on numbers coming through the turnstiles too.”

A crowd of around 64,000 is expected for Saturday’s double-header which will take the aggregate for the men’s tournament past 400,000.

That is well above the 382,080 total from the 2017 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand but below the record 453,483 established at the last tournament in England in 2013.

It is, of course, well short of Dutton’s stated target of 750,000 ticket sales but he stands by his initial ambition.

“We’ve got to allow for the fact that the start was in 2015, before we had a global pandemic and geopolitical challenges so I think at the start the target was feasible,” he said.

“We were always bold and brave and set out to achieve something the sport has never achieved before. We got massively blown off-track by the pandemic and postponement and we’ve had to change the way we deliver some of the things.

“It’s hard in the moment but, when we take a step back, we will reflect on record viewing audiences. In 2013, 14 million people watched on the BBC and this time it will be over 30 million, so more than double.

“The peak for England versus Samoa on the BBC was 2.5million. We believe it’s the highest peak audience for any international game of rugby league ever.”

Dutton believes he got the venues right and says the decision to stage all three World Cups simultaneously for the first time has provided a blueprint for the French officials who are shadowing his team this week as they prepare to host the next tournament in 2025.

“Different people will have a different take but, for us, the structure has been a resounding success,” he said.

“We’ve seen some amazing athletes and we’ve got a new audience the sport didn’t have.

“They’ve been attracted by how brilliant wheelchair rugby is to consume, for example, and what’s happened here in the women’s game is transformational.”

Dutton cannot confirm whether the tournament will break even after paying a rights fee to the International Rugby League to enable it to develop the game globally but says the over-riding aim was to get more eyes on the sport.

“We’ve had limited broadcast revenue and we’ve chosen reach over revenue in that regard, which was the right decision,” he added. “We made it free-to-air rather than going behind a paywall.

“We’ve got 15 commercial partners who are new to the sport, people like Vodafone and Deloitte, and then there’s a balance to make up from ticket revenue. There’s no profit.

“I think the business model for the tournament could be improved upon significantly and that’s part of our learning.

“Some of my advice to the French would be not to stretch yourself too far given that the world was already changing before the pandemic in terms of how we consume sport and the pandemic super-charged that.

“Make sure quantity doesn’t outweigh quality but we want 2025 to be better than us because it’s a selfless approach.”