Peter Bills: Yen for our game hurts the ordinary punter

Tomorrow's match in Tokyo offers rugby fans a disturbing view of the game's future.

If you wondered why earlier this year the IRB broke with tradition and announced the venue of not just the next Rugby World Cup but the next two, then all can be revealed. For sure, it's a wheeze Blackadder's servant Baldrick would have been proud of.

If the Bledisloe Cup's dead fourth rubber is any guideline, the 2019 Rugby World Cup which is to be staged in Japan will produce eye-watering ticket prices.

It seems the IRB's thinking is that if the tournament isn't going to take place there for another 10 years, the world has time to get used to the idea of super inflation mugging ticket prices for the sport's premier event.

For those who reckoned that $242 for the best tickets to watch Wales play Japan in a pool match at the 2007 Rugby World Cup and $850 for the most expensive ticket to the Paris final two years ago were decent asks, then I suggest you find a comfortable surface and lie down before you read about the ticket prices being charged in Tokyo this weekend for a Bledisloe Cup match which is irrelevant, the All Blacks having long since retained the trophy this year.

Tickets in Tokyo's National Stadium start at - gulp - $275, with the most expensive at a cojones-squeezing $1050. $1050 to watch a dead rubber match? It seems rugby's longtime fans will have to dig deep to find a place in the stands as the sport explores new markets.

Japan is playing in the world of serious financial profits from sporting events and if, as seems perfectly possible, they make these astronomical sums work this weekend, there is no reason why they won't try something similar at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

You can bet if they do, the IRB won't be telling them not to be so damn greedy. Rugby's governing body knows it made a financial blunder by taking the 2011 tournament to New Zealand, an event which is set to incur a loss of $7 million, and likely to rise.

England, in 2015, and Japan four years later will do much to repair that damage but the costs incurred by the game's governing body in spreading the sport across the globe are growing exponentially and every cent is needed.

The 45,000-seat National Stadium is expected to be sold out. The organisers are aiming for receipts of $20.5 million and they need those sums to meet their commitments and turn a healthy profit from the enterprise. Substantial guarantees have been made to both cash-strapped Southern Hemisphere unions, with each sure to bank $4.6 million from the Tokyo experience.

Both Australia and New Zealand see the Asian market, especially Japan, as a key financial cow to milk in the years to come. Last year in Hong Kong, the two countries attracted 39,000 to the former colony's stadium for a similar Bledisloe Cup match. That generated receipts of $12.3 million, but Tokyo looks set to eclipse that sum.

On the basis of these prices, ordinary supporters are likely to find themselves priced out of the 2019 World Cup, apart from a few lucky enough to snap up the tiny handful of tickets at $510.

But then, is it so much different in this part of the world? The last time I bought tickets for Twickenham, back in 2002, we paid about $123 each for the privilege of being stuck up in a far corner where you could hardly see one quarter of the pitch. The view from one of the seats was obscured by a small wall surrounding the sponsors' boxes. Hardly great value ...

It is clear that in the next 10 years, the price of tickets for international rugby matches is set to go through the roof. This weekend marks a significant move in that direction.