Munster Rugby Marketing Strategy

Introduction

Munster Rugby is one of the four professional provincial rugby teams of Ireland. They compete in the Guinness Pro12 and the European Rugby Champions Cup. The team represents the IRFU Munster Branch, which is one of four branches of the IRFU, and is responsible for rugby union throughout the geographical Irish province of Munster. Their main home ground is Thomond Park, Limerick, some other smaller profile games are also played at Musgrave Park, in Cork. The Munster Rugby logo consists of three crowns and a stag. The motto of the team is "To the brave and faithful, nothing is impossible". The club was created in 1879. Currently the president of the club is Garrett Fitzgerald and the coach is Anthony Foley. The nickname of the team and it fans is the “red army”.

The team counts in its prize list 2 victories of the Heineken Cup (in 2006 and 2008) and 2 victories of the Celtic league (in 2009 and 2011). The team is also famous to have been the only Irish team to win against all blacks.

The Munster rugby team is well known for their dedicated fan base and also for the atmosphere in the stadium during the games.

Question 1.

a) What is that Munster Rugby is selling?

b) What are the brand values it represents?

c) Evaluate the products offered by Munster Rugby targeted at the fans, in the quest to maximize the potential of the brand.

The core offering of the Munster Rugby is the tickets for the games; they sell entertainment through the games, it’s more a service than a product. They also sell different products under the Munster Rugby brand name such as:

 Clothing range, with the Thomond Park collection

 All the memorabilia selling in the Munster Rugby stores

 With their Business club they propose different offers to their sponsors and partners: privileged benefits, pre-match entertainment and post-match access to the players

 They also sell products of their brand on limited durations via various events as the “buy a brick campaign” or the limited edition of printed series with the effigy of the players.

This brand has real strong brand equity; the loyalty of the fans seems endless. The fans of the Munster Rugby team form a real community. The major values that the brand represents are: passion, integrity, excellence, community. Similarly in the study case we have also pride, honesty, trust and humility.

In order to evaluate the products offered by Munster Rugby targeted at the fans, first we can talk about their core product: the tickets for the games. The very good atmosphere of the Thomond Park stadium is well documented. The fans of the team are responsible of this atmosphere they have this strong team spirit which leads the stadium. However some projects could be envisaged to increase the capacity of the stadium and welcome more people to the games.

The offer of memorabilia selling in the Munster Rugby stores and also through the website is complete. They can find various products. To increase the sales of these products they could proposed more discount to the fans to encourage them to buy more memorabilia.

The idea of event like the “buy a brick campaign” is good because it’s an original way to encourage the fans to affiliate more with their favoured brand. It’s a way to etch their name in the history of the stadium. They could propose more events like this or create more events in order to organize meeting between the players of the Munster Rugby team and the fans to strengthen the long-term relationship with them.

Question 2.

Outline the factors in the process that ultimately lead to a sponsorship arrangement between Munster Rugby and another organization.

a) What “rub-off” effect are sponsors of Munster Rugby hoping for?

b) Evaluate the product offering Munster Rugby presents to its sponsors.

A sponsor is an entity which attempts to achieve its own promotional objectives by being associated with a sporting entity; they typically hope to endear themselves to fans of the particular sporting entity.

It’s an exchange which goes in both directions, a fair’s fair exchange: “promotion of sport and the promotion through the sport”. As it is explain in the study case: “the sponsor pays cash or gives some in-kind support, valued by the sports entity, in order to be able to establish an association with Munster Rugby and the right to promote this association”.

The sponsors are interested in this team because of the values of the brand, pride, passion, determination…The good results of the team is of course also one of the main reason for the sponsors when they chose to associate themselves with a team, so with their several victories the Munster Rugby team represent a great potential for sponsors.

As Adidas said they only associates their brand with the best and that’s why they chose the Munster Rugby club: they are one of the best team of Europe, they have good results and they won important championships…

For the others sponsors it’s the same story; for example the Bowen Group, they have in common the values of honesty, integrity, fairness and dedication to excellence. Toyota said in the same idea “best built cars with best built team”. To be associated with such a team is good in term of brand equity for the brands; people associated the values of the team with the brand.

The community of fans that the Munster Rugby represents attracted also sponsors. They are many so they also represent targets potential for sponsors. Indeed this dedicated fan base is constantly seeking for ways to affiliate themselves with the Munster so they could be interesting targets for sponsors.

Besides the right to promote their team, the Munster Rugby team offer others products to theirs sponsors. For example with their Business club they propose different offers to their sponsors and partners: privileged benefits, pre-match entertainment and post-match access to the players. The access to the players is very important for sponsors. When there are famous international players in a team it represents a good opportunity for the sponsors to associated their company to this player in player particular

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