Back in July 2021 when the Herald first got wind that the British petrochemical giant was close to signing a deal toput its name on the back of the All Blacks shorts and training tops, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) staff were warned to say nothing publicly.
There was extreme sensitivity internally, because it was recognised that a public relations nightmare loomed – the All Blacks in partnership with a company, owned by Britain’s richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, which had been branded by Greenpeace as the “worst polluter in Scotland”.
The most celebrated brand in clean, green New Zealand was selling real estate on its revered uniform to a company that was metaphorically knee-deep in fossil fuel.
This was the archetypal example of greenwashing – a billionaire with colossal wealth gained from pollutive industries using an association with a much-loved sports team to clean his reputation.
It was a deal that NZR felt would need to be carefully sold to the public and to its own people, so it tossed around whether it would be Ineos Hydrogen that would be the name on the shorts – a nod to the UK firm’s supposed hard pivot into renewables.
But in the end, the story was spun to reflect Ratcliffe’s passion for sport, and what was agreed with Ineos was not a sponsorship, but a performance partnership.
The All Blacks found out that they were now part of the Ineos sports stable – one that included a cycling team, Sir Ben Ainslie’s Americas Cup team, Mercedes Formula One and a couple of football teams no one was sure they had heard of.
The partnership required the All Blacks to share performance intelligence with their new stablemates and for Ineos personnel to be granted access to training sessions.
Richard Thomas, NZR’s former chief commercial officer who was the architect of the deal with Ineos, told the Herald in 2021: “We did a lot of due diligence and had a high level of confidence that they are on a really good journey around sustainability”.
“The reason they are involved in sport is because they have a passion for this idea of high performance and taking on the big challenges.
“That’s why they are motivated to be part of New Zealand Rugby’s journey. They are not in it for greenwashing.”
No one inside the All Blacks would agree the relationship was beneficial to performance, or the concept of the arrangement being a partnership that was only ever invented to hide the greenwashing truth of a deal that the Herald understands was US$12 million ($21m) a year.
INEOS CEO James Ratcliffe Photos / Getty Images, Photosport
But the irony in this is that Ineos has effectively terminated its six-year contract with the All Blacks three years early, on the grounds the greenwashing hasn’t really worked.
In a statement explaining why Ineos is pulling the pin, Ratcliffe has, quite hilariously, pleaded poverty – his personal wealth is estimated at $32 billion – and his growing frustration with what he says is the European Union’s punitive carbon tax regime.
The EU, it turns out, is not persuaded that throwing billions into sports teams is doing anything to improve the environment, and if his $21m-a-year into the All Blacks isn’t actually doing anything to clean Ineos’ reputation or win favour with industrial rule-makers, then why bother?
On the question of why he has chosen to blow the relationship up so explosively by refusing to pay what is thought to be a US$6m ($10.5m) invoice for services rendered in the second half of last year, the answer seems to be because he can.
With billions in the bank, it’s likely he’s calculating that he’s better equipped to deal with the ensuing legal action that may run for years rather than months.
It is believed Ineos made a desultory compensation offer to NZR late last year, which was rejected.
The national body has a rightful expectation that it will be fairly and appropriately compensated, and because Ineos didn’t offer up something fair and reasonable, it had no other choice but to sue for breach of contract and let the lawyers drive a resolution.
To do nothing would have sent a message of weakness and devalued all current and future commercial contracts the national body signs.
The symbolism of being prepared to take Ratcliffe to court is likely to be the biggest victory NZR scores in this saga — because not only is it a powerful act of protectionism, but it may also be enough to convince Ratcliffe that his best course of action would be to agree a mediated financial settlement to avoid all the fine detail of the relationship playing out publicly.
But maybe the best action of all would have been for NZR to have never got into bed with a billionaire in the first place.
