Last night, the first Sport Industry Dining event of 2023 took place at Wagtail in Central London.
Sport Industry Dining is a series of exclusive dinners for Sport Industry Members, meeting three times a year at some of London’s most exclusive venues.
The prestigious series provides representatives from leading brands, rights holders and agencies across the sport industry with the opportunity to network, socialise and hear from some of the most inspiring names in sport.
To kick off a new year, BT Sport’s Becky Ives took care of hosting duties, and was joined by former rugby union player and pundit Ugo Monye, to discuss his career, the Six Nations, and a turbulent time for the sport.
Ahead of a stellar weekend of Six Nations fixtures, Monye confidently predicted a win for England against Wales on Saturday in Cardiff, before emphatically naming his favourites for the tournament as a whole.
“Ireland are the number one team in the world and I can’t see past them winning it” said Monye.
Although the former England international was keen to praise the quality of the rugby in this year’s tournament, and across the sport in general, he expressed his disappointment at failures off the pitch.
Following the high-profile collapses of Premiership sides Worcester Warriors and Wasps, Monye explained that those running the sport need to think differently to ensure the game keeps moving forward and retains commercial appeal.
“Take boxing for example,” he explained. “There’s a fight this weekend. We all know what it is. How does a former Disney star, turned YouTuber, take on a professional fighter and it becomes the biggest fight in ages? Some people will turn their nose up at it, but trust me, everyone wants to watch it. I know professional boxers that are excited for Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury. But this is what boxing is doing. Thinking differently, and finding ways to bring in new people, new audiences. Rugby doesn’t do that.”
And Monye thinks this is the prefect time to capitalise. “A Six Nations now, a World Cup in France this year, where a home nation could well win. Use that momentum, use those eyeballs to attract even more people to our sport.”
In his thirteen-year career, Monye made over 200 professional appearances for Harlequins, the only club he played for. Becky quizzed him on whether he looks back on that with regret.
“I was very close to leaving. At 26, after playing for the British & Irish Lions, I got an offer to play in Paris. The reason I didn’t go was because the team that we had built together, was a team I was familiar with, loved and cared for. We can talk about management structures and leadership but there was vision there which I bought into.
I could go to Paris and win trophies but it will never feel the same as doing it for your own club. We won the Premiership three years later and it meant staying was the best decision I ever made”.
Despite his strong connection with Harlequins, Monye names his period playing the British & Lions as the “highlight” of his career, and specifically a 70m intercept try that he describes as “the best six or seven seconds of my career, that took 13 years to get too. Would I do those 13 years of hard work for another six or seven seconds? In a heartbeat.”
Now retired, Monye has switched to a successful media career. A pundit on BT Sport, a regular on Question of Sport, and a former Strictly Come Dancing contestant, Monye hopes that rugby can embrace the media world like he has, speaking on the sports’ new fly-on-the-wall Netflix docuseries following the Six Nations.
“It’s exciting. You’ve got this global platform full of people that do not watch rugby and that’s an opportunity,” he said. “I didn’t love Formula 1 until I started on Question of Sport. The first thing I did to research F1 was to watch Drive To Survive. People love sport if there is a hook. And the hook is the personalities. It’s not about techniques, tactics, pit stops, cars. It’s about people.
Now rugby has taken it on. And it’s a great opportunity to showcase the personality within the sport.”
Monye was also keen to celebrate the recent success of the Red Roses, calling women’s rugby “a totally different sport”, underlining how much more sophisticated the governance and investment is compared to the men’s game. “If you went into Dragons Den and I have this business proposition, and I didn’t say the words ‘women’ or ‘rugby’ everyone would want to invest into it.”
However, he believes more can be done by the government to support the sport and give it the backing it needs to become more mainstream.
“When the men’s national football team got to the final of the Euros there was a £50m pledge from Boris Johnson to ensure no boy or girl was more than 15 minutes away from a football pitch.
But when the Lionesses win the Euros, where is the pledge? When the Red Roses reach the World Cup final, where is the pledge for rugby? Women’s sport is thriving in this country, but for it to get to the next step we need everyone involved. That includes us as subscribers, but we need backing from the highest powers in the country.”
Ugo Monye joins the likes of Molly Thompson-Smith, Alessia Russo, Hannah Cockcroft, Ellie Simmonds, Jermaine Jenas, Will Buxton, Alex Scott and Aimee Fuller on the list of Sport Industry Dining speakers, with more high-profile sportspeople lined for next year’s Dining events.
Access to Sport Industry Dining can be gained by purchasing a Sport Industry Membership. In addition, the package offers tickets to Sport Industry Socials, tickets and entries to the FEVO Sport Industry Awards, and a number of other generous discounts and benefits.
Find out more here.
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