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Rugby World Cup: The business of the game

Sponsorship, video games, and tickets – what brings the most revenue to rugby and how good an investment is the sport?

As rugby fans celebrate the thrills and highlights of the past few world cup matches, the tournament’s organisers can rub their hands with glee: the economic boon and revenue the event has given to host France is sizeable.

A previously released report from Ernst & Young’s claimed that the tournament in Japan in 2019 saw the highest ever economic impact in Rugby World Cup history, and increased the GDP by $2.93 billion (€2.75 billion).

The profitable sport mega event is attracting even more tourists to France, meaning hotels, airlines, museums, and more cleaning up.

The 2023 tournament – the tenth edition – is expected to attract more than half a million visitors to the country, and bring approximately $1 billion (€940 million) into its economy.

Meanwhile, the organisation Rugby World Cup Ltd is expected to rake in a hefty revenue, in the vicinity of $500 million.

Football’s a very different ball game

It’s by comparing rugby to other commercial sports that you can clearly see the impact it has. The obvious one is football.

The Rugby World Cup is considered to be a top 20 sport mega event, while the Football World Cup is in the top three, and so predictably brings in a gargantuan sum.

“So it’s believed that for World Rugby, the organisers of this particular competition, may generate around $500 million from the competition,” said Simon Chadwick Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at Skema Business School in Paris.

“In comparison with FIFA, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar brought somewhere in the region of about $7.5 billion to the organisers,” he added.

Where is the money coming from?

While the financial value of football may eclipse that of rugby on the world stage, the funds that flow through old rugger are not to be sniffed at.

There are three major drivers that put the balance sheet of the Rugby World Cup into the positive every four years, following three preparatory years of huge expense and investment.

The majority of the revenue comes from broadcasting rights, followed closely by sponsorships and then income from ticketing and merchandise.

Broadcasting rights include everything from showing live games to edited highlights, news reports and social media clips.

The big question is, how many pairs of eyes can the

Microsoft quietly announced two for-business products this week, and they’re brilliant

June Wan/ZDNET

While a large portion of what Microsoft announced at its Surface and AI event today was expected, the company quietly revealed details on two new devices that business users will want to take note of. Neither of these products made the live keynote, but both bring a bit of innovation to the workplace.

Also: Every product Microsoft unveiled at its Surface and AI event today

First up is the Surface Hub 3, the newest version of Microsoft’s workplace collaboration device that’s part interactive whiteboard and part virtual meeting platform. The Hub 3, available in a 50-inch size and a 85-inch size, runs Microsoft Teams and is designed to be a part of a conference room where it replaces traditional television and monitors.

Surface Hub 3 brings a number of new capabilities, Microsoft says, like improved CPU and GPU performance, a variety of stands and wall-mounting options, active linking with two Surface Hub Pens, two microphone arrays and speaker pairings for intelligent audio, and a 4K PixelSense display with anti-glare coating. Perhaps the biggest innovation is the 50-inch version’s smart rotation and portrait mode option that adapts the screen to either be a whiteboard of sorts or a video call depending on the orientation.

Also new to the latest edition of the Hub is Cloud IntelliFrame, which lets remote meeting attendees see in-person users more clearly with a smart video feed that separates people into Zoom-like boxes. Backgrounds are removed and video sizes are adjusted, meaning remote attendees blend seamlessly with those in person.

In addition to the Hub 3, Microsoft also announced the Surface Go 4 for Business, the company’s smallest detachable two-in-one tablet and laptop. While the Surface Go 4 looks largely identical to its previous generation on the outside, it comes with pretty significant internal upgrades.

Review: Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 hands-on: Making my MacBook jealous

While the Surface Go 3 had a dual-core Core i3-10100Y chip, the Go 4 comes with a quad-core Intel N200 processor. The 4GB RAM of the 3 is doubled to 8 in the 4, and the storage can be expanded to 256GB, double the previous generation.

The company also touted the Surface Go 4’s improved battery life, microphones, security, and repairability — the last change being something that especially appeals to workplaces trying to make devices last as long as possible.

Microsoft didn’t reveal pricing on either

Russian Military Commanders Wounded in Strike on Black Sea Fleet HQ

On Friday, a Ukrainian missile struck Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea.
Russia has not confirmed any deaths but top military commanders were among those reported wounded.
Since the invasion began, many high-ranking Russian military officials have been killed in action.

Top Russian military commanders were among those wounded Friday in a Ukrainian missile strike that targeted the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea.

Russia’s Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk and Lieutenant General Oleg Tsekov were among those “severely wounded” in the strike, Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told Ostap Yarysh, a Pentagon correspondent and anchor at Voice of America news.

