For the 2023 Rugby World Cup, the pandemic may have been bad for good. After eighteen months of sporting events behind closed doors, fans around the world, in need, rushed to the places during the first three phases of sale, in March and April. Results: 60% of tickets have already been sold, or 1.5 million of the 2.5 million seats planned. And those for the final stages have not even been on sale yet …
“We are two years away from the event. If we had been told that we would be where we were when we created the organizing committee three years ago, we would have signed with both hands, ”says Claude Atcher, CEO of France 2023. To mark the Two years from the kick-off, a special program produced by TF1, the event’s broadcaster, will be broadcast live on Facebook, the new sponsor of the World Cup, this Wednesday at 6 p.m. The official competition ball will be unveiled. In the meantime, here is what to remember about “the first major post-pandemic sporting event in France”.
When and where is it? The Rugby World Cup will be held in France from September 8 to October 28, 2023. The competition will be organized in nine stadiums: the Stade de France in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Villeneuve- d’Ascq (North), the Groupama Stadium in Lyon (Rhône), the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne (Loire), the Orange Vélodrome in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), the Allianz Riviera in Nice ( Alpes-Maritimes), the Matmut Atlantique in Bordeaux (Gironde), the Toulouse Stadium (Haute-Garonne) and the Beaujoire Stadium in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique). The Stade de France will host the France-All Blacks opening match, two quarter-finals, the semi-finals and the final.
Which teams are qualified? We know 13 qualified out of the 20 teams divided into 4 pools that will compete for the World Cup (the first two of each pool will go to the quarter-finals). France, New Zealand and Italy (Pool A), South Africa, Ireland and Scotland (Pool B), Australia, Wales and Fiji (Pool C), England, Argentina, Japan and Samoa (Pool D). Two European countries, two Americans, an African, an Asia-Pacific and the winner of a final repechage tournament will join them. The African qualifying tournament between the last eight teams from this continent will take place in the summer of 2022 in France, Claude Atcher announced on Tuesday. Qualified teams will receive three base camp proposals in the coming days, he added. After the visits of team managers on site at the end of November, we will know at the beginning of 2022 where the qualified people will stay for their stay in France.
What tickets are already sold? The organizing committee has put on sale packs of several places to follow each of the 12 flagship teams in their group match or packs to follow several matches taking place in the same city. This forced fans eager to attend big posters to also buy tickets for “small” matches in the same city. The tickets are therefore off to a good start. “We sold 1 million tickets to the general public and 500,000 for World Cup partners (Federations, sponsors, media, etc.), while we expected to have sold 260,000 in 2021. We are in ahead of schedule, ”said Claude Atcher.
Who bought the tickets? “One of the lessons of this success is that 40% of the tickets were bought abroad. This is more than during the 2007 World Cup in France or that of 2019 in Japan, where there were rather 25% of places bought abroad, ”says Claude Atcher. Main buyers, and this is no surprise: the English, ahead of the Irish, Scots and Welsh. “In some cities, we are even at 60% of tickets purchased abroad, such as in Nice where all tickets for England-Japan have been sold for a long time,” detailed Claude Atcher. The English will be the most numerous in the stadiums of Nice (45%), Lille (42%), Marseille (40%) and Nantes (30%).
When will we be able to get places again? On September 28, a new 250,000-seat sales phase will take place, with packs of two matches per city, starting at 30 euros, and ticket sales for the quarter-finals, in packs of two (both quarters of the Stade de France or two quarters of Marseille). “It takes around 450 euros for two places in category 2 or 3”, estimated Claude Atcher. Tickets for the semi-finals and the final will be on sale from March-April 2022, then single tickets for the remaining matches will be available from September 2022. The organizing committee hopes to sell 100% of the tickets. banknotes and fill its coffers with 400 million euros. The 2023 World Cup does not benefit from any public subsidy and hopes to generate 60 million euros in profits “which will be entirely devoted to the development of rugby”.
