WHEN THE first leg of Ireland’s Euro 2012 play-off against Estonia kicks off in Tallinn tonight, there will be millions of euro riding on the result, and not just down the bookies.
Qualification for the tournament would translate into an economic boost next summer, say retailers, publicans and economists, as football fans spend more money on food, drink and electronics, and companies devote more cash to marketing.
“As an Irishman, I’ll be hoping they qualify,” says Declan Ronayne, managing director of electronics group DSG Ireland, the company behind Currys, PC World and Dixons. But “as a businessman”, he’s also praying there will be no repeat of the Thierry Henry handball that kept Ireland out of the 2010 World Cup.
“When Thierry Henry scored the handball, I was in a restaurant in Letterkenny in Co Donegal with some business associates and I remember thinking – that’s just cost us millions. And it did. Because we saw a spike in sales in the UK, but there just wasn’t the same uplift in Ireland.”
Fragile consumer confidence has meant sales in the electronics sector have not grown in Ireland in 44 months, Ronayne notes. However, Ireland’s first participation in a major football tournament since 2002 could spark a rash of television set upgrades.
“If you’ve got a four-year-old TV, you’re not necessarily going to change it. But then the European Championships are, ‘Come on,’ you say, ‘oh dear, I want that picture clarity’.”
Austin Hughes, economist at KBC Bank, which co-produces Ireland’s consumer sentiment index, believes if the Irish team emerges victorious after the two play-off matches, it will produce “one or two days of pretty good spending” around the time of qualification, followed by “some element of a feelgood factor” from next spring.
“It would be in the areas of discretionary spending, where you might actually see some loosening of the purse strings. But there would also be a general boost to sentiment if we could see that Ireland is good at something, particularly after the fiascos we’ve had over recent years.”
Both retailers counting on the cash of armchair fans and publicans hoping to attract supporters to their big screens agree that the scheduling of the matches on the evening will be a big factor in generating buzz.
Most matches in host countries Poland and Ukraine are due to kick off at 7.45pm Irish time, with a smaller number pencilled in for a 5pm start.
“In the rugby world cup, people were getting up at 7am on a Saturday morning, bleary-eyed. But these games are going to be on at a time when people can make an event out of it,” says Shane Treanor, managing director of media agency Mediaforce.
Treanor believes a rash of advertisements from supermarkets and consumer goods companies will result in the media sector, as a whole, profiting from Ireland’s qualification, and not just RTÉ as the match rights-holders. The swell in discretionary spending will even include sales of “all those horrible novelty songs”, as Treanor calls them, and a sudden surge in interest in sportswear – “not just the replica jerseys”, says Retail Excellence Ireland chief executive David Fitzsimons.
“We’d expect a sales uplift during the competition, and that generally intensifies as the team progresses,” a spokesman for Tesco says. “If there’s a Saturday evening match at around 5 o’clock, you’ll sell a lot of barbecue sets around that,” he adds.
But it’s not just a question of timing. “Soccer, more so than rugby, will tend to win over the hearts and minds, particularly as the team progresses,” he says.
The Licensed Vintners’ Association, which represents about 700 pubs in Dublin, describes qualification as “a gilt-edged opportunity” for its members after a number of subdued years.
“We’ll have three phenomenally good trading days during the group stage, and if Ireland gets through to the next stage, it would be like having a Saturday night midweek for the pubs,” says LVA chief executive Donall O’Keeffe.
Matches against “big-name” countries in the group stage would help boost alcohol sales on those nights, O’Keeffe says. “But the most important thing is that the team play well, and there’s momentum. If they play badly in the first two matches, then fewer people will turn up in the pubs for the third one.”
But before anyone tries to put the pressure of bringing about an economic revival on the Republic of Ireland team’s shoulders, one football tournament isn’t going to spell an end to austerity, cautions Hughes. “The reality is that people are still cash-constrained, so qualification wouldn’t wipe away the recession.”
