World Rugby has confirmed that Ireland is one of the three countries to gain formal recognition of their bids to host the Rugby World Cup in 2023.
France and South Africa will be our rivals in a process that will conclude with the announcement of the winning bid in November 2017.
As was revealed on Sport for Business last week Italy formally withdrew from the process after the union confirmed it could not guarantee government support with its bid being linked to Rome 2024.
The applicant phase evaluation focused on key criteria such as finance, venues, tournament window and government support in line with World Rugby’s seven hosting objectives:
- Venues and infrastructure commensurate with a top-tier major event
- Comprehensive and enforceable public and private sector guarantees
- A commercially successful event with a fully funded, robust financial model
- Operational excellence through an integrated and experienced delivery team
- A vision that engages and inspires domestic and international audiences and contributes to the growth of rugby at all levels
- An enabling environment of political and financial stability that respects the diversity of Rugby World Cup’s global stakeholders
- An environment and climate suited to top-level sport in a geography that allows maximum fan mobility
The sixth of these may yet problem problematic for South Africa Rugby who are currently under a Government imposed ban on bidding in an argument over meeting targets set on the integration of non-white players.
Each application was reviewed in detail by a specialist technical review group and independently assessed to ensure a fair and consistent approach to the evaluation process.
“We are delighted by the strong level of serious interest from unions and governments, which is clearly reflected in three strong and impressive applications,” said World Rugby Chairman Bill Beaumont.
“I would like to congratulate the unions for successfully progressing to candidate status and we welcome further dialogue with all parties as momentum builds towards the selection of the Rugby World Cup 2023 host.”
Selection Process
The application phase was the second stage of a detailed three-phase host selection process following an initial and education phase, designed to provide prospective bid unions and governments with all the information required to determine to proceed with a bid.
The noises emanating from the irish bid team have been very positive over the last 24 hours.
“We very much welcome the formal announcement from World Rugby that Ireland’s application to host the Rugby World Cup in 2023 has progressed to the final phase,” said Dick Spring, Chairman of Ireland’s RWC 2023 Bid Oversight Board.
“We note that World Rugby will officially open the final process on November 1 and we look forward to detailing Ireland’s approach to this final phase of the process in the weeks following that announcement.”
“Significant work has already been undertaken in the preparation of Ireland’s bid and this will continue apace as we enter this next phase.”
“Given the level of support to date from all quarters including Governments, North and South, sporting organisations, in particular the GAA, and indeed the general public, I remain convinced that Ireland can mount a winning bid for what is one of the great occasions on the world sporting calendar.”
Rugby World Cup Winning Manager and Leader of the Lions in 2005 Sir Clive Woodward will be one of an impressive line up of experts at the inaugural One Zero Conference taking place in Dublin at the RDS on Friday October 21st.
The one day event will look at Fan Engagement with leaders from Stats and Two Circles; at Nutrition with Daniel Kings from Aspetar in Qatar and Stephen Nolan of Nutritics; at Innovation with Mounir Zok, the Head of Innovation with the US Olympic Committee, at major Sports Investment with Nic Couchman of Sports Investment Partners and much more besides.
The key learnings for sport and business will be interspersed with keynote interviews with Sir Clive Woodward, Jaimie Fuller, Shane Lowry, John Kavanagh and, in his only European appearance in 2016, Lance Armstrong. A limited number of tickets are still available starting at €175. Click here to find out more.
