A September crunch meeting in Europe will tackle mounting financial dramas for national unions. Could it lead to a Saudi takeover of the game? Rugby Australia’s French match fee farce and ‘A Game of 2 Halves’ returns with a twist.
OPINION
World Rugby ‘crisis’ summit could open the door for Saudi Arabian investment – Sports Insider
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, former Wallaby Brett Robinson, Sky's Laura McGoldrick and IndyCar driver Scott McLaughlin.
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Australia’s contender to become the first World Rugby chair from the southern hemisphere, former Wallaby Brett Robinson, has described the summit as a “crisis” meeting.
Robinson, who has NZR’s support to replace Englishman Sir Bill Beaumont as chair, has made it clear the summit must address the spike in member unions finding themselves in increasingly precarious financial positions, as well as the state of the game itself.
It’s why the chairs and CEOs of the big unions have been invited, and not just their World Rugby delegates.
It follows a fragile period with several prominent clubs and privately-owned franchises in both hemispheres going bust, including London Irish, Wasps and Worcester and, most recently, Super Rugby’s Melbourne Rebels.
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Alarmingly, the financial rot is now spreading to national unions including Australia, England, Scotland and France. In April, Rugby Australia announced a loss of A$9.2 million ($9.98m) for 2023 and later shuttered the Rebels. Scotland followed suit a couple of months later, warning it expects to lose £10.6m ($22.4m), the second straight loss of over £10m in a season.
France is now in similar trouble, despite hosting last year’s Rugby World Cup. The French federation announced it had an operating deficit of €16 million ($28.5m) for the 2022-2023 season and was expected to have a deficit of €24 million ($42.8m) at the end of this season. New Zealand is hardly immune either, having also recorded back-to-back financial losses, the latest being $9m.
How is this happening?
Essentially, national unions are living beyond their means. Professional rugby simply isn’t generating enough money to feed its many mouths.
Its operating model needs overhauling – either by cutting costs, or by seeking investment (but back to that later).
Robinson’s warning ahead of summit
To tackle this problem, Brett Robinson is running a “change” campaign, driven by his pitch of more agile leadership from World Rugby.
The 54-year-old former Brumbies captain, who was on Rugby Australia’s board until 2019 and is the CEO of the giant RetireAustralia retirement community developers, has the support of New Zealand and other Sanzaar nations for the role of chair.
He is up against 66-year-old Scotsman John Jeffrey, whom longtime All Blacks fans will recognise as the “White Shark” from his test days as a rugged Scottish and Lions flanker.
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Jeffrey is seen by Southern Hemisphere nations as an ultra-conservative who will be a potential barrier to getting the northern nations and their rivals Downunder on the same page.
In announcing his candidacy, Robinson told the Sydney Morning Herald that his own nation’s parlous financial position (see later item in this column) and the appeal of test rugby as a spectacle was symptomatic of rugby’s global problem.
“Australia is a bit like the canary in the coal mine for the game... and many of the challenges we’re facing now are also right in front of many of the member unions, having spoken to them over recent months,” Robinson told the SMH.
“The issues that we’re facing are consistent issues across the game, to the point where the macroeconomic challenges of the game are at such a crisis point that we [the World Rugby board] are holding a meeting... this September, inviting the tier-one CEOs and chairs to discuss not only the revenue challenges we face, but also the pressure we’ve created around our cost base.
“Clearly revenue growth is important but the heart of it is managing cost base and player salary caps and wages, that’s at the heart of the tension.
“The economics aren’t sustainable and that’s the pressure point for everybody. We just have to come together and agree on what are some of the mechanisms to address it.”
Robinson claimed international football was showing World Rugby the way to make tough decisions.
“Football have been doing this for a long time as well and have arrangements, where there’s financial compensation or [financial] fair play arrangements at Uefa. Or is it about agreeing on salary caps? How do we manage that together?
“Club owners and club competitions that need to be a part of that conversation as well. It’s in everyone’s best interest, because it’s not good when you know you have to shut down teams, and that’s happened everywhere in the world in the last couple of years because you just can’t fund them.”
Robinson believes successful investment by World Rugby in strengthening the competitiveness of developing nations, and increasing to 24 teams at the 2027 World Cup in Australia, will enhance the game’s global growth.
But where does that investment come from?
Are the Saudis poised to pounce on rugby?
The brittle state of the game at the elite level has left some pondering whether the great disruptors of world sport, the Saudi Arabian-owned sovereign wealth fund, might pounce on test rugby.
World Rugby has already turned down an offer from the Qatari royal family’s wealth fund (owners Paris-Saint Germain football club) to buy hosting rights to the upcoming Nations Cup finals. Qatar reportedly offered £800m ($1.68b) for an eight-year deal starting in 2026.
