The All Blacks perform the haka in San Diego last season. Photo / Photosport
In 2022, United States fund manager Silver Lake determined that the All Blacks brand was worth $3.5 billion and that it was willing to pay $200 million to buy a 5% share.
For years, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) had said the All Blacks had the same profile and recognition as the likes of Manchester United, Real Madrid, and the Chicago Bulls – but it had never been able to put a number on what the brand might be worth.
The $3.5b figure was unquestionably a surprise – a number beyond NZR’s expectations and hence its desire to do the deal, almost as if it was worried Silver Lake would change its mind.
And the surprise at the valuation was understandable, because while the $3.5b figure was not high on a straight comparison – the Dallas Cowboys are valued at $19b, Golden State Warriors at $17b, Real Madrid $10.5b – it is high when measured against revenue generation.
The Cowboys generate around $2.1b of income per season, Golden State Warriors $1.3b and Real Madrid $1.5b, and typically, based on the price buyers have paid for various sports entities in the last decade, valuations range from six times up to 10 times total revenue.
But Silver Lake’s valuation was 13 times NZR’s annual income of $270m and so its number placed a significant premium on the power of the All Blacks brand to open commercial ventures in new markets.
Essentially it was saying that the brand had enormous untapped value – that the revenue figure represented the difficulties a national sports body had endured in trying to monetise international markets.
Silver Lake’s investment thesis was that there were significant numbers of All Blacks’ fans to be discovered – maybe as many as 60 million - in offshore markets, and that if they could be engaged, they could be commercialised and that’s why it put the valuation at such a high multiple of income.
But three years on, does that $3.5b figure look like fair value or a catastrophic misjudgment?
A significant part of the All Blacks brand value relates to their win record, which sits at 76% over all time and 85% this millennium.
The ability to maintain a winning record which legitimises a narrative that the All Blacks are the international game’s only consistent over-achievers, is a critical component in supporting the current valuation.
Silver Lake decided on the $3.5b figure mid-way through the 2021 Rugby Championship – which the All Blacks won, losing just one game.
It seemed, then (October 2021), that the All Blacks were well-placed to uphold the legacy.
They had won nine of their 10 tests in 2021, had committed to a coaching group that appeared to be settling into international rugby after a bumpy start in 2020, and Super Rugby had a new future as a potentially viable and engaging Pacific competition.
But since Silver Lake came on board, that winning record has plunged to 70%, and built into those results are some unwanted historic firsts such as losing to Argentina in New Zealand, losing a series to Ireland, and losing a World Cup pool game.
The big hope was that by changing coaches in 2024, the All Blacks’ results would return to their historic highs, but Scott Robertson’s side only won 10 from 14 last year.
The last three years have not delivered overall results that have met the benchmark, but some of that has been off-set by the All Blacks making the World Cup final – and more significantly, it’s too short a body of time to have damaged the brand value or materially changed the story.
Matt Dickinson, who is chief executive of the agency True, a strategic branding and creative agency, says: “They have built the brand and the legacy off a culture of performance which is exemplified with amazing results”.
“That said, throughout history they have lost games. It hasn’t been about this 100% record.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Yarnie Guthrie, who is New Zealand Rugby commercial’s general manager.
He says: “We did a lot of research [in 2020] that tells us that we have – depending on the piece of research – around 300 million fans around the world.
“And of that 300 million, 42% did not tick the box of being a rugby fan. That tells us that a performance dip of a short-term period is not going to drastically affect the value proposition of that brand.
“When you have a performance winning record like we do and ultimately the statistics say that we are the winningest team in sport in any code in any sport in history, that’s why those short-term dips don’t tend to affect the conversations we are having at a global level. It is a higher purpose discussion.”
Guthrie references iconic brands such as the Dallas Cowboys, Real Madrid, and Ferrari – none of whom have been as dominant in the last decade as they were previously – to say that a lack of recent success has not damaged their long-term brand value.
