%20(990%20x%20550%20px)%20(990%20x%20990%20px)%20(990%20x%20550%20px)%20(Card%20(Square))%20(1).jpg)
Sport for Business
Sport for Business
Hockey Ireland’s Hosting of the FIH Pro League
Let us know what’s on your mind
We go inside Hockey Ireland’s ten-week sprint to transform the Sport Ireland Campus into a Pro League venue with world-class broadcast, a sold-out crowd, and a free fan village that widens the sport’s reach.
Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer Nick McElwee brings us inside the decision-making process that will deliver World Class Hockey in Dublin this week.
• Winning hosting rights on a ten-week timeline
• Leaning on a small core team and expert partners
• Turning a campus into a functioning venue
• Balancing weather risk, branding, and broadcast needs
• Building a world-feed TV product with 10 cameras
• Funding mix, de-risking, and early ticket sales
• Creating FOMO with a 1,500-seat sell-out
• Opening a free fan village to grow visibility
• Using experience from Formula One-scale events
Find out more about what we do day in day out at Sportforbusiness.com
We publish a daily news bulletin and host regular live events on a wide range of sporting subjects.
Subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, and look forward to more upcoming chats on leadership and the business of sport.
Our upcoming live events on Women in Sport and the Sporting Year Ahead, as well as plenty more, are live on the Sport for Business website, and we'd love to have you join us.
Hello and welcome to the Sport for Business Daily Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Hartness, and today is Monday, the 8th of December. We are in conversation this morning with Nick McAlwee. He's the Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Hockey Ireland. We're all set for a big week. They're hosting the FIH Pro League matches featuring the men's and women's, the very best of the best in hockey, including the Irish women who take on England in what will be a very exciting game on Thursday afternoon, as well as plenty more matches running all the way through until Sunday. We talked to Nick about the logistics of setting up a competition, having only won the rights to host it ten weeks ago. We talk broadcast, we talk set up, we talk getting the fans in and out and giving them an experience which they're going to remember and want more of.com. If you want to find out more, please do visit us at the website or sign up, subscribe, comment, and share wherever you get your podcasts from. Is it a good team? Have you got a good kind of ops team and events team that can actually step into this? Because like it's not something that you're doing every week.
SPEAKER_02:So here's I I mean, I think, you know, and I think this Hockey Ireland will share this with a lot of a lot of other NGBs. It's a small organization. I mean, we have a big responsibility with a with a small organization to deliver it, you know. Yeah. Um and and and and so we're limited in terms of our our core, you know, our core resources to deliver a big event like this. So so what's really important is it's properly planned out. And then we utilize the you know that core resource um as much as we can, understanding that that core resource is also continuing with their day-to-day business. I mean, nothing, it's not that everything else stops, all the other stuff still needs to go on. So actually, what's really important is then to build around us a network of suppliers and partners that and contractors that we really rely on, bringing subject matter expertise and deliver to our plan, you know, and build a plan with us, of course, and deliver that plan. And then the third element is the volunteer piece, particularly less so on the planning and the preparation side, but definitely in the on the on-the-ground delivery and at events, that volunteer network is really important. So, so actually, you know, the core Hockey Ireland staff will be a small percentage of it, critical, but it'll be a small percentage of it. We'll rely on that network of partners and suppliers. And and and in that list, I'd include, you know, a tournament hotel partner, you know, who could take all of the logistics, you know, key transportation partner.
SPEAKER_01:Transportation is always the killer, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Event infrastructure, you know, branding, the look and feel, you know, and also making sure the venue works because it's not just about building it. And and it's worth saying that we're obviously hosting at Sport Island Campus, which is a fantastic facility, but it's not a venue, it's not a hockey venue. So we have to build a venue around the pitch that doesn't exist and all that comes with it, you know, things like infrastructure, you know, where where to view, power, you know, uh, internet, all of those aspects need to be. So you need really good partners. But I think you know, that's how you make it work by bringing in those partners, building the plan with them so that we can deliver a venue that not just looks like a venue, but actually behaves like a venue and brings us uh an experience to the fans that they'll, you know, that they'll um they'll remember and that they want to come back again for because it really it's about building audience. I should say at the outset that you know the team, the sport on a campus are fantastic so supportive. Yeah, and and also we rely on them some for for some resources, additional resources. You know, those contractors I mentioned, you know, security, yeah, cleaning staff, you know, that's really important as well. So the venue is up to scratch. But like you say, public transport is a bit of a challenge, although lots of parking. Um, and also from from my perspective, the pitch is a bit exposed. Um, so you know, when weather comes in, you know, it comes in hard uh across that in December, really?
