LONG READ ‘Hurricanes may end up champions, but they might be the symbol of why Super Rugby needs a radical overhaul’

The only rugby nation that understands commerce in sports is France. Their comp is the best because clubs are privately run, get a piece of the (huge) TV-revenue cake and so on. The clubs pay for and develop players. Their marketing is excellent too. The league runs for a full season meaning 13 home games in the Top 14 and 15 in the ProD2, before playoffs en not counting the 2 home games Top14 teams always play in Europe. They run the Top 14 like the NRL or EPL. Clubs rule because that’s what every successful sport does.

Bordeaux sold out every home game over the last two seasons. That’s 30 x 35000.. over a million fans through the gates. La Rochelle sold out over the last 10 (TEN) seasons in their 19000 seat stadium. NZR can only dream of those numbers for the ABs.

People keep going on about how France underperform, but their league hasn’t been set up for the national team. It’s been set up for the clubs. And it works. Europeans are extremely parochial and more often than not support their club first and then the country. They don’t like the country to lose, but that’s quickly forgotten when their team plays in the local derby next weekend. These rivalries go back centuries sometimes. It matters more. We’ll never have that in NZ.

We need a full season club comp based on what they do in successful comps in other sports. Some homework has to be done first to see what works in NZ because we’ll continue to bleed cash if we persist with this model. Something’s gotta give.

Running up debt seems to be the way with everything today. Many English FA clubs have operated with annually increasing debt for decades, the Olympics, even Governments! What country in the world is not in debt? While this is an unhealthy state of affairs, it’s kind of hard to imagine any strategy except “double down.”

maybe they want to look at the ticket prices and include the train and bus in the ticket prices

I live in the uk and prefer watching super rugby over premiership and top 14 (which does have some quality games, but not many).

The product is good, but the teams need more freedom to act like businesses and invest for their commercial success and on for on field success. If Super rugby can get more access to attract and retain talent, it’ll grow for sure. It already is these last couple of years, under new management.

Some great info here Gregor and there are also a number of issues alongside the problems you identify:

1) Large stadiums are not fit for purpose for crowds of 10-12 thousand people.

2) Winter is not a good season to attract people to outdoor games.

3) The ABs are not getting worse because they are not playing the SA teams (the SA teams were largely useless in Super Rugby), they are getting worse because a huge number of fringe NZ players are leaving. Those players brought the level of the comp up.

We don’t need South Africa back in Super Rugby. O think we need to go north as well and axe out a deal with the English Premiership. Invite three or four teams from England to join Super Rugby. That’s where the money is at. It will benefit NZR a lot more than having the South Africans back. Sorry to say it, but that ship has sailed.

Hot political takes!

What a joke.

The entire rugby world is currently scratching its collective head over a truly baffling mystery: Why is Super Rugby Pacific, a competition where New Zealand plays itself in slightly different colored jerseys, not generating the same mountain of cash as it did when half the world was involved?

Gregor suggests the Hurricanes are a symbol of a broken system (I wonder who broke it?), pointing to the Wellington property market, the culling of public servants, and even a more expensive training base

It’s almost impressive how many excuses can be fit into one article without mentioning the 950kg, Springbok-shaped elephant in the room…

The kiwis are coughing up blood but would rather pay the "We Don't Need You" tax than admit they f’d up on a monumental scale

Remember 2020? The year NZ Rugby looked at their long-term South African partners, the ones who brought in the massive broadcast checks, the 2:00 AM character-building kick-offs, and the actual physical physicality and said, it’s not you, it’s us... actually, it is you, please leave

Now, four years into the Aotearoa-Plus-A-Few-Others experiment, the Hurricanes are reportedly losing millions while sitting at the top of the table

It turns out that when you kick out the world champions because the flights are too long, you also kick out the interest of anyone who doesn't live within a two-hour radius of a Z service station

Crying out for a radical overhaul to save the game, suggesting private investors, player drafts, and maybe, gasp….afternoon kick-offs!

Truly revolutionary stuff!

