From flop to fan-tastic... the remarkable two-year turnaround in the appeal of rugby’s Judgement Day
So, just how has Judgement Day become a recordbreaking success after falling flat two years ago? Rugby correspondent SIMON THOMAS investigates...
TWO years ago, Judgement Day looked to have had its day. The second incarnation of the regional double-header had been a flop, with only 30,000 turning up at the Millennium Stadium, some 6,000 down on the inaugural event.
There was a very real danger of the project being scrapped altogether, with the original four-year deal being ripped up amid uncertainty of its viability.
And yet two years on, here we are with the genuine prospect of the now Principality Stadium being sold out for Judgement Day IV this weekend.
It is, by any measure, a remarkable turnaround.
So how has it been achieved? How have we gone from a damp squib to a roaring, record-breaking success?
Well, to get an idea of what has gone right, we first have to get an idea of what went wrong.
The event was introduced in 2013 with the hope of replicating the success of the London double-header which kicks off the Aviva Premiership season.
WRU chiefs had been keen on the idea for the while and when Cardiff Blues and the Dragons agreed to come on board by giving up their home derby fixtures, it was born.
The original four-year deal saw the
It certainly helps for an event like this when everyone is pulling in the same direction
two east Wales regions being guaranteed a certain financial return for switching their fixtures to the Millennium. In essence, the Unions were the ones taking the risk.
And the event made a promising enough start, with 36,174 turning out for the inaugural double header in March 2013, which saw two away wins, with the Scarlets beating the Dragons and the Ospreys defeating the Blues.
The hope was that out of relatively small acorns a big oak would grow, with attendances steadily building as had been the case with the London event.
And so we moved on to year two. But this was where things started to go badly wrong. It was prove something of an imperfect storm.
From the outset, Judgement Day II was up against it.
Opting to go for Easter Sunday proved a real turn-off and a totally family unfriendly date.
There was also the escalating civil war between the WRU and the four regions, with the dispute becoming more and more acrimonious as that 2013-14 season went on.
Such a background was hardly ideal when it came to selling a joint venture.
Things got so bad that the official media day for the event ended up being staged at Cardiff Castle rather than the Millennium because the regions couldn’t face the prospect of stepping onto Union turf, as it were.
It was hardly the perfect promotional scenario.
There was also an element of some supporters turning their back on the event because they didn’t want to put money into the coffers of the WRU, who were seen as the enemy at the time.
After all, the Blues and the Dragons were getting their set fee however many turned up, with any profit beyond that going to the Union, so why bother?
That’s how grim things were back then.
The end result was almost inevitable, with only 30,441 turning up the stadium on April 20, 2014, with the vast swathes of empty seats telling their own story.
It was a pretty joyless occasion all round and it threw into question the long-term future of the event.
That became an even more pressing question in the early autumn when it emerged the WRU had informed the regions the original four-year deal no longer stood.
It had been entered into under the old Participation Agreement, but that had expired, so the Judgement Day deal expired with it.
There was presumably a concern on the part of the Union that they could end up out of pocket if attendances continued to fall, given the guaranteed fee they had to pay out.
So there was now no deal and there were very real doubts over whether the event would continue.
But eventually a fresh agreement was reached, under new terms.
Now it was to be a full tripartite arrangement, with the Union, the Blues and the Dragons sharing the costs three ways and splitting the profits three ways. It was in all their interests to make it work and draw the crowds in.
With that in mind, there was also to be a radical rethink in terms of the pricing, with a £10 entrance fee introduced. That, above all, was the move which was to breathe fresh life into the 2015 event, offering up superb value for money, while switching back to a Saturday was a further prescient move.
Importantly, the civil war had also ended, with a peace deal having been struck and former Dragons chief executive Gareth Davies having taken over as WRU chairman.
The environment was changing and the two sides were now able to work together more harmoniously in promoting the joint venture.
Gradually, tickets sales grew and things really took off in the last few weeks as a buzz developed around the event.
In the end, 52,762 people flocked through the turnstiles, setting a record Pro12 attendance, while the rugby lived up to the occasion, with the two matches serving up 11 tries and 93 points.
Judgement Day had been saved and the question was could it get even better? The answer was to be a resounding yes, as ticket sales for Saturday’s back-to-back bonanza confirm. As for why it has stepped up to another level, well it’s been a case of a different kind of storm, this time the perfect one.
Sticking with the £10 ticket price was the first and most important piece in the jigsaw, while the fact that a lot of people had enjoyed last year’s event was also a pretty useful starting point.
You also have the current relationship between the WRU and the regions, which is so removed from what it was two years ago.
Far from being stuck down in the bowels of Cardiff Castle for the media launch, with the warring factions either sides of the ramparts, we were all together in t h e Principality Stadium for this week’s shindig.
Most tellingly of all, the event was kicked off by WRU chairman Gareth Davies and Pro Rugby Wales chief executive Mark Davies standing side by side and singing from the same song sheet, pointing to the remarkable ticket sales as proof that regional rugby is on the up.
It certainly helps for an event like this when everyone is pulling in the same direction and that’s undoubtedly the case at the moment, with the promotional activity having been unified and co-ordinated.
Judgement Day IV has also benefited significantly from where it has fallen in the season and how the importance of the two matches has increased with each passing week.
The fact the Arms Park was out of action during the World Cup has meant we have had an unusual concentration of Welsh derbies in this latter part of the season and those games have served as an appetiteincreasing hors d’oeuvre ahead of the main course.
And there is now so much resting on that main course given how things have worked out in the race for the Pro12 play-offs and Champions Cup qualification.
In particular, the late surge from the Blues has really added to the mix, increasing the magnitude of their meeting with the Ospreys and
Simon Thomas