Rugby: Fears of beginning of the end for National Provincial Championship, no TV deal from 2026 - Gregor Paul

NPC rugby could be gone from the small screen. Graphic / NZ Herald

Provincial unions may be feeling it is the beginning of the end for them. This week they were hit with the news that the NPC almost certainly won’t have a broadcast partner from 2026, needs to be radically restructured to lower costs, and that elite player development should be predominantly left to Super Rugby clubs.

Next week, they are expected to be told that New Zealand Rugby chairwoman Patsy Reddy wants them to vote in favour of adopting the recommendations of the Pilkington Review under a revised proposal that will see the national body move towards a new governance structure of nine independent directors appointed by an independent board in a transitional format.

That they are feeling under siege – as many provincial union representatives have told the Herald in recent weeks – is easy to understand.

They are being depowered and almost decommissioned – reset as the champions of the community game with a remit to run club rugby and drive participation – and to effectively keep out of the way of the professional game and its ambition to commercialise itself to the highest bidders.

The unions understandably feel that, from being the major stakeholder in the game and the focal point of everything, they are being kicked out of office with such haste and force as to suggest they are not even an irrelevance, just an irritation.

What seems certain now is that the NPC is going to have a vastly reduced broadcast inventory from 2026 and that, at best, it may score one live game a week on Sky, with some games possibly streamed on free-to-air platforms.

This was made clear earlier this week when NZR revealed, via an e-mail to the unions, the terms of reference for a review it is calling MPAC – Men’s Pathway and Competitions – in which it said it was working on the assumption: “That future broadcast revenue values for the NPC will be significantly lower than previous broadcast agreements, on the basis that Sky TV is not expected to wish to bid for rights to broadcast every NPC/FPC [Farah Palmer Cup] game moving forward.”

The document also makes clear that the NPC has to lower its costs to be sustainable – the current salary cap of $1.15 million is too high – and that player payments may be centralised. That is to say, unions may no longer be responsible for paying their talent and responsibility for that could transfer to the national body.

So, too, will MPAC attempt to simplify and clarify the player development pathways.

Empty yellow seats stand out during a Wellington Lions game against Hawke's Bay. Photo / Photosport

There is universal agreement that the current system is confused and confusing. Neighbouring provinces often compete for talent against their local Super Rugby franchise and, according to the document sent to the unions: “The problem is that the current men’s high-performance development pathway is inadequately aligned, duplicates resource and does not optimally enable Teams in Black to consistently win on the international stage, and that the NPC and Super Rugby competitions are not sustainable in their present forms.”

The unions received this notification about MPAC because NZR has effectively taken control of a stalled process to “reimagine rugby”.

NZR’s general manager of community rugby, Steve Lancaster, says: “There was some work that was initiated by the unions about 18 months ago, which we were involved in from the outset.

“They said they recognised there were issues with the system: a lack of alignment, a lack of role clarity, a lack of positioning.

“We went through a process of bringing a large number of people together and we were just unable to reach a consensus.

“The unions were telling us at the end of last year that they had a real desire to advance this work and what we hear from the unions is that they need NZR to take a leadership position here because it is increasingly apparent we won’t achieve a consensus on the outcomes.”

The unions don’t disagree with the premise of the review – that the NPC needs to be rescoped to a lower cost basis and that the talent pathways need to be cleaned up – but there are fears that what has begun is a thinly veiled attempt by NZR to lower operational costs and ultimately pave the way to reduce the amount of money the provinces receive each year.

Currently, there is an agreement that the unions will annually share 17 per cent of NZR’s revenue, a figure which is starting to trouble the national body given it also has to pay 36.5 per cent of revenue to the professional players and 7.5 per cent to equity partner Silver Lake.

With costs rising higher than forecast and revenue not kicking in the way it was anticipated by bringing on Silver Lake, unions spoken to by the Herald said they felt the MPAC review was being rushed through to shore up NZR’s balance sheet rather than to find the right outcome for the NPC and talent pathways.

Adding to that fear is that the terms of reference state that the review doesn’t need to reach a consensus and will be taken directly to the NZR board to approve once the findings are complete.

Some unions are also understood to have been concerned by the short timeframe to complete the work, with the document stating conclusions will be reached by the end of May.

New Zealand Rugby denies it intends to cut provincial rugby funding in the longer term. Photo / Getty Images

Lancaster, however, is adamant that there is no intention to cut provincial rugby funding longer term and that there is some urgency to complete the work ahead of beginning the broadcast renegotiation with Sky in the second half of the year.

“There is nothing behind this about NZR looking to reduce its investment in provincial union rugby and we talk a lot about the importance of investing in the community game,” says Lancaster.

“One of the interdependencies of this project is that it is an important input into our broadcast renewal discussions.

“Sky will be consulted as part of this process. If there is a reduction of the number of games broadcast on Sky, then that presents an opportunity around how those games [NPC] are delivered and what venues they are delivered at and what the costs of that delivery are.

“I don’t think anyone denies that the cost of the delivery of the NPC across matchday costs, player payrolls [and] support is higher than it needs to be.

“The question we need to answer is what is the right level of investment for that competition to fulfil its role?”

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.