Betting ad complaint: Sky makes changes to Israel Dagg rugby segment; Is TVNZ closer to being sold?; Cartoonist’s financial support for The Platform; Sean Plunket apologises to lawyer; Top advertising exec Nigel Douglas departing OMD for new pitch consultancy venture. Subscribers: Have your say in the comments section below.
Sky TV has been forced to review and change the way it integrates a sports-betting segment – normally hosted by former All Black Israel Dagg – into its live rugby coverage after an official complaint that some viewers would not know it is a paid advertisement for the TAB.
New Zealand’s advertising watchdog says it would have upheld part of the complaint if Sky TV had not made the changes.
Dagg – who played 66 tests for the All Blacks between 2010 and 2017 – normally presents two live segments, during Sky TV’s pre-game and halftime shows, in which he outlines the latest betting odds and offers his own views on worthy punts.
A viewer who watched the Crusaders-Chiefs Super Rugby final in June complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the nature and tone of the segments meant viewers might not distinguish them as advertising.
“The introduction to the ad by Laura McGoldrick implies Dagg is a friend and fellow presenter," wrote the complainant.
They said Sky had told them Dagg was contracted to the TAB, but the complainant pointed out Dagg was “still listed as a Sky rugby presenter on the Sky website”.
“Dagg was also an active Sky Sport presenter previously doing normal rugby comments and interviews, so the audience clearly would assume this is a Sky presentation rather than an ad.
“Before the cross, Dagg is seen leaning on the goal post waiting for the cross, holding his Sky microphone, he begins talking before any graphics, which are hardly noticeable, come up.”
The complainant was concerned that the segments promoted and normalised live betting for all ages, including children.
“Sky may say that 91.8% of viewers are over 18, that still leaves 60,000 children and young people watching these ads. The TAB are happy to target children and young people and groom them as future gamblers.”
Both Entain, which runs the TAB, and Sky TV defended the live segments in responses to the Advertising Standards Authority.
They denied the segments breached the Advertising Standards Code and Gambling Advertising Code, as well as the assertions that the content targeted children or young people.
“While Mr Dagg is a sporting hero, we believe that this consideration is outweighed by all other factors,” Entain told the ASA. “Entain engages Mr Dagg for his charisma, persona, and his appeal to TAB NZ’s targeted demographic of males of ages around 40-64.”
The majority of the Advertising Standards Authority’s complaints board said the pre-game advertisement did not have a clear enough delineation to separate it from the general broadcast content.
“The majority of the board said the combination of the casual introduction from the Sky presenter saying, ‘What’s going on son?’ and the [screen label] with Israel Dagg’s player statistics put the focus on the presenter rather than making it clear it was an advertisement for TAB within the broadcast.”
The board also said the use of a personality such as Dagg - who had multiple roles during his career, such as rugby player, presenter and now betting ambassador - “heightens the risk of the transition from the broadcast content to the advertisement being misunderstood by some consumers”.
Sky said that after receipt of the complaint, it had reviewed its protocols “around the delineation of this content”.
“As a result, we have refreshed our implementation of these protocols to ensure we present the delineation consistently and the advertorial is very clearly distinguishable to the audience.”
It listed four areas where the format was being “consistently executed”:
• “Sky presenters formally introduce the TAB presenter at the start of the segment, making it clear the viewers [are] now watching a Bet Break, brought to us by TAB”;
• “Accompanying graphics appear on-screen at the commencement of the segment”;
• “TAB branding is clearly visible throughout the advertorial content”;
• “For any on-field transitions, the production team only use single-person shots to avoid any confusion that the Sky and TAB presenters are ‘co-presenters’.”
Sky said it worked with Entain to ensure the segments were created with a target demographic – males aged 40-64 - in mind.
“The advertorials are not constructed to appeal to or target young people. The content is complex, delivered at a fast pace and refers to adult concepts such as ‘odds’ and ‘multi’ product.
“Noting Israel Dagg’s profile as a sporting figure and in the media, we have asked Entain to ensure that he wears Entain-branded clothing in any future segments to ensure that his role in advertorial content is more visibly evident.
In his pre-game and halftime segments during last weekend’s Bledisloe Cup test at Eden Park, Dagg wore a small TAB badge on his jacket.
He was introduced by McGoldrick as “Israel Dagg from the TAB” and on-screen graphics labelled him “TAB NZ presenter”.
The Advertising Standards Authority’s complaints board, in its decision, said the complaint about the ad was settled in part and not upheld in part.
