The All Blacks are aiming to avoid distractions in Chicago, focusing on high performance over commercial activities.
Lessons from their 2016 loss to Ireland emphasised maintaining routine and separating players from promotional events.
New Zealand Rugby’s commercial ambitions in the US are greater, but the players’ focus remains on winning the game.
If there is one lesson the All Blacks learned from their last visit to Chicago, it is the need to be in the Windy City as high-performance athletes and not wide-eyed tourists.
This weekend’s clash at Soldier Field is being billed as The Rematch – a title thatwas presumably chosen by New Zealand to reflect the sense of angst and frustration that is still felt about that game, played nine years ago at the same venue.
The 2016 fixture sits as one of the most significant historic landmarks in Ireland’s rugby history after they beat the All Blacks (40-29) for the first time in 111 years of trying.
But New Zealand don’t have happy memories of that day – or of that whole week in Chicago. It was a rare high-performance fail by an All Blacks side who came into the fixture having secured a Rugby Championship clean-sweep and a world-record 18th consecutive victory when they beat the Wallabies at Eden Park two weeks before arriving in the USA.
Ireland played supremely well, but for 55 minutes they were allowed to, as the All Blacks made 16 unforced errors and conceded 12 penalties.
It was a horror show from the All Blacks – they were ragged, confused and passive, their problems compounded by a serious injury toll that saw them lose midfielders George Moala and Ryan Crotty, and a selection backfire as the decision to play loose forward Jerome Kaino at lock simply didn’t work.
(Left to right) New Zealand coaches Gilbert Enoka, Steve Hansen and Graham Henry. Photo / Photosport
“On the surface, you look at it and say we prepared pretty good,” All Blacks coach Sir Steve Hansen said after the defeat.
“But you have heard me talk about how preparation has to be bone-deep and how bone-deep was it? Only the individual can tell you but the result tells you it wasn’t bone-deep.”
Two weeks after the loss in Chicago, the All Blacks beat Ireland 21-9 in Dublin, a result that sparked all sorts of questions about what had happened in the US.
The game was a first of its kind – a top-tier fixture against a Six Nations opponent at a neutral venue – and the conclusion was reached that the players, many of whom were invested in following US sport and culture, had been knocked off their usual high-performance routines by the volume of peripheral events in Chicago that week.
It was a week that had spiralled out of control with too many competing demands on the players’ attention and time and a week in which the lines between commercial ambition and high-performance imperatives had become blurred.
Chicago is the self-styled sporting Mecca of the US and some All Blacks players attended the Monday Night NFL game between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings, others were guests at the Chicago Bulls’ NBA game, and everyone was invested in the World Series baseball final as the Cubs won it for the first time in 108 years.
The city was basically shut down on the Friday before the game as the Cubs held a celebration parade that saw an estimated six million people attend – creating what was dubbed the third largest gathering of humanity in history.
On top of that, the All Blacks’ front-of-jersey sponsor, US insurance group AIG, renewed its five-year agreement – an announcement that required some players to be present to promote the deal – while there was a not-too-subtle pressure applied by New Zealand Rugby’s commercial team for the players to generally be visible in the city and active on social media to help promote the game and the brand.
“[The players were spending] a lot of time worrying about what the Cubs were doing,” Hansen would later say.
“There were five million people at the parade and most of our blokes were there. I don’t know if it was or if it wasn’t [a contributing factor]. Is that what they normally do on a Friday before a test match? No, and you can get caught up in that stuff.
“I am saying it is a possibility that comes into it. Only the individual will be able to tell you that.”
There were salient lessons for both New Zealand Rugby (NZR) and the All Blacks to take from 2016, as the whole point of being in Chicago was to showcase the excellence of the national rugby team: to sell a vision to the US sporting market of a team that was built on dedication to the basics, perseverance and precision.
Instead, the legacy took a major hit and the US market was left unsure about the values underpinning the All Blacks brand.
Internally, there were heated discussions about how to build a better blueprint should there be future games of a similar nature – and there were even suggestions that the whole concept of playing big games in neutral markets should be binned entirely as the high-performance risks were always likely to outweigh the commercial rewards.
And this is why the 2025 All Blacks are going to have an entirely different experience in Chicago to that of their 2016 peers.
NZR’s ambition to break into the US is significantly greater now than it was nine years ago, as is its desire to monetise the fixture.
Finding new fans in the US is now an integral – if not core – part of the financial growth thesis and the commercial plans for this week are vastly ramped up from the 2016 programme, with about 300 delegates expected to attend a midweek conference that will effectively be selling All Blacks’ intellectual property (IP) to aspiring executives.
The All Blacks also have a broader portfolio of sponsors than they did in 