SPEAKER_01:Is that a concern?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you should say that, you know, I'm just looking at some. We actually we we we've we we have this really we've got this four-meter backdrop behind the viewing area, right? Which is gonna create a crucible kind of arena uh look for television particularly. Because remember, it's not just about the uh, you know, we want to see fans cheering on and we want to see them on the sidelines, but this goes out across the uh world feed for international hockey, goes out to all those hockey geographies. Uh it's also been broadcast on RTE Live on the news channel, you know, as well as their player, and it's all the neutral games are going out on TG Car. So that what it looks like on TV is really important. So we have this high back, you know, back four-meter backdrop behind the players that behind the spectators, which looks fantastic. But it's um, you know, it took a bit of a bashing this morning from the wind, so we'll have to do some little bit of repairs. However, we did make a call to stop the branding uh yesterday morning and reconvene for you know this afternoon because we knew that weather was coming in, you know. So look, you want the venue to look great, you know, on TV, but also you want to create a really great experience for the for the fans. My goal, my goal on this one is to, I know it sounds, but it's to create a new reference point for hockey, you know, because quite often it's like you know, they remember Donny Brook, and that's quite some time ago. We need to refresh and update our event experiences and reference points here in Ireland, you know, and we just simply we don't have enough big international tournaments like this for hockey in Ireland. You know, part of which is we don't have a venue, but that you know that will come, and obviously we're having those conversations, but you have to build an audience and we have to create these experiences um so that so that it becomes a reference point, you know, and a current contemporary reference point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, completely. And like you know, and it's like it is it's ambitious, but if you don't actually sort of set yourself that target, then you will you will potentially beat your own expectation. But if the expectation isn't high enough, then it's what you're seeing through the eyes of those that are walking through the gates. But if you get to a certain level that you can actually persuade them, oh God, you know, this is actually this is I'm very proud that this is my sport, that this is how I see myself. So that they see they see the shine as opposed to the you know the map finish that they might otherwise have been looking for. Um, like we see it in, you know, we see it in golf, we see it in the cricket, we see it in, you know, across all the different sports, that everybody has their own view, and you kind of have to beat everybody's view in order to bring them over the line with it, you know. But but you're right, that sort of whole look and feel like we do a lot of stuff with forefront sports now. Um Key and Branagan, and they do like the the branding that they've done with the with the Women's Irish Open has been a huge part of that event. Um, and it's that attention to detail, and it's how the event works, it's how it's how the people are going to move from A to B to C to D. All of those little things that you don't you don't see the amount of work that goes into it, but you see it if it doesn't go in, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and luckily, you know, you you know, obviously, you know, I I came to Hockey Art to build the kind of the business side of the sport, you know, and the commercial and marketing relevance of the sport. But actually, I I I bring a significant event experience because I was effectively promoter for you know hockey uh for Formula One events, you know, for you know you're not missing out on being in Abu Dhabi this weekend, are you? I was gonna say, funny enough, I'm working away on this event. Meanwhile, over in Abu Dhabi, you know, I you know, I I did the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix from start for the first 12, 12, you know, 12 races. So, you know, I know how to deliver that event and and and you know, how to create an experience, how to make a venue work three-dimensionally, you know, so that you know, so because you want recurring business, you want to see the same fans coming back, you want to build positive word of mouth, and those you know, those rules apply. The scale may be different this week, you know, but the rules, the same rules apply, even though entertainment, and it's about, you know, and it's about recognizing that customers, fans are coming in, they're paying for a ticket, and they need to get a product and an experience that they remember. You know, and one of the things is there was a piece of research done by international hockey recently, just this summer. 74% of grassroots hockey players didn't connect with or were intro weren't interested in in elite hockey, which is to me is a crazy statistic. Very damning, yeah. Well, and and and and I think part of the problem, uh, you know, what was the problem was was the question. I'm thinking, well, why is that, you know, and it could because it's a fantastic sport at the high level, it's so such a high-intensity sport. It looks so good on TV, it's so watchable. And I think a lot of it's to do with uh opportunity to see. And I think the problem is it's just not the opportunity to see, so it's not relevant to them. And and proven proven by the fact we worked with FIH, the team was due to travel out to Argentina for this block in December. We had conversations in early September. So this December, the team were planning to travel out to Argentina. In Argentina, they were not going to be playing Argentina, they were going to be playing England, and they were going to be playing Belgium in Argentina, which I mean, just from for lots of different reasons, you know, environmental, economic, commercial, you know, it doesn't sort of didn't make sense. So we sat with uh FIH, we were very supportive. We we we we sort of ran the numbers, we said, look, we could do it on this basis, and they were fully supportive of us. Great. That was 10 weeks ago, and and we obviously got the decision. 10 weeks ago. Now, here's the important thing is we were sold out within the first four weeks, you know, demonstrating the fact is you know, if we deliver it, they will come. There is an appetite for it. The issue is opportunity, not appetite. You know, and also what's really important for us, and and as any event promoter, you know, knows, you want to see the business early. You know, the worry is if it comes late, you can't invest in the experience, and you can't invest in the event because what you then do is focus on the costs, reducing your costs. You don't want to go into a heavy deficit scenario. Yeah. When you see that business come in, you see the pickup, the tickets being purchased early, then you can go, great, we have a viable event. Let's invest in the experience. And that's exactly how this has played out. Yeah, so it's been really good in that respect, in that it's allowed us the confidence and the resources, you know, revenues effectively, to put in, you know, things like two big screens, not you, not just no big screens. We'll have a 28-square meter screen by the pitch, but we'll also have a fan village which will have a large screen in it. Yeah, brilliant. We can go for a 15-foot Christmas tree as opposed to, you know, it that's what it comes down to. And these are the little touches that make it a great event, an okay event, or a you know, well, I won't do that again event. And that's absolutely what we want to avoid.