Riding high after a historic series win in New Zealand and ranked the number one team in the world ahead of next year's Rugby World Cup, the Irish men's rugby team are the ultimate prize for brands in the Irish sport sponsorship market.

As the fortunes of the team have steadily risen following four Six Nations champions, including two Grand Slams, over the past 15 years, in addition to five historic victories over the All Blacks under Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell, interest in the team and resultant commercial activity has grown at a similar pace.

John Trainor, managing director of sports sponsorship consultancy Onside, says the value of annual sponsorships garnered by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) has doubled since 2007 and is "comfortably" in the seven-figure range.

Accounts for the 12 months to the end of July 2021 show the IRFU brought in revenues of €84m, of which just over €10m was commercial income.

A decade ago, after the team had made an early exit at the 2011 World Cup, around 25-30% of the public expressed some level of interest in rugby to Onside, a figure that has grown to 55-60% in the intervening years.

In Association with

"There has been very significant exponential growth in the supporter base that there is for rugby in Ireland, and there's no doubt that a proportion of that fan base are still on a journey in terms of the extent to which they are avid as opposed to casual rugby fans," Trainor says.

"And, obviously, spills over into how that is shared in families, and how all of a sudden mam and dad are rugby supports and becoming increasingly avid supporters who will pass that down through the family.

"Underpinning that is how the rights holder, the IRFU, but also the sponsor brands they have aligned with have managed to position and market the sport over the past decade.

"The truth is that the type of brands that have invested in supporting sponsorship of Irish rugby have equally been some of the best marketing brands in Ireland, if not the world," he adds, citing O2, the team's main shirt sponsor from 2006 to 2014.

The IRFU has a stable of sponsors similar in volume to those of England's RFU, Wales' WRU and Scottish Rugby, with 15-25 main sponsors across telecoms, beer, finance, retail and other categories while avoiding "brandalising" the brand with too many or incompatible sponsors.

"They've managed to fill in a huge amount of the categories, the sub-sectors of sponsors that they can have, and that again is a testament to the fact that they've managed to capitalise on their success," Trainor says.

"They've been conscious of not overfilling the bucket with too many sponsors. Given their success, there's no doubt that there would have been a lot of brands who would want to align with them, but just may not have been the right fit or may not have been in the right investment level/scale."

According to a recent survey by Onside, asking the general public which sponsors they most admired in Q3 2022, six of the top 10 brands identified by respondents were sponsors of Irish rugby in some form.

Topping the list was the main shirt sponsor Vodafone, which signed a four-year, €16m deal with the IRFU in 2019 and whose "phenomenally successful" #TeamOfUs campaign has roped in more casual fans who would not be predisposed to rugby by encouraging them to join "a movement" with growing momentum behind it.

The mobile service provider was joined in the top 10 by Guinness, Bank of Ireland, Aviva, Aldi and Heineken -- not all sponsors of Irish rugby but part of the rugby firmament through their patronage of competitions and provincial teams alike.

Sponsors in the Irish market also consistently rate the IRFU first or second in terms of the rights holders that are operating best, with respondents believing the union has "a really good set-up and approach to how they relate to sponsors."

"They have developed a mutually beneficial approach to sponsors in terms of how they recognise that they can play a major role in how Irish rugby markets their organisation and their sport, all with the positive intent that this marketing ... will be done in a way that's good for the sport," says Trainor.

He points to Aldi's sponsorship of the Play Rugby initiative to encourage youth participation in rugby, which helped to double the number of kids in the programme to 100,000 in the first 18 months of the deal.

Historically, sponsorship has been based on exposure, but brands and marketers are now predicting deals on metrics such as degree of awareness and degree of affinity, or how their relationship to an entity or team improves public sentiment towards them.

Trainor says sponsors are also keen to benefit from matchday experiences at the Aviva Stadium for staff, clients and customers, which he describes as "one of the best experiences of business a brand could have," which will perhaps be evidenced by the scores of TDs who will keenly tweet pictures of themselves seated pitchside for the South Africa match.

Ultimately, the IRFU is in a highly enviable position, especially compared to the struggling FAI, and the organisation is fortunate to have sponsors knocking on its door to get involved with Irish rugby.

But the IRFU has also embraced commercial opportunities -- installing LED hoardings at the Aviva Stadium, investing in analysis of sponsorships for brand partners, and effectively managing relationships with its sponsors -- while taking advantage of the sport's unprecedented popularity.

Photo: The Irish men's rugby team celebrate their series win over New Zealand in Wellington in July. (Pic: INPHO/Billy Stickland)