Giving NZ a lift

John Kirwan is a Rugby World Cup 2011 ambassador. Photo / Supplied

With just five months before kick-off, the game is back on for the Rugby World Cup after the Christchurch earthquake.

Games from the city have found new venues, numbers of visiting fans are firming up, those running New Zealand's biggest international event are re-emphasising prospects of success and funding squabbles are back in the headlines.

Promotion of the event was put on hold for about a month after the February 22 quake, not only as the country dealt with the human impact of the disaster but also as organisers made the difficult call to move games from Christchurch.

Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully said it could be a month or more before excitement started to build to high levels.

"When you get a cataclysmic event of the type we had in Christchurch people need to back up and gather themselves in again, but that's a process we've worked our way through in terms of the tournament."

Government-funded organisers were starting to press ahead with promotion of a nationwide festival of events for the public and visiting fans, business sector showcases and a Business Club networking programme to introduce visiting business people to New Zealand counterparts.

Business people can host events which so far range from high-end lunches with Jonah Lomu as a guest speaker, to informal golf matches and possum hunting.

"I'm confident we'll get the sense of excitement building as we get past the 100 days to go mark," McCully says. As with all big events, calculating the economic spinoff is notoriously inexact, complicated by different ways of measuring it.

One Reserve Bank estimate put the boost to economic activity as high as $700 million for the six-week event, while an economist says total spending by visitors, excluding international airfares, will be $280 million, which could range up to $593 million.

A Deloitte study calculated tax revenue could be boosted by $90 million.

McCully says "the real legacy value in hosting the event is what we want to keep our focus on. I think the immediate economic impact is minor by comparison with the long-term value you can create".

The Business Club - something of a corporate dating agency - has been set up to help foster personal contact that can lead to lifetime relationships, something tournament boss Martin Snedden stresses.

"Rugby World Cup is not the be all and end all of these partnerships, there's no reason those partnerships can't be developed for other opportunities. One of the real legacies if we do this well is that New Zealand will have a much greater confidence in itself to handle bigger projects than it thought it could."

Snedden says Auckland's flirting with bidding for the Commonwealth Games was a result of this new confidence. While this wasn't pursued, the city did win the Fifa Under-20 World Cup in 2015 and will be ready to look for more big events.

"If we can do what we're doing successfully at the end of this year then the starting point will be 'they can do it but it's just a matter of should they do it and do they want to do it'."

McCully says Auckland has the opportunity to present itself as a truly international city, particularly with its waterfront.

But there is frustration in the Government at a fresh round of spats over funding.

Some additional running costs of relocated quarter-finals have fallen on Auckland ratepayers, leading to tears from one Super City councillor and the clumsy handling of the $2 million "Tupperwaka" project has been derided and the spending attacked.

McCully says opposition to extra spending to secure the quarter-finals was "cheap politics".

"Quarter-finals weekend in Auckland is worth about $40 million in economic activity, I'm staggered that some people don't get that."

And Finance Minister Bill English took aim at the waka detractors.

"It's part of the cost, the pretty substantial cost of the World Cup. We are saying 'yes it is worth it because this is New Zealand on the world stage, we want to do a good job of it'."

McCully says venues such as the Cloud on the Auckland waterfront were a part of giving visiting business people a snapshot of New Zealand industry.

"Often our thinking around something like the World Cup is letting people see our tourism destinations and attractions - presenting some picture postcard photographs and some nice experiences.

"What we're trying to do is to build on what's been attempted in the past.

"There's a place for the clean and green images and yes, there's a place for the indigenous culture but presenting New Zealanders as smart with good education, and entrepreneurial approach and a lot of talent who are good business partners is what this is all about."

Attendance from many fans at business events is almost guaranteed - for tax reasons.

"Filling in weeks between games is something they'll want to do profitably. Some of them will want to have a story to tell revenue authorities about why they had some tax deductable expenses."

McCully, and others close to the tournament, are excited about the guest list that is starting to take shape. Global party animal Richard Branson is set to make the trip and others range from international drinks barons, executives and chairs of some of the the biggest supermarkets and food chains in the world to top global financiers and Russian oligarchs.

McCully says it will be a chance to exercise some rugby diplomacy around the Pacific Forum in the leadup to kickoff.

"We're starting to accumulate a very impressive array of visitors. We're going to see some heavy hitters from around the world. People are at the tentative stage of organising diaries."

One of the principal sponsors, ANZ, says it will bring in several hundred high-value clients from throughout Asia and Australia for the final fortnight, including those in agri-business, importing, investment, infrastructure and IT.

Another sponsor, Emirates, says heavy demand from premium cabin and frequent fliers, partly driven by the cup, meant it was almost doubling capacity of its lounge at Auckland Airport.

Tourism NZ and event organisers estimate 85,000 visitors from overseas will make the trip.

The average length of stay for these visitors is around 23 days, half of them will be here before the tournament starts and about 20 per cent will remain after the final. Most will come from Australia, 32,000 from Europe, nearly 5000 will come from the Americas and 5000 from Africa.

Their average age is mid-to-late 40s and around 30 per cent of the visitors expected are women.

Goldman Sachs economist Philip Borkin says based on Australia's experience of the 2003 World Cup and the 2005 Lions tour here, fans would on average spend $221 a night, excluding international airfares.

While the 85,000 figure is used frequently, Borkin points out the displacement effect.

This figure could be reduced by up to 20,000 for the six weeks because of "demand shifting", where visitors who intended to come to New Zealand anyway shift the timing of the trip to coincide with the tournament and non-rugby fans reschedule or cancel their trips altogether.

"Where [the cup] could have a great positive influence is the impact on confidence. It could be a trigger to see us start to bounce off what has been a pretty disappointing recovery to date."

Former All Black coach John Hart is part of the 2011 Group, charged with supporting the coalface work of the business leveraging New Zealand 2011.

"I don't know if we'll ever get an opportunity as big as this so we've got to leave a legacy whereby people connect to New Zealand in the long term.

"It's hard to measure at the moment - you'd like to look back in 15 years and say we've done really well out of the World Cup."