Sport: Samoa ends up making a profit from All Black test

Transcript

The Samoa Rugby Union says it ended up making a profit from hosting the All Blacks in Apia, after receiving some additional sponsorship money.

The SRU announced in July it was a facing a loss of more than half a million US dollars from the historic test, citing smaller than expected earnings from broadcasting and sponsorship.

But SRU Chief Executive Officer Faleomavaega Vincent Fepuleai told Vinnie Wylie they received a late funding boost, turning the deficit into a profit of 300,000 US dollars.

FALEOMAVAEGA VINCENT FEPULEAI: After the match when we did our financials specifically for the match we had made a loss but down the track the main sponsor that we applied for funding, towards that particular match - the All Blacks and Manu Samoa - came through in the end a couple of months afterwards, so that gave us a bit of profit in the end. They've always been a major sponsor of the union, SIFA [The Samoa International Finance Authority], who has been with us and they continue to be part of our family of sponsors. Our partnership goes way back and they've been one of the main sponsors of the Union over many years, since their existence.

VINNIE WYLIE: So a loss of 1.5 million Tala [initially] - what did the profit end up being?

FVF: We made about 800,000 Tala.

VINNIE WYLIE: Is that the ordinary sponsorship money that you get from SIFA or is that extra money that they had offered to pay in regards to the All Blacks test specifically?

FVF: Yeah I think the extra funding that came through from them was specifically for this match, like I said. I don't think after what they've seen there, in terms of what we did at the park and the exposure that Samoa got out of it, and especially SIFA, I can't see them [stopping their support for Samoa Rugby]. In moving forward I think they've seen what can be exposed out of what we've done and I think it's been worth their while to support us in that once-off test.

VW: From a match like that, which was a match that had huge hype and what-not, it must give you huge confidence that these things can happen again?

FVF: Not really. The main hindrance to our efforts was the reduced capacity at the park. Before we could probably fit in around about 15,000 and we only managed to get less than 10,000 out at the park so it was quite a reduce for us in terms of getting more tickets. That was probably the main issue that we faced when we had the match set-up.

VW: In future are you not able to increase that capacity or is it too expensive?

FVF: The park there has already been renovated to that capacity and I can't see in the foreseeable future getting more than that. We also assisted in that respect in putting more temporary stands but unfortunately I can't see for the forseeable future of getting anything more than ten or twelve thousand to the park in going forward.

VW: With a capacity of just 8,000 seats what was the ticket sales revenue?

We managed to get just under 1.1 million Tala in ticket sales.

VW: Was there much cost involved in that?

FVF: Yes it was quite a huge cost I think. A lot of it was around the technical issues with putting around the safety issues around the park and upgrading the changing rooms and so forth. A lot of it was done with a lot of help from the government and we funded most of the other upgrades in the changing rooms and the technical areas and around the field. We had to get a company from New Zealand to come up and do all that for us, at huge cost to the Union.