“The majority said the complaint [about the pre-game segment] would have been upheld because the delineation between the broadcast content and the advertisement was not clear enough,” said the authority.
“However, the board considered protocol changes made by the broadcaster and agreed this element of the complaint was settled.
“The majority of the board did not uphold the complaint about the half-time advertisement as it contained clear signals that it was an advertisement.
“The complaints board unanimously agreed that although there would be children and young people viewing, the advertisements did not target this demographic in terms of content, product or audience figures.”
In a statement last night, Sky said: “We accept the findings by the ASA, noting that we have proactively identified and committed to specific actions to ensure that Bet Breaks are clearly differentiated as advertorial content.
“We are committed to being a responsible broadcaster and, like the many media organisations in New Zealand that have a commercial relationship with Entain, we will continue to take care to follow all regulatory requirements.”
If anyone can sell a business, it’s Andrew Barclay, the new chairman of TVNZ.
The just-departed Goldman Sachs NZ managing director would be one of the best-placed dealmakers to sell a public asset such as TVNZ. A big question is, who would line up for it?
According to one source, Barclay’s nickname in some business quarters is “Barclaycard” because he’s made so much money for Goldman Sachs over a 26-year career with the firm.
Media Insider revealed this week that Barclay will become TVNZ’s new chair in November after the surprise early retirement of Alastair Carruthers.
Barclay’s dealmaking skills are legendary in investment circles - and he has had some media experience in the past, assisting with a MediaWorks IPO on behalf of Goldman Sachs.
“He’s a nice guy, but always incredibly focused on the deal - hence his success. He’s got expensive taste and enjoys the ‘top end’ of town. He’s a dealmaker, not a public broadcaster. It’s a pretty surprising appointment, and to be honest, quite a coup for [Paul] Goldsmith to have secured him on this,” one source told Media Insider.
It is not a long bow to think Barclay has been appointed for a very specific reason – to eventually get some, or all, of TVNZ off the books.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon indicated in January this year that asset sales were a possibility during the next political term.
“Our focus is on driving economic growth and, as I have said, that is not something we’ve been talking about this term,” he said at the time.
“We won’t be talking about [it] this term. I am open to talking about it in the longer term, at the next election. That is something for this term that is not on [the agenda].”
Luxon said an election victory in 2026 would be a mandate to move forward.
“We would take it to the election and it would be part of our programme that we’d want to talk about and be upfront with New Zealanders about,” Luxon said.
“I am open to the idea of asset recycling and the best use of capital and that is something we should always be attuned to. But as I have committed to, we’re not going to be having asset sales this term.”
He refused to say what assets he would be open to selling.
Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith said in a statement this week: “Mr Barclay has had a professional career spanning over 25 years in global investment banking and finance.
“His background equips him with the skills to provide continued strong oversight of financial performance and strategic decision-making, which are critical for a commercially focused public broadcaster like TVNZ.”
Goldsmith yesterday responded to a range of questions about whether the Government or National Party was investigating, considering or supporting a sale of TVNZ: “No. Any policies that the National Party intends to take to the election will be released at the appropriate time.”
Act leader David Seymour said: “I don’t have much to say other than in our alternative budget we sold TVNZ, so while I remain committed to the Government and its positions, my own views are well expressed by my party in its alternative budgets.”
NZ First did not respond to questions.
Broadcaster Sean Plunket has certainly had an eventful few weeks - buying out richlister Wayne Wright jnr’s shareholding in The Platform venture, and having to apologise this week to a prominent employment lawyer for comments he made on his show in June.
But Plunket also has a new shareholder in the business, cartoonist and painter Garrick Tremain.
Tremain, a former cartoonist with the Otago Daily Times, has provided Plunket with financial support for The Platform, and in return has received a 5% stake in the company.
Tremain said: “My desire was to support them and the others who are now our only source of truthful and reliable news since the legacy media has become nothing more than the distribution of left-wing propaganda and fiction.
“There are too many daily examples to quote here, but look no further than ‘the Treaty is a partnership in Aotearoa’. Two pieces of misinformation in one sentence.”
Plunket said he would tell the full story of Tremain’s involvement in due course.
He was in the process of updating Companies Office records, and in the meantime, business was good, without needing to rely on taxpayer and public support. “There’s tonnes of energy in the room.”
He was open to further investors. “I have faith in providence.”
In a written and verbal apology on The Platform and its various social media channels this week, Plunket announced he had paid legal costs and damages to settle a High Court claim brought by Wellington-based employment lawyer Barbara Buckett.
