World Rugby partners with Gemba’s Turnstile platform to value sponsorship

In a move to more accurately value existing and future commercial partners, World Rugby has agreed a deal to use Gemba’s recently created platform Turnstile.

World Rugby will use Turnstile to better understand valuations of commercial deals in the lead up to the Women’s Rugby World Cup coming up in 2021 and the subsequent Men’s Rugby World Cup in 2023.

Turnstile, an innovative platform designed to more accurately value global sponsorships, was launched in February this year with Formula 1 as a foundation client. Williams Racing subsequently appointed Turnstile to value its sponsorship portfolio.

Outlining the decision to appoint Turnstile, World Rugby Chief Commercial Officer Tom Hill advised “as Rugby continues to grow as a global proposition, we were seeking a methodology that captures the full value of the Rugby World Cup. While the global reach of the events is massive, we believe that the value of the Rugby World Cup is far more than just exposure.

“The unique values of rugby - integrity, respect, solidarity, passion, discipline - resonate globally and we liked the Turnstile approach to capturing our intellectual property value.”

Hill added “we believe that Turnstile’s methodology will better reflect the value being generated by the Women’s component of rugby. Women’s rugby is a strong differentiator for our sport and its audience is growing. It already has tremendous goodwill amongst our fans and we want to properly capture this engagement in our valuations.”

Turnstile Chief Executive and Director Rob Mills commented “the Rugby World Cup is one of the pre-eminent sporting events and we are incredibly proud that World Rugby chose Turnstile to value their key assets. World Rugby’s decision is further proof of the industry’s desire to build a more robust approach to the pricing of sport and entertainment properties.”

Image courtesy of Rugbyworldcup.com