Budanov said at least 9 Russian military personnel were killed and 16 wounded in the attack.

“Romanchuk is in charge of Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia where the main thrust of Ukraine’s counteroffensive is occurring,” Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote in a post on X. “This suggests that it wasn’t just a strike on the Black Sea Fleet HQ, but timed to target key senior leaders during a meeting.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense initially confirmed only one soldier was killed in the attack, Insider previously reported. However, the Kremlin has been tight-lipped about confirming the number of Russians killed since the war began last year.

Representatives for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense and the Government of the Russian Federation did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.

In May, the White House estimated 100,000 Russians have been killed or injured since the invasion began. The British government has reported as many as 60,000 Russians have been killed in action. While the exact number remains unconfirmed, many of Russia’s top generals and military commanders have been killed in action.

The Friday missile strike is the latest in a series of relentless attacks that have targeted the Black Sea Fleet’s ships and facilities, which Insider previously reported are an attempt to make holding Crimea “untenable” for Moscow’s forces.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials said a command post near the port of Sevastopol was damaged in a missile strike. Within the last month, Ukrainian troops also launched a cruise missile strike on a Russian shipyard, damaging two warfighting vessels.

Is chasing artificial intelligence genuinely senseless? | This Week in Business

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

With a name like “This Week in Business,” the expectation is that we talk about things that happened this week. Things in business, even.

But sometimes expectations go unfilled. And sometimes we plan to write about one thing, but then Unity shoves its foot into its mouth clear up to the knee and we feel obligated to point at the company trying to choke down its own femur and say, “I don’t know, seems like a bad idea?”

So anyway, we’re playing catch-up this week and looking back to two weeks ago at an interview we did with Roblox’s chief technology officer Daniel Sturman about the company’s plans for generative AI.

QUOTE | “It can act as an incredible on-ramp to creators on the platform, but it also can work in a way that can really accelerate existing creators. It’s not a separate thing from Studio. It’s all part of the creator tools we’ve been shipping for years; it’s just accelerating them with the power of generative AI.” – Sturman talks about Roblox’s AI Assistant, a conversational tool that users can ask to pull assets into a project and code behavior for objects in a game.

Right now the AI Assistant pulls assets from Roblox’s Creator Marketplace, but eventually the plan is to roll it out with 3D model creation, so Roblox developers will be able to ask for a model of a car and the AI will generate one that can then be tweaked on command.

Now I have what I think is a healthy skepticism toward AI. I question whether it will ever work the way backers are promising it will. I question whether the people rolling it out – those who swear up and down they want to do it in an ethical and proper way – will ultimately just shed any ethical concerns (and the people responsible for voicing them) as soon as it is financially prudent to do so, just like Amazon/Twitch, Microsoft, and Twitter have done.

I question whether it is even possible to pursue AI in an ethical way, given how

Aging, high living costs prompt small business owners to sell

An aging Canadian population and demand for higher wages are among the factors pressuring small Canadian business owners to sell their companies, according to a seasoned expert in mergers and acquisitions.

Michael Morrow, managing director of merger and acquisitions and capital markets at BDO Canada, is forecasting a rise in the sale of businesses within the next five years compared to the previous half decade.

He attributes that forecast to a lack of succession options for aging Canadian business owners, post-pandemic burnout among entrepreneurs and pressure to match competitive salary expectations amid high cost of living.

“The drivers for business owners to sell that we’re seeing have a lot to do with an aging population and no plans for family members to take over the companies,” Morrow told BNNBloomberg.ca in a telephone interview.

SUCCESSION GAPS

After decades of growing a business and steering it through the pandemic, many owners feel it is time to sell their companies now that their businesses have recovered, Morrow explained. However, many business owners do not have successors in place to take over their operations, he added.

“Another reality that is pushing owners to sell their businesses is the lack of management they have been able to retain since COVID,” Morrow added.

HIGHER WAGE DEMANDS

Demand for higher wages is also posing challenges for small businesses, Morrow said.

Small businesses can’t find the right employees, he said, because qualified candidates are seeking opportunities at larger corporations that can pay higher salaries or offer better employment perks, he explained.

Morrow is observing these trends through clients he works with at BDO Canada which offers accounting, advising and professional services to businesses.

“Someone with 20 to 30 years of expertise in a field is now a highly sought after resource in this labour market and large companies will bid to have them,” Morrow said. “This leaves smaller companies with less competitive options to offer them.”

TECHNOLOGY COSTS

Another challenge driving business owners to sell is the steep cost of new technology used in business operations today, he added.

“We’re seeing a lot of owners who have been in business for years who are now simply unable or unwilling to invest in the technology needed to bring their companies up to speed. They either