“I am making this apology in response to the statement of claim served on me on 28 July 2025, regarding comments I made on The Platform in June of this year about the lawyer, Barbara Buckett,” Plunket said in his statement.
“I won’t repeat those comments but I want to be absolutely clear: I regret making them. I crossed a line I shouldn’t have crossed. Whatever my views about the case in which Ms Buckett was involved, it was wrong of me to question her personal integrity or motives.”
Buckett represented former Platform worker Ani O’Brien in her employment case against The Platform.
In his apology this week, Plunket said his comments in June were personal and “had no place being aired on my programme”.
“The truth is, I let my frustration over the outcome of the employment dispute get the better of me. I fired off some harsh words that were neither fair nor justified. I made allegations I shouldn’t have made, and I accept full responsibility for that.
“I want to unreservedly apologise to Ms Buckett for having done so, for allowing others a platform to repeat and add to these allegations, and for broadcasting them publicly to The Platform’s listeners. And I want to make the same apologies on behalf of The Platform.”
Plunket said he could not comment further this week; Buckett did not respond to messages.
The loquacious and powerful boss of one of our biggest advertising agencies has resigned to set up a new and unique-to-New Zealand business venture within the client-agency landscape.
OMD chief executive Nigel Douglas – one of New Zealand’s most respected advertising agency executives after 36 years in the industry – is creating a pitch consultancy to help clients overcome many of the issues they face when they want to renew or revive their advertising agency accounts.
There has been no shortage of concerns from the likes of the Comms Council about the amount of time, resources and expense that pitches can take.
The entire focus of agencies can get lost in the winner-takes-all stakes to snare a new client. Similarly, clients might not always achieve the best or desired outcome from pitches.
Douglas, who has been with OMD for eight years, announced his resignation this week.
He told Media Insider he is leaving the agency at the end of October to create a new pitch consultancy.
“I’ve done eight years, and that’s a stretch in a role like that. I’d always anticipated moving on to the next thing around about now, and for a number of reasons, the time is right for the evolution.
“I’ve been pondering what’s next. This is something that I’ve had in my mind and have talked about pretty extensively for quite some time.”
Douglas says at least half the pitches in Australia have a consultancy involved, with an even bigger percentage in the United States and Britain.
“It’s not something that has really existed specifically locally in New Zealand – there’s a massive gap.”
He said pitch processes were “often not what we would describe as best practice”.
“The agencies get run ragged, the clients often don’t get optimal outcomes, and publishers often end up bearing the brunt as well. You could ask any agency leader in town for a perspective on that. It’s just not great, and I would like to fix that.”
He said the new consultancy would be a client-centric service.
“The critical thing is being able to diagnose the relationship you’ve already got [with an agency] – have a look at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities. Review how that’s going to determine where you can improve it, or if you can improve it.
“It’s like any relationship, sometimes, the best course of action is starting with a bit of counselling, and trying to understand what’s going on with those relationships because it might be resolvable.”
He said pitches cost a lot of money and took time. They were disruptive and might not necessarily improve a relationship.
“I’d be looking at a pragmatic approach at what clients need, how to structure it, and achieve or provide an environment that can lead to strategic and financial outcomes in particular.”
He said a pitch consultancy would also help agencies by creating better practice and processes and good briefs: “Not too onerous, not enormous pitch lists of participants – you really only want three agencies in a pitch like that.
“In most processes, that’s kind of the number. By the time you go through identifying the sort of resources you require, the geography, the skill sets - I talk about the four Cs – capability, capacity, chemistry and cost. Those are the pillars that need to be considered and often aren’t.”
Douglas, whose career started as an advertising cadet at the NZ Herald in 1989 before stints in the radio and television industries and then a move into the agency world, has strong confidence in his new business venture.
“I’ve participated personally in more than 300 pitches. If you’re a client, you might have participated in three. It’s just not what you do every day on the client side, but it is what we do all the time.
“No one’s ever seen it all, but I’ve certainly seen a lot. I’ve seen some very good processes and some very poor ones.”
Douglas said he was fired up about the move and had received “resounding, positive support” from the industry.
“I think the market needs this big time. It’s gripe number one on everybody’s gripe list. It’s getting worse, not better. Now feels like the hour, so ... let’s go!”
A report out of America identified in 2023 the cost to clients of pitching – about US$409,000 ($702,000) for an agency pitch without participation from the incumbent and about US$375,000 ($645,000) for an agency pitch with participation from the incumbent.
