OPINION
Next year the All Blacks will likely play 15 test matches, which will include an historic first in Fiji and probably another trip to Japan.
The new content hub, NZR+, will be at full noise next year too, trying to win five million registrations on the strength of its content offering - which will feature behind-the-scenes videos of the teams in black, archival footage repackaged with player-led, hindsight commentaries and analysis, and quirky offerings from New Zealand celebrities.
New Zealand Rugby will also be hoping its recently launched All Blacks Performance Labs – a leadership course aimed at high-end executives – will start generating the sort of income it needs to meet its goal of bringing in $33 million over the next five years. All this will be happening while the players continue to get close to maxing out the commercial hours they are contracted to leverage sponsorships for the increasing portfolio of multi-national backers pumping $113m annually into the national team.
The ecosystem is precariously balanced as a result of all this activity.
There’s a lot of high-intensity rugby to be played – games that come with an emotional toll, a physical impact, and a travel burden.
There’s a particular pressure that will come with constantly having cameras inside the team, an anxiety about whether those entrusted to observe pre-agreed rules about where and what they can film will abide by the agreements, and a weariness that will come with always having to be on.
There is also a danger attached to selling intellectual property to corporations.
The All Blacks have long had a mystique and secrecy that has enabled their myth to grow, something that may soon be lost when chief executives of FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies are regularly spurting mantras they have lifted from the inner sanctum of the team.
Because there are so many sponsors now, there is a need for new, younger players to do some heavy lifting in leveraging these associations – something many will find difficult to the point of overwhelming.
All this is happening because NZR needs to generate the $100m or so a year it needs to pay the players, as well as make enough to fund the grassroots and pay a dividend to equity partner, Silver Lake.
How close the system is to breaking point may be discovered next year when a new coaching team takes over the All Blacks and have to find a way to be successful on the field while navigating these unprecedented commercial demands.
But this is the reality of professional rugby in New Zealand – it has locked itself into a cash-hungry model that is putting pressure on the players to win test matches and use their time and profile to help generate income.
It has locked itself into this financial cycle on the strength of one decision – which is the rule that requires players to be contracted to a New Zealand Super Rugby team to be eligible for the All Blacks.
Essentially, this one decision is creating all the pressure to make money. The All Blacks have to win to maintain brand value, and to win, they need the best players to stay in New Zealand and not stray into richer, foreign markets.
Maybe now it’s possible that the demands that come with making the money to keep the best players in New Zealand are more damaging than the likely impact of altering the rules to allow a few seasoned individuals to play offshore yet stay eligible for the All Blacks.
For most of the professional age, New Zealand’s eligibility rules have made sense.
The argument has been strong that New Zealand’s domestic rugby would collapse if players could go offshore and still be eligible for the All Blacks, and that the quality of the team would drop with so many individuals playing their club rugby in European or Japanese competitions that weren’t as strong as Super Rugby.
But several things have changed in recent years. Super Rugby Pacific has regressed in intensity and value as a result of losing the South Africans and the strongest club teams in the world are now in France and Ireland.
The All Blacks would ultimately benefit if they were able to send a few players to Leinster, Munster or La Rochelle to expose them to the tougher physical demands they would face there.
Secondly, the commercialisation of the All Blacks has intensified to the point where it’s impinging on the high-performance ability of the team.
New Zealand Rugby enjoyed its most commercially successful period between mid-2021 and mid-2022, signing sponsorship deals that were worth an accumulated $300m, plus agreeing to a $200m cash injection from Silver Lake.
But it was also one of the worst periods the All Blacks had known in the professional age as they posted a 65 per cent winning ratio and in an eight-game run, only won twice.
Amending the eligibility rules in line with what the Australians have done, to allow perhaps up to five players to be picked from offshore, may drop the wage bill and alleviate some of the pressure to keep making so much money.
Essentially, why not let some of the deep-pocketed European and Japanese clubs do some of the heavy financial lifting by paying the wages of a handful of All Blacks stars?
The argument that this would trigger an exodus of talent and see New Zealand’s high-performance system collapse is also now harder to make stick.
Part of the attraction for European clubs in buying high-profile New Zealanders is the security of knowing they won’t be able to play test rugby.
Watch demand for All Blacks drop if the eligibility rules change, because clubs won’t pay top dollar for Kiwis they fear they may lose for prolonged periods to test action.
Also, foreign clubs are feeling the financial strain as much as NZR and they don’t have the budgets or the inclination to load themselves up with high-profile All Blacks.
There will be money and desire to buy the top echelon of players, but the notion that the whole team will be lured to Europe by big contracts is a fallacy.
One other thing to consider is that picking players from offshore is already happening, as the country’s top players are allowed to play a season or two in Japan on sabbatical and the system hasn’t collapsed as a result.
