The question as to whether the Government should chip in another €30 million to support the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in Limerick in 2027 is a valid one. For a start, it is a lot of money. Not in the context of the €115 billion the Government spends each year, perhaps. But definitely in the context of a budget next month that will see the withdrawal of temporary cost-of-living measures. The timing is terrible.
However, the Government has no real choice but to double down on the Ryder Cup. It essentially signed a blank cheque back in 2019 when the then minister for transport, tourism and sport, Shane Ross, announced the agreement with the Professional Golf Association (PGA) of the European Tour.
The details of the agreement were not disclosed at the time because they were “commercially sensitive for the European Tour”. But we were told they included licence fees, investment in Irish golf tour events and marketing, and a commitment to “support the event through the provision of local authority and public services such as policing and transport”.
This apparently open-ended commitment was justified by “a pre-event economic impact study” commissioned by Fáilte Ireland which predicted it would be worth between €161 million and €190 million to the economy.
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Committed Government expenditure to date related to the Ryder Cup is running at more than €200 million, made up of €58 million in direct costs and €150 million for the Adare bypass. Add in the additional €30 million that has been flagged and the taxpayer is in the hole for something in the region of €40 million, even if Fáilte Ireland’s projections come good.
There is of course a bit of double-counting here because the Adare bypass is something that should have been built years ago and, like any bit of significant infrastructure, will contribute to economic growth.
There will also no doubt be a fresh economic impact assessment produced to justify the increased expenditure. Unnamed Government sources are already saying that the projections of a €160 million benefit to the Irish economy were now viewed as “conservative” and don’t reflect the expected benefit to the economy that will come from Ireland being showcased on 50 television channels broadcasting to 375 million homes. “It’s difficult to say exactly what the figure will be,” the source is reported to have said.
Whoever the source may be, they have inadvertently put their finger on the issue of State support for mega sporting events; economic arguments for governments paying fantastic sums of money to host high-profile international sporting events are at best woolly and at worst spurious.
Economic journals are filled with papers making the point that big events rarely deliver on their economic promises. One of the better-known critics is Andrew Zimbalist, a US economist who was a member of the No Boston Olympics group that put the kibosh on the city’s bid for the 2024 Olympics.
[ Ryder Cup 2027: The true cost of bringing the prestigious event to AdareOpens in new window ]
He is pretty categorical that they are a bad investment, writing in one publication that: “Mega-events are far from the economic engines they are touted to be. It is almost a universal experience that these events engender more short-run costs than short-run revenues, and that the expected long-run gains in tourism, trade and foreign investment are not forthcoming.
“Depending on the event and the host city or country, the actual economic outcome can range from significantly negative to neutral to modestly positive. The modestly positive experiences, however, are few and far between and necessitate special circumstances.”
The penny seems to have dropped in the Department of Tourism, which last year published the first policy document on the topic: the Major International Sports Events Policy and Strategy Framework. Stable door and horse.
It advocates a more robust and structured approach to bringing big sporting events to Ireland and lists the things that must be considered before making a bid, including the need to have the time and resources to “conduct a comprehensive assessment prior to bidding, planning and preparation and monitoring of outcomes”. The realisation of the predicted economic benefits has also to be considered.
It’s an open question as to whether the Ryder Cup bid would have survived a robust analysis along these lines. It is also beside the point, as the Government cannot back out. As the policy documents highlights, “poorly executed major events with a large international profile have the potential to impact [a] host’s international image”.
When it’s all over and the final accounting is done sometime in late 2027, there will be winners. The people of Adare will have got a bypass. JP McManus, the owner of Adare Manor, will have put his golf course firmly on the bucket list of well-heeled international golfers, and some of the locals will have got big windfalls from renting out their properties. The taxpayer will not be on the list.