The Gulf nation was in exclusive talks to stage biennial “Super Bowl-style” finals between the top-ranked Southern and Northern Hemisphere test teams, but France and Scotland were among the nations that demurred and the deal didn’t happen.
Given the French and Scots are facing financial peril, their opposition seems strange... unless they’re holding out for a better deal.
That could undoubtedly come from the Saudis, who remain on the hunt for more sporting jewels and, in particular, target sports that are ridden with political divisiveness and greedy opportunists (come on in, rugby).
The Saudis could trump any offer from Qatar or private equity types as well as potentially buying out CVC’s interest in the Six Nations and the English club premiership and Silver Lake’s share of New Zealand Rugby, to strengthen up their rugby portfolio.
With that sort of grip on the game, and immune to the individual agendas within World Rugby, the Saudis would have close to a blank piece of paper to begin reshaping the club and international game globally.
At least one prominent Kiwi rugby insider has confided to this column in the past a Saudi takeover of the game is what’s needed for the game to survive.
Sadly, I fear he’s right.
French renege on test match fee and deepen Oz rugby woes
The previously-mentioned hole in Rugby Australia’s finances just got deeper after a fracas with the French Rugby Federation (Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR).
Rugby Australia (RA) chief executive Phil Waugh is appealing to World Rugby to force the FFR to make good on a verbal promise to pay them a A$1.7 million ($2m) match fee for the Wallabies to play the French national team last August as a pre-World Cup warm-up game.
The French won 41-17 in front of a packed house at the World Cup final venue of Stade de France in Paris.
The arrangement was struck by then Rugby Australia chair Hamish McLennan and his French counterpart Bernard Laporte.
The pair were close. McLennan persuaded Laporte to convince the French to tour Australia in 2021 in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, helping RA secure much-needed revenue.
Laporte also supported Australia’s successful bid for the 2027 Rugby World Cup hosting rights.
But then the controversial Frenchman, who was also deputy chair of World Rugby, got busted for corruption and had to stand down from that role and the French union’s presidency.
Without Laporte at the helm and a match fee for the 2023 warm-up match being a verbal assurance and not in writing, the FFR apparently decided not to pay up.
If, like me, you can’t believe McLennan didn’t document the deal, you might be able to understand why he was booted out of Oz rugby (the Eddie Jones coaching debacle imposed as a “captain’s call” by McLennan being the final straw).
Waugh appears to have accepted RA has next to no chance of getting the full match fee and is reportedly angling for a mediator from World Rugby to secure a more modest few hundred thousand.
Game of 2 Halves reboot to debut next week
Ric Salizzo has started something with the successful return of Marc Ellis and company with a rebooted Sports Café.
Now it’s time for a show with a similar cult feeling in yesteryear to get the same treatment.
Game of 2 Halves is making a return to a screen near you.
The original panel show was mostly famous for the merciless banter between Ellis and his old mate Matthew Ridge. For many lads of the time, it was a compulsive watch weekly on TVNZ until its final episode in 2009.
Neither Ellis or Ridge are involved in the reboot, which is an interesting collaboration between NZME’s Alternative Commentary Collective (ACC) and Sky TV.
The ACC input should provide the humour quotient, and the show intends including broadcasters (mostly key Sky personalities) and athletes among the two teams.
Much will be up to host Laura McGoldrick to pull the 10-episode package of pub quiz-style questions and humour together.
ACC Does Game of 2 Halves will debut on the Sky Open free-to-air channel next Thursday at 8.30pm, with episodes to follow weekly.
The opening episode featuring double Olympic gold medallist Michaela Blyde from the Black Ferns, Sky’s Joey Wheeler, ACC trio Matt Heath, Manaia Stewart and Chris Key, and broadcaster Brodie Kane.
Team of the Week
Kayla Cullen and Shaun Johnson: The wife of the retiring Warriors legend proved she’s a good sport and hammed it up for the cameras with her fun signs at the end of her husband’s stellar farewell match in Cronulla.
McLaren: They will be frustrated they didn’t win their fourth Grand Prix of the season but the F1 team bearing Kiwi icon Bruce McLaren’s name scored two spots on the podium at the Italian Grand Prix and narrowed Red Bull’s lead in the Constructors Championship to just eight points.
The two Scotts: A Kiwi 1-2 on the podium last Monday in Milwaukee has Scott McLaughlin in third place overall in the US IndyCar series standings, ahead of the championship finale in Nashville next weekend, while Scott Dixon sits fifth and now has more podium finishes than anybody else.
