Rugby World Cup: Predicted retail upturn a fizzer

For booksellers and most retailers, the Rugby World Cup was the spark that did not ignite. Instead of ringing tills, foot traffic was down by half in Auckland’s Newmarket shopping area. In New Plymouth, Benny’s Books put up the bunting and stocked up on rugby titles – but nobody came despite three high profile matches in the city.

RWC tourists visited bookshops in Greymouth and Wanaka – to buy maps. Union, the big lead rugby book for the event, hasn’t even made it on to Nielsen BookScan’s top ten non-fiction list.

The Read’s field report from booksellers and publishers:

Devonport’s Paradox books had a one day surge of rugby tourist sales on October 10. “English Rugby fans going home,” observed owner Carolyn Morgan.

“They bought unexpected titles – on villas and the new book on trees from Craig Potton.”

David Moir, PaperPlus Nelson and also Blenheim says the three pool games in Nelson were a fabulous event for the area. Sales in the stores were up over the same period last year, but he attributes that to stocking and selling “Swags of flags, car flags, fluffy toys – a lot of all that.” (Australian capes were a sellout.)

The stores did a promotion with local publisher Craig Potton for the period, but David says “I don’t think they were here to read!”

Pictorials sold to tourists, but overall he rated the book trade as a bit disappointing. Nelson hosted a lot of Italians, Blenheim entertained Russians, and a large party of French visited to kayak in the Abel Tasman National Park.

“As a community event it was great, but most of the money got spent on tickets for games. “But it hasn’t finished yet...”

The mall where Marbeck’s in Dunedin is sited stayed open late for the first match in the city. “The streets were crowded,” says book manager Bruce Caddy, “But that didn’t translate into sales.

Our cafe got a few extra customers, but not worth staying open for.” The mall didn’t repeat the late night experiment for other games.

“We had a few rugby tourists dribble in and we sold a few books, but mostly they seemed to spend their money on other touristy things like clothing.”

Hachette went low key on RWC titles, publishing only an Ali Utterly Unreliable Guide, a Stars of the All Black Poster Book and Fred the Needle, the Fred Allen biography. Sales Manager Peter Janssen says the Poster Book is a sellout – airport stores took the last copies available – and Fred has continued to do unexpectedly well beyond the Father’s Day market. Peter puts this down to nostalgic rugby tourists! The Ali Williams title ‘has been slower’.

Anne Whelan at Dymocks Newmarket was one of the first to notice and comment that trade took a dive when the RWC got under way.

“Store traffic has halved since the start of the Cup. The discretionary spend seems to have been taken out of the market. People have stayed home or bought rugby tickets.

The downturn isn’t just affecting book stores, Anne believes. “The drop in trade has been consistent over all stores I’ve talked with in the Newmarket area.”

The outlook is more upbeat in the city. Unity Books Auckland owner Jo McColl was reported in the NZ Herald on October 6 saying the talk at a recent book launch had been about the plummeting World Cup trade. Jo was on holiday when The Read phoned to see if things had improved – and found they were never that bad!

“The opening weekend was dire, says Carolyn Alexander, “But as the games have gone on it has got better. We had a good lot of tourists with interesting accents last week and it was really busy. Overall business is up, and we think it will lift further with the Cup in its closing stages.”

Experience sees through hype: Whitcoulls Book Manager Joan Mackenzie told The Read that Whitcoulls never had any expectations that the RWC would drive great sales. “You only had to look at the Sydney Olympics to see that that did not deliver.
“We supported our publisher colleagues by featuring the books, but as we thought, there was no rise in sales because of the event.”

Matthew Simpson, HarperCollins, says of their three RWC related titles, Rugby Shorts is a sell out with a reprint under consideration, but Four More Years rugby trivia has not sold as well. Sonny Bill Williams, the latest in their series of rugby biographies is selling briskly “But perhaps not as well as previous titles in the series like the one on Dan Carter, though it will carry through to Christmas.”

Ask Tim Skinner of Capital Books in Wellington how RWC trade was for his store and the response is “Nothing like I’d hoped for!

Some visitors, including the French, bought copies of Fay Looney’s New Zealand Through the Goalposts because there was a picture in the book of a ground they played a Golden Oldies match on. Union didn’t move at all – I’ve sold just one copy...
“Trade has been difficult since early September, though it has picked up a little this week. But the evidence overall is that the Cup has been slightly negative for trade.”

At Penguin, General Sales Manager, Siobhan Clare said “Sales to date of Union aren’t where we hoped they would be at this point.

“Since the Father’s Day peak, sales have been down, however with rugby related titles, Winning Matters, Sean Fitzpatrick’s book that is part memoir, self help and business strategies, is doing well,” says Siobhan.

She feels that expensive ticket prices for RWC games has soaked up many families’ disposable income.

As part of the whole Union: the Heart of Rugby book promotion, marketers Sports Inc mounted a show of super size photographs from the book in Auckland’s Concert Chamber. Kelsen Butler says the exhibition has been well attended both by locals and overseas rugby tourists – they’ve counted people from 32 different countries among the visitors. About 20 percent of visitors have bought the book - Kelsen thinks that is good considering the worldwide distribution of the title means tourists can pick up the heavy tome back home.

Vanessa Kerr, PaperPlus Takapuna owner, had the French team headquartered at the nearby Spencer on Byron for 20 nights of pool play and had a few French tourists visit the store. “But the tourists aren’t buying – yet.” The store still wears its French colours, as the local business association adopted the team, but if the AB’s make the final “We will definitely go All Black.”

“A big NO to extra business from the World Cup,” Julia Phillips of Benny’s Books in New Plymouth emailed The Read from home where she is convalescing from a recent operation.

“It has been a real shame. There has been some beautiful books produced and they have sold, but not at all like I expected.

“Benny’s Books is in the CBD in New Plymouth and we would be in the top three biggest stores up the street, so if I have struggled with World Cup, I know there are a lot of businesses doing worse than me.

“We found weekends when we thought we would be busy, families were at the local Fan Zone and overseas visitors at bars and restaurants, not really wanting to buy All Black books or even New Zealand books.”

Article written by Jillian Ewart, writer for The Read