And NZR chief executive Mark Robinson said in a recent interview with the Herald that while he wants the All Blacks to be winning more than 70%, the results of the last three years hasn’t, so far, impacted the ability to win commercial partners.
Yet while the last three years don’t present a cause for concern in themselves, they do potentially signal that a major, long-term change is happening in the international game.
Firstly, it’s valid to ask in the wake of Super Rugby’s post-Covid restructuring (in 2022) to a Pacific-only competition, the rising strength of Japan’s Top League, societal and demographic changes, and growing concerns around safety, whether there are endemic issues within New Zealand that will detrimentally impact the ability to recruit, retain, and develop players.
Super Rugby Pacific is proving to be incredible entertainment, and a world class club competition in its ability to engage fans, but there remain doubts about whether, without the South African teams, it has the same capacity to prepare players for test rugby.
Since 2022, the All Blacks have lost five of their seven tests against South Africa, two out of two against France, and two out of five against Ireland.
The threat of Japan lies more in its ability to secure world-class coaching talent, with the likes of Steve Hansen, Ian Foster, Robbie Deans, Dave Rennie, and Todd Blackadder all working in the Top League.
Having once dominated age-grade international tournaments, New Zealand has not won the Under-20 Junior World Championship since 2017, and finished fourth in 2018, seventh in 2019 and 2023, and fourth in 2024.
Playing numbers are static – except for in the women’s game – and the drop-off in teenage boys remains significant.
There is evidence to suggest that basketball and the NBA has become a genuine competitor for rugby, both for its ability to attract teenage talent and engage it.
Reversing this trend will be made harder given the changing immigration patterns – significantly more people are arriving from countries that have no affinity with the game (115,000 of the 133,000 people who came to live in New Zealand last year were from the Philippines, India, and China).
Combine all this with the proliferation of entertainment choices, and it’s difficult to foresee that rugby will ever hold the same level of public interest in New Zealand that it did in the last 40 years of the previous century.
There were empty seats at the All Blacks’ two home tests against Argentina last year and because New Zealand’s media industry is facing an existential crisis, the game doesn’t garner anywhere near the same volume of coverage it did even three years ago or dominate the news the way it once did.
And while New Zealand has battled to retain its world-class development programmes, other nations, particularly France, Ireland, and South Africa, have built highly effective pathways that have enabled them to catch up with the All Blacks.
Their competition is better now than it has ever been, and New Zealand doesn’t have the same rugby capital within its system as it once did.
South Africa have won the last two World Cups, Ireland have the best win-ratio of any country over the last seven years, and France have become the dominant force at U-20 level and are current Six Nations champions.
The All Blacks have an intangible element linked to the brand value – which is their mystique and the intrigue that is generated around their team values, the haka, and their codes of behaviour.
The All Blacks promote humility, modesty, unity, and a team-first approach, which culturally, makes them an entirely different proposition to iconic American sports teams and European football clubs.
And it was this intangible quality that AIG, Adidas, Altrad, and Ineos were prepared to pay a premium for to gain an association with the brand.
In the book Black Gold, Martyn Brewer, who ran point for Adidas when it signed the initial US$20m-a-year apparel deal with the All Blacks in 1999, said: “Internally there was a lot of excitement about the All Blacks”.
“This is bigger than rugby. If we can build a relationship with this asset and tell a story about the commitment to excellence – this is the one – the All Blacks – that crosses over.
“You can have your individuals. We had Sachin Tendulkar in India, Kobe Bryant in the US, someone in the Czech Republic but the All Blacks could cross all those country boundaries.”
Do the All Blacks of today still carry this same mystique and intrigue for global sports fans and international brands interested in investing?
David McIndoe, group chief strategy officer for the marketing and communications agency DDB, says: “I think the mystique is very much alive as long as you stay true to the core principles of the brand”.
“Respect, humility, leadership, and even the captain sweeps the sheds. The essence of the All Blacks brand is one of values and identity, personal respect rather than it being about every game is a win.”
