Scottish Rugby will be staying at Murrayfield despite its financial problems, chairman John McGuigan has pledged.
And he has revealed that Taylor Swift’s promoter told him that Edinburgh has overtaken Glasgow as Scotland’s music capital – thanks in large part to the national stadium. The governing body lost £11.3million for the 13 months to the end of June. And there has been talk for some time about selling up at Murrayfield and moving to a new site out of town. But McGuigan reckons he can turn things round without moving. And he is confident that more big names will follow the likes of Swift – who played three nights in June – in coming to Murrayfield.
He said: “It’s really interesting: when I came to the Taylor Swift event I met the promoter. And he said to me ‘I’ve done this for years, and Glasgow was always my place, because Glasgow is the home of music. And I’d never think about Edinburgh as being a place to come to. But coming to Taylor Swift has completely changed my mind.’
“Because he said air routes out of Edinburgh are better. More people from Europe came to Edinburgh and bought their tickets because of the location – they want a few days in Edinburgh and combine it with Taylor Swift. We had lots of customers from America, who found that coming here and having a week’s holiday and buying a ticket here was cheaper than buying it in California.
“So he said ‘It’s completely changed my perspective’. Sixty-seven thousand people in this stadium, in Edinburgh, which is the second biggest tourism attraction in the UK with great air routes and transportation – he said ‘We’ll be back’. And he said it’s becoming more and more for a global star that that’s where they would come when they come to Scotland.”
Harry Styles, Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce are among the other stars who have played at Murrayfield, And Billy Joel, Robbie Williams and Oasis will be there next year. There is a limit to the number of big events Scottish Rugby can put on there because it is a residential area – McGuigan reckons three or four a year.
But he is sure that even a handful of concerts like Swift’s – whose three gigs generated £1.7million in revenue – can be a big part of his plan to get the organisation back into profit. Speaking after Scottish Rugby’s annual general meeting on Wednesday night, he said: “The future is definitely at Murrayfield. We’re absolutely staying here.
“I’d love it (the number of big events) to be a lot more. I was a bit jealous actually – I was speaking to somebody from Australia, who told me that they had 18. But we’re nowhere near that. We’re talking about probably the threes and fours.
“We’re really keen to continually promote Murrayfield as a place to come and do other things. There are some opportunities like a hotel. There’s lots of different things that we can do to generate income.
“But we need to do it in the context of keeping everyone else onside. We can’t fall out with the local residents, we can’t have anything other than a great relation with the council, so we need to be very careful with how we do it.”