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that sounds great. Look, not for I won't I won't put I won't put this into the into the piece or anything like that, but like in terms of like a 10-week run, you wouldn't have had any sort of major event supports or anything like that from the department or anything like this. This was uh this was a purely solo run on behalf of Hockey Ireland. So everything that you were spending was either going to come out of current accounts or deficit.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is all de-risked somewhat by Sport Ireland, um, who who who sub you know supported us. Okay. Um and without which we we wouldn't have been able to do it. However, their support represents 40% of the costs. So the significant costs and risk on our side to delivering this event. Um and that's why you know it's not just a case of putting in a bid um, you know, and then hoping for the best. It's actually all of the hard work is done before you put the bid in. So we knew to you know, to the last, you know, to the last cent, we knew what this event was going to cost us, and we knew where our revenues were gonna come from, whether that's concessions from FIH in terms of the cost of delivery and what's what liabilities sit on our side, as well as our abilities to generate income um through ticketing, um, you know, at your minimum sizes, you know, because typically they'd want an eight to ten thousand seater stadium. We can't deliver that sort of and it doesn't make sense because we build an audience, but also that investments from other sources, you know, and allow us to support the teams or commitments from the teams so that they all stay in the one hotel so we can consolidate costs and and and and and look at potential revenues on that side. So, you know, all of those elements are really important to balance it, and we had that in place before we put the bid in because you can't make this stuff up in 10 weeks after you've put the bid in with a sort of a finger-in-the-air estimation of cost. We need to know exactly you know, exactly what you know, what we're looking at and how we're going to deliver them to what spec and where our revenue are and our costs. You know, again, small organization, you know, hockey island is what, a five million euro business. This is a big event.
SPEAKER_01:You know, you get it wrong, you know, that has a significant impact on our financial, you know, and and in all sorts of ways, like reputation, you know, the sort of like you if you if you do a bad one, you know, people kind of remember that and they go, Oh, well, I'm not sure whether we can really trust there and that. But that's like it's a great vote of confidence from FIH that that sort of 10-week period would be, and and I presume that the support would have come from England and Belgium as well, that they would have, for for all of the the obvious reasons, they would have said, Yeah, this makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:Correct. Correct. I think in that community, the FIH community, including the FIH, but those teams very supportive of us hosting it. And you know, we did have two European, smaller European events last year and the and one the year before, which obviously gave them the confidence that we knew what we were doing, uh particularly be able to deliver an on-the-grand experience for the teams, for the fans, but also to deliver a you know a global TV product, which is really you know, which is really important for them, so that it's not just our reputation, it's their reputations that are you know that are on the line. But you know, we have really, really good support, and the those early, those early conversate conversations gave us all the confidence that we could deliver this. Um and and in that sense, the scale of the venue 10 weeks is not unreasonable for us to be able to deliver it as long as you get the planning right and the numbers set up properly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and the broadcast partnerships they came on board early on as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the broadcast is a key part of it because significant, significant amount of the cost goes into broadcast. It's a you know, it's a it's a 10-camera setup, you know, it's um it's a significant setup. Um but but and the only thing I'd say is, you know, we did go to tender. We use we we tendered locally as well as internationally, and we went for an international uh broadcasting company and coming in from Spain. Um I would have liked to have used a local producer if I'm being a local broadcast you know outfit, to be honest with you, um, because that's the point of having something like this so that we can actually exercise local talent and local expertise, which is what you're doing through the hockey TV anyway.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:But however, you know, this particular outfit, I think, you know, um, yes, they were very competitive on cost, but also they had good expertise in delivering the broadcast for pro league. Uh what we can't do is we, you know, you know, we're not experts in that. We needed someone who we could rely on so that they could tell us what we needed to do in order to deliver a you know successful broadcast. So the right comms, the right graphics packages, all of that. It's it's complicated. The broadcast is complicated. Hockey moves very fast, it's a very quick game. There's a lot of interaction which is included in the broadcast around the video referencing and the umpiring. You know, there's cameras on the video referral umpires, the the you know, the audio is part of the broadcast. So it's actually quite a complicated piece of broadcasting, you know, when it's live and in play, um, because it's a very fast game. Um and what we you know, we we could we couldn't be learning on the job. Dare say we will have, you know, dare say, and you know, it will be a success next week, and we will look to host a subsequent pro league. Don't know when, you know, we may look at things slightly differently because at that point we'll have we'll have knowledge and and experience under our belt, particularly as regards the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Wow, brilliant! Excellent. Well, I'm really excited, really looking forward to it. Um, the the first games are Tuesday, are they?