Guthrie says the value of the legacy is nuanced to different markets. “The bit people like in America is out-and-out performance,” he says.
“The way they talk about us is that you guys are the winningest team and that is all that matters. Whereas in Japan the bit that is most appreciated is that commitment to excellence and humility.
“The American audiences are less worried about that, and more worried about that dominance and they love the All Blacks because they just don’t lose – and I’m talking in terms of the legacy here rather than individual fixtures.”
In 2012, NZR made the decision to rename all its national teams as All Blacks. It was a move that was heavily criticised at the time, but NZR was adamant that calling the U-20, Māori, and male Sevens teams “All Blacks”, would create more assets for sponsors, and build the profile of the brand in new, non-rugby markets.
A big driver was the elevation of Sevens into the Olympics and the likelihood that would lead to more nations pumping more money into their programmes and growing the profile of the abbreviated game.
There was strong pushback, though, as some commentators felt it was over-reach – that it was applying the values and legacy of one team that had built its reputation over 120 years to others who didn’t have the same performance history or proven depth of culture.
To many it felt like the All Blacks brand was going to be diluted, cheapened even, and those arguments have strengthened in the last 12 months as the men’s Sevens team has suffered a number of defeats that have resonated around the world.
How much damage is inflicted on the brand by these defeats which generate negative headlines in territories such as Spain and Uruguay where general knowledge of rugby is comparatively low, is a valid question.
Regular defeats can’t surely help sell the All Blacks to fans in potential new markets? “I see it differently,” says McIndoe.
“I would agree with the move to bring the teams under the All Blacks banner. The All Blacks were trying to transcend from being one of the revered teams to becoming a super brand, then it makes sense to put the name across more teams.
“If you look at brands that have that sort of power … Manchester United, NFL teams or Formula One teams, you want more in your stable than just your one team and one performance a week.
“The fact that there are lots of countries pumping lots of money into Sevens is an excellent sign – obviously I would like to see the team perform better – but the question back would be would we be having this conversation. As a commercial proposition it expands the exposure to the name.”
When Silver Lake came on board, its investment thesis had content at the heart of it. Engaging and compelling content telling athletes stories and taking fans into the inner sanctum of the changing room, was going to enrich the experience of following the All Blacks.
The plan was to make an in-house streaming platform to push this content and use it as a hub to gather intelligence about fans and provide a means to regularly communicate with them.
But having spent close to $11m on content and building the site, NZR+, in 2023, only around 60,000 people had registered and the following year there was a shift to publishing on YouTube.
Dickinson believes it was a major mistake to build NZR+ and have it at the heart of the content play.
“[It is a] bad idea. Why not use channels that have existing audiences rather than spending significant amounts of money not only creating the platform and the content, but then you have to find people to watch it and go to your platform.
“Use existing platforms they are there - focus on making great content and part of the historical challenges they have had is wrapping players in cotton wool or whatever you like to call it around the All Blacks and not allowing them to express themselves as real people.
“Because once you get through all the talent managers, they are decent guys who are real. We are in the cult of personality these days and building those personalities is important.”
McIndoe largely agrees and believes the All Blacks have the necessary cache and brand story to interest the global channels such as Netflix, Amazon, and Disney, and that the focus should be on trying to come up with a content idea that would sit on one of those networks in a multi-series format and effectively try to emulate the business model of Formula One’s Drive to Survive.
“I don’t think it has to be a lift and shift from the way Drive to Survive played out,” he says.
“There is definitely a place for let’s say end of season one-and-a-half-hour documentary of the season gone and it may be a little more sports focused than the ins and outs and backstabbing of Formula One.
“That just means there would be a different style of content for the All Blacks but I don’t know what it looks like.
“I would like them to do a deal with Sky TV first and foremost. There are plenty of partners in the NZR media world already who could help them with that journey and start unpacking that.
