The Rugby World Cup was conceived in late 1983 when the Australian Rugby Union and the New Zealand Rugby Football Union had each independently written to the International Rugby Board seeking to conduct a World Cup tournament. It was at the 1985 meeting that the IRB approved for the inaugural Rugby World Cup to be jointly staged in Australia and New Zealand in May and June of 1987. Rugby World Cup 1987 was broadcast to 17 countries and had a cumulative audience of 300 million people while the tournament finished with a net surplus of £1 million after accumulating gross commercial income of £3.3 million. From this modest beginning, each subsequent Rugby World Cup has been a roaring success with each tournament registering commercial and broadcast records to clearly be positioned as the world's third most popular and biggest sports event behind the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup. Rugby World Cup 1999 was broadcast to over 150 countries reaching a cumulative audience of over 3 billion people while a net surplus of over £47 million was achieved. The 20 teams qualified for the Tournament are allocated to four Pools of five teams each. The Pool phase consists of a round robin in which each team plays each other team within the Pool once. There are 10 matches played in each Pool, for a total of 40 matches in the Pool phase of the Tournament. | 