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. The first game. So, what we have is we've got six teams coming in. Yeah. Um, three ten uh three men's teams, three women's teams. Obviously, it's only the Ireland women who are competing, the Irish uh men's team. We were in pro league last year, but we've dropped down to nations cups this year. But the Irish women were promoted up to pro league and they will be competing against Belgium and England. And then we'll have on the men's side, we'll have Germany, England, and Belgium. And we're you know, we're looking at top-ranked teams in the world here. These are top, you know, number three, you know, ranked team. These are the Olympic teams, yeah. Exactly. I mean, this is high caliber hockey, number one, number two, it's also for points. You know, this is a league format, it will run through 26, 20, uh, 25, 26, and the winner of the pro league trophy will you know will qualify for Olympics, you know, for the LA in in 2028. Um and there is delegation at stake. So everyone's coming in to score points. This is not international, uh, international elite hockey, um friendly elite hockey. This is you know, point scoring international elite hockey. We'll have so starting Tuesday for six consecutive days, we'll have two games per day, yeah. Which is 12 matches in total. And then the Irish women's team will play on four, will play four matches. Their first game always at two o'clock. Their first game is on Wednesday next week, then Thursday, and then they're back for Saturday, and they finish on Sunday, uh, December 14th at two o'clock. All of those games are sold out and were sold out, as I mentioned, four, you know, four weeks after we went on sale.
SPEAKER_01:What's the capacity that you got to in the end?
SPEAKER_02:1500. Okay, classic. It's not it's not huge, but it fits the venue and it fits the kind of you know, the you know, the the the kind of the budgets as we put together, but also you know, we wanted a sold-out scenario. I think that's important because what it does is it does it makes the point that this is viable, you know, there is an appetite for hockey, and that if you don't purchase, the chances are you might you might know I know all about that fear of missing out, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And and you know, you want that, and there and and that early purchase, as I said, allows us to better deliver the event. Um it's worth saying though, it also, because we sold out early, and I think we'll be about potentially more than 50% for the for the um Tuesday and Friday, which are which are you know, which are the Irish women's team are not still look it will still look full, it would look good on TV, and there'll be a good atmosphere at the venue. Yeah, but it's worth saying it also what we did is we've got a big marquee, a fan village in the you know, next to the pavilion at the um at on the Sport Island campus, and we put in there a big TV screen, and you don't need a ticket to go in there, grab a burger, a cup of coffee, watch it on the big screen, soak up the Atmosphere and you can do that for free. So anyone who's coming to the campus is at the aquatic center, for example, they can just come across. And that that opportunity to see hockey, you know, um casually is really important for us because it's about widening the you know, you know, visibility and and and and and and assist with the promotion of the sport more generally, not just to the hockey fans.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for taking the time to listen in. It's an exciting week ahead for everybody working in Hockey Ireland and at the Sport Ireland campus, and indeed for the 1500 fans who will be packing the stands to see the Irish women's hockey team taking on at the very best in the world. Remember that game against England, which will be on television but also live at the campus on Thursday afternoon. There's plenty more on the Sport for Business website today as well. We're looking back on a weekend of champions performances in Gaelic football, in hurling, in swimming, and in plenty more besides, as well as looking back on the night that Team Ireland and the Olympic Federation, in partnership with Allianz, celebrated 2025 and crowned the Ollies, the Olympic sport champions of the year. We'll be back again tomorrow morning and every day this week with the Sport for Business Daily Podcast. For now though, I hope you have a great day.