“But are they a big enough brand to do that [interest the global players]. I think they are a big enough brand. They have cache, the fact that the Spanish press took the opportunity to say they beat the All Blacks then that is proof positive that there is enough of a global reverence for the name and for that salience to turn into some kind of content play.”
Guthrie, perhaps not surprisingly, says that NZR+ has been a game-changer from where he sits at the coalface.
He says that there has never been a problem getting potential commercial partners interested in the brand story of the All Blacks, but there has long been an issue of trying to present data to show how easy otherwise it is to reach the fanbase.
“Walking into meetings and presenting NZR and the wider team and being able to share information on this incredible content platform is powerful,” he says.
“We are not bench-marking ourselves against other rugby teams at all. We are looking for the spend of people that are investing in a top tier football team or an NFL team or a Formula One team.
“People on the other side of the table are buoyed by what we are doing and achieving. It’s a game-changing asset being able to build into the overall proposition.”
The ultimate testament to the power of the All Blacks brand and best way to assess its value, is to look at its ability to generate income.
When Silver Lake bought in three years ago, there were forecasts that it would transform the revenue profile of NZR.
NZR had managed, under its own steam, to grow its income from $76m in 2000 to $270m in 2022. But Silver Lake’s involvement had people suggesting that revenue would start doubling every seven years.
Yet, three years on, revenue has remained static at $270m, and just as importantly, it remains built on the same three pillars of broadcast, sponsorship, merchandise and ticket sales.
The promised new income streams are yet to materialise and the 300 million All Blacks’ fans that supposedly exist around the world, are still not being persuaded to buy into the brand, and the data suggests that domestic fans are already spending more per person than fans of any other major sports team.
So can this be turned around? Is there any chance of the All Blacks being monetised to the extent Silver Lake said they could be?
Guthrie is optimistic they can be, citing the collection of fan data as the most crucial reason why. He says that by improving its ticketing, e-commerce, taking corporate hospitality in-house, and by building NZR+, there is now a rich and valuable database that has helped it understand who its fans are, where they are and what they like and don’t like.
He believes this will enable NZR to build strong and better relationships with its fans, and that the benefit of this will be mostly keenly felt when it comes to selling the naming rights to the All Blacks kit in 2027.
He also says that new income streams are coming online at scale – programmes such as the All Blacks Performance Labs which sell management lessons to corporate executives.
“Taking back the relationships with the fans, being able to grow our connective fan base to a much more meaningful state that creates value,” he says.
“Our destiny is a little bit connected to the shape of the game and there have been some positive changes in that.
“This Nations Cup tournament when we explain that to brands and they see that we have finally got a connected rugby tournament that Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere are playing in one competition and there are no dead rubbers anymore … that is a massive game changer. With those things in mind, I believe it will lead us to some attractive growth.”
On balance, the $3.5b figure looks about right and probably what the brand is worth today, with some optimism that by 2028, it will be worth $4b-plus.
The last three years have delivered a generally lower level of performance from the All Blacks – 2023 World Cup excluded – and a host of negative domestic headlines around poor governance of NZR, a badly handled episode with the All Blacks coaches, and a high-profile clash with a UK sponsor.
Unquestionably, the popularity of rugby has taken a hit domestically and the sport’s treasured place as the national game can no longer be assured.
But against that, the country still produces enough quality players to compete on the international stage – or enough at least to believe the All Blacks can maintain a winning record of 70%.
And that may be enough to keep their brand story relevant and powerful because the mystique is already so strong and there is a truth to be acknowledged that iconic sports teams don’t necessarily need to dominate all the time to retain their power.
The two big changes in the last three years, however, have been the accumulation of fan data and the ability now for NZR to show potential commercial partners who they are reaching.
And secondly, the arrival of a totally new board of directors earlier this year has installed a much greater degree of confidence that NZR can build and follow a more effective strategy to grow the game and its commercial footprint.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
The 34-year-old could represent New Zealand from mid-2026.