Here’s a radical idea: Maybe the financial model didn't need recapitalizing by local property developers; maybe it just needed a competition that didn't feel like a never-ending internal audit

As it turns out, fans are less likely to buy a ticket to see the Hurricanes play the Blues for the 400th time than they were to see them face the Bulls at Loftus

The Hurricanes might win the title, and Moana Pasifika might close their doors, in the old days, being the best meant you were rich

In the all new & vaccinated, SA-free Super Rugby, being the best just means you’re the most efficient at losing money

But hey, at least the flights are shorter

Open up the borders within the comp but only after so many Super caps dilute the kiwi teams slightly strengthen the Oz teams a tad with some key players and depth slightly and adjust the pay structure relative open up Japan either test caps keep and promote younger dudes more

The Oz teams improving should help let’s hope they continue they should be flush with cash now and after next year for mid def

The cake tin is a nice enough stadium and located well enough to city but simply the seats are just to far away from the paddock making it oval for cricket that never happens was a bad decision that even in my younger days thought it was a bad one

Honestly, F the current “government”

About as useful as tits on a bull

Super Rugby does not need a radical overhaul, we just need anyone with business sense to take the reins. All the middle-aged men who keep taking charge are incapable of providing an experience that justifies all the additional costs on top of the ticket prices.

Also, Wellington Stadium is a s-hole. Attendance will never change unless a new one is built.

Gillies also talked about another fundamental problem - that overseas entities can buy NZ players without paying any transfer fee to NZ rugby, whether club or NPC or NZR. Where else in professional sport does this model work, where absolutely nothing goes back to enable recoupment of the huge investment NZ rugby has made to make that player an international commodity? Imagine ManU letting a player they’d been grooming since he was 14 go to another club without compensation.

Clearly I’m missing something here, is there a legal problem, Gregor? What happens, for instance, if a player who enters the Warriors pathway programme then jumps ship to, say, the Eels? Do the Wahs just let him go? Is there a transfer fee? Is any part of that fee paid to the Wahs?

I think the fundamentals have to be addressed - I don’t think just adding another ten games is going to fix anything. NZR have to look at transfer fees, tv rights and a draft system, give the clubs more autonomy over their own fate, but only if they also have more opportunity to make a genuine business model work…. Pity they can’t talk to Ted Turner anymore - he seemed to be able to make sports franchises profitable!

The basis of the problem is that both NZ and Australia have refused to completely professionalise their domestic game. 30 years in to professionalism, amateur rugby still controls more than 40% of the domestic season in both countries.

Amateur rugby [NPC and the Sydney/Brisbane club competitions in Australia] has stopped the SR teams operating full season for the last three decades. As a consequence the SR teams play only 14 scheduled competition games, 7 at home, finishing in the middle of winter. English Premiership and URC teams play 22/11 scheduled competition games a year, finishing in late Spring, while Top 14 teams play 30/15, finishing early summer. Because of that, attendance, commercial deals and TV revenue for the SR clubs have been severely compromised, to the point they are no longer viable entities.

This is insane. There is no sport in the world that imposes this restriction, let alone in professional rugby. Its only now the NZ SR teams have all veered into the red that NZR have finally recognised this.

In the short term, NZ and Australia need to run a double round robin SRP in 2027, so 18 games up until the end of June, then run either a double round robin SR Aotearoa/Australia July to September, or a single round SR "Next Generation" [promoted as bringing in the next generation of pro players] or a comp with Japan's J One teams. Or some combination of all three. The SR teams need to get to about 25 games a year immediately and eventually move to a single, full season SRP, or like Australia NZ's SR teams will have to be taken over entirely by NZR, with all the financial consequences of that.

Beyond the financials, the refusal to completely professionalise their domestic game has done an appalling amount of damage to professional player development in both countries. It is absolutely vital for young players that they have a single, fully professional, year round structure to work within, not a hopelessly fragmented collection of "development" structures that have poor results but insist on being part of the system. They need to be certain they will have the opportunity to play at the top level, something impossible if they are playing for a team that only gets 14 games a year.

The Crusaders formally took over player development in Canterbury in the early 2000's. A professional organisation doing a professional job for professional players. It is zero coincidence that the Crusaders has been, far and away the best professional player development organisation in the rugby world over the last thirty years. Instead of demanding the loser solution, a draft, New Zealand rugby as a whole needs apply the winner solution, and demand far, far more from its hopelessly ineffective player development system.

Paying the price for focussing on making the All Blacks brand more important than the domestic game.

I think we need to see some of the decline as part of a wider social pattern. Covid has a big impact on rugby attendance in NZ. But we are seeing a growing younger “fan” base if the Blues vibe is anything to go by. More of the younger generation heading to watch the game in a Friday or Saturday night. While relatively small, it is a momentum change especially as younger stars make their names. This especially needs to be encouraged - Fehi is now a household name through NZ, and Love could become a super star. Tavatavanawai is building a cult. Ditto Vai for the Blues. The Chiefs and the Crusaders are already blessed with a string of ABs but would do well to promote some of their younger talent. Marketed right, and targeting this younger audience (us oldies will always be there) is key. The NRL does it perfectly and Super must borrow from their marketing strategy.