“For the client, the key costs for an agency pitch are related to hourly costs, staffing changes, disruptions/delays, external consultants, and compensation to the agency,” says the new report, The Cost of the Pitch, produced by the New York-based Association of National Advertisers.
In New Zealand, industry leaders have believed for some time that there is a better, more cost-effective solution.
“The traditional pitch approach that our industry seems to fall into is that clients will ultimately arrive at a shortlist of agencies and then ask them to perform a creative or strategic task,” Commercial Communications Council chief executive Simon Lendrum previously told Media Insider.
“That’s in many ways akin to asking three architects to design your house and agreeing that you will probably appoint one of them if you like one of the designs, and pay for that design only after you’ve seen three alternatives.
“We simply do not get treated in the appointment process like any other industry on Earth.
“In a very trite way, you don’t go to a restaurant and eat their food and then tell them whether you’re going to pay for it.”
Douglas’ move coincides with big pending changes for OMD and its sister agencies under the Omnicom Group (OMG) umbrella.
In June, the Commerce Commission approved the merger of OMG with another big global holding company, IPG.
Major OMG brands such as OMD, PHD, Colenso, DDB, Clemenger, TBWA, Hearts & Science and Dynamo are now set to be housed under the same umbrella as IPG agencies such as FCB and Initiative.
There are also several big pitches in the market right now.
The biggest of all is ANZ, but others include Briscoes Group and Sharesies.
The man who once led the business that owned the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB has resigned from his long-running role as chief executive of one of Australia’s biggest media firms.
Ciaran Davis is stepping down as ARN Media chief executive, to be replaced by chief operating officer Michael Stephenson in January.
Davis was chief executive at the time that ARN - then known as APN News & Media (later HT&E) - owned the Herald, ZB and a suite of entertainment radio stations and regional media brands in New Zealand.
APN’s New Zealand assets were combined and relaunched as the NZME business in 2014. NZME was publicly listed in June 2016.
“I love the drama of media, so Davis was my kind of CEO,” Australian media writer Tim Burrowes wrote on his Unmade platform last night.
“He was always willing to take game-changing risks. Too many executives are risk-averse, unwilling to do anything that might undermine their own position.
“Davis did it differently. Back when ARN Media was still APN News & Media, and Davis was running the Australian Radio Network side of the business, he masterminded the biggest game changer the radio industry had seen in a generation.
“ARN hired Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson away from [Southern Cross Austereo’s] 2DayFM and used them to spearhead the launch of the Kiis network, closing the ailing Vega. It was the boldest move since John Singleton hired Alan Jones into 2GB in 2002, and tilted the momentum away from SCA and towards ARN."
Under Davis, Sandilands and Henderson also signed a new 10-year, A$200 million deal in late 2023, a record for the Australian market.
The pair have been phenomenally successful in the Sydney market but the show’s recent syndication into Melbourne has been less than stellar.
And, as the ABC reported yesterday, Australia’s media watchdog has threatened ARN “with action to force it to ‘rein in’ the highly paid stars and stop them broadcasting ‘vulgar, sexually explicit and deeply offensive’ content”.
“A months-long investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found seven breaches of Commercial Radio Code of Practice decency rules by the Australian Radio Network’s (ARN) morning program on KIIS Sydney and KIIS Melbourne last year,” reported the ABC.
“The decency breaches relate to broadcasts that included the airing of audio of male and female staff members urinating and references to their genitals and ‘graphic comments’ about menstruation and oral sex, offensive descriptions of a sexual position, and a segment discussing masturbation and pornographic websites.”
NZME director Sussan Turner is the latest board member to invest in the media firm that owns the NZ Herald, Newstalk ZB, OneRoof and a suite of regional media titles and entertainment radio stations.
An NZX notice this week revealed Turner, who has been on the board since July 2018, has invested $55,031.46 to buy 50,000 shares.
Her investment follows fellow director and shareholder Jim Grenon lifting his own stake in the media business to just under 18.5%.
In recent weeks, NZME chairman Steven Joyce lifted his stake from 18,965 shares to 50,965 and director Bowen Pan invested $99,113.15 for 86,185 shares.
Another director, Carol Campbell, has 150,000 shares.
NZME in August reported operating ebitda of $23.9m and an after-tax loss of $393,000 for the first half of its financial year.
NZME shares closed at $1.06 on Thursday.
Editor-at-large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including managing editor, NZ Herald editor and Herald on Sunday editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.