Iain Payten, SMH

The boss of the British and Irish Lions says he has no concerns about the Wallabies being a potential walkover on next year’s tour of Australia – and fans on both sides of the globe seem to agree, with record demand for tickets and forecasts of massive windfalls for Rugby Australia and the national economy.

In just over a year, the British and Irish Lions – featuring the best of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland – arrive in Australia for their ninth tour since 1888 and with new coach Andy Farrell at the helm. They will play three Tests against the Wallabies and six tour matches.

The Wallabies beat the Lions in 2001, and lost 2-1 in both of the gripping series in 1989 and 2013. But the Wallabies’ ranking in world rugby has fallen considerably since then and, over the past two Test seasons, Australia has had a measly 30 per cent win record. Under former coach Eddie Jones, the Wallabies fell at the pool stage of last year’s World Cup.

At the start of this year, Australia’s fall from grace was captured by the Wallabies sitting below all four of the Lions nations in the rankings; a scenario a Lions series host has never been in before.

Wales’ poor results in the Six Nations dropped them below Australia but the prospect of the northern-hemisphere players flexing their muscles in a one-sided series has some pundits worried.

Lions chief executive Ben Calveley isn’t one of them.

“No, that wouldn’t be a concern,” Calveley told this masthead from London. “A lot can change in a year, can’t it?

“History tells us these tours are always competitive, irrespective of world rankings and things like this. I’ve got no doubt that come next year the Wallaby side will be incredibly competitive.

“We’ll have two sets of players who will see this as the pinnacle of their careers; incredibly talented athletes and players on both sides. They will be putting everything on the field of play, and they’ll both be desperate, absolutely desperate, to win.

“No doubt this will be a fantastic spectacle. It will be incredibly competitive. Australia, frankly, is one of the great sporting nations in the world, and those players will take that field of play and I’m sure will deliver a really competitive performance.”

World rankings and the Wallabies’ struggles did not dampen the extraordinary demand for tickets to the 2025 Lions series.

Held once every four years (with Australia, New Zealand and South Africa rotating as hosts), Lions tours are always highly popular; particularly with travelling fans from the UK and Ireland. In 2013, more than 30,000 fans came to Australia to watch the Lions, and all the games were sold out.

But based on the demand for tickets, the five-week tour in 2025 is already set to be the biggest ever.

When general ticket allocations for the series went on sale in Australia in March, all Tests were almost sold out within 24 hours and the tour games – against Super Rugby teams and an Australia-New Zealand invitation side – are also exhausted. (Another small batch of tickets will go on sale later this year).

Calveley said the demand for travel-and-ticket packages from the UK and Ireland had been equally intense, and a ballot for tickets to a pre-tour clash between the Lions and Argentina in Dublin was massively oversubscribed.

“We could have sold out that stadium five times over, and it is a similar situation for the travel program [to Australia],” he said.

“Across each of those three categories, the level of interest is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

“In four months, we’ve already sold more than we’ve ever sold for any tour in history, and we’ve got 12 months to go between now and the first match. So there will be tens of thousands of people coming from here and converging on Australia.

“When RA went on sale with the tickets in the local market, they were exhausted within minutes. So all of that, to me, demonstrates the level of interest. The level of excitement, I think, is off the charts.”

RA is expecting between 35,000-40,000 travelling Lions fans, who are known as the “Sea of Red”. A big reason for the increase in travelling support is the fact the last Lions tour in 2021 was staged in South Africa, and COVID-19 travel restrictions meant there were no fans on tour.

“I’m absolutely sure that’s in play here. By the time the tour comes along, it will have been eight years since we’ve had [Lions] fans in the stadiums,” Calveley said.

“So having all those fans together – that passion and the colour that they bring – won’t have happened for eight years. And I’ve got no doubt that yes, [some] fans effectively roll over the budgets that they would have allocated to that ’21 tour, and they’re spending them in ’25 instead.”

‘We’ve already sold more than we’ve ever sold for any tour in history.’

All that saved-up money – and supporters starved of action – are set to provide a major financial windfall for Australia. Major event experts are forecasting the Sea of Red will pour more than $200 million into the country’s economy during the tour.

RA stands to be an ever bigger winner than the publicans. As part of a new joint-venture organisational structure – which means the Lions and the host nation share all commercial and government revenue, ticket revenue and broadcast revenue – RA is set to pocket more than $100 million from the tour. That’s up from about $40 million for the 2013 Lions tour.

For a cash-strapped organisation like RA, the money is a literal lifesaver. RA took out an $80 million loan in 2023 and is banking on the Lions windfall to pay down the debt. A second fortuitous “revenue event”, the 2027 World Cup in Australia, means RA is expected to squirrel away another $100 million to help fund the game.

Given the Wallabies’ recent record, the sighs of relief at RA headquarters when the Lions tickets flew off the shelves in March would have been audible.

But RA chief Phil Waugh, who was a ballboy in the first Wallabies-Lions Test at the Sydney Football Stadium in 1989, said he had not been surprised by the demand.

“Our recent experience, and the history of the Lions tours here, has been really exciting for the Australian public – and for all Australian sports supporters, not just Australian rugby supporters,” Waugh said.

“So the interest, I’ve been encouraged by it, but it probably hasn’t surprised me.”

Calveley lauded the “excellent appointment” of former Ireland coach Joe Schmidt at the Wallabies, and said his clash with former assistant coach Farrell “adds to the intrigue and excitment”.

The Lions are being kept in the loop with regards to the midweek tour fixture in Melbourne on July 22, which was due to be against the Rebels but will now likely be a clash with Australia A.

The unusual Australia-New Zealand fixture in Adelaide on July 12 has raised questions about how seriously it will be supported by the Kiwis, but Calveley said the Lions love the innovative match.

“It’s rare and it’s a bit different and, frankly, that’s what we like about it. I don’t have the view that Lions tours should be exactly the same, cycle on cycle,” he said.

“We like to think about new and interesting things that we can do, both for the players but also for the fans, and that’s I think where this combined fixture comes in, right? We are looking here at two countries who between them have five Rugby World Cup titles. So you get the selection right and that’s as close to Test quality.”

The British and Irish Lions announced it would stage a women’s tour to New Zealand in 2027. Calveley said Australia would also be in the mix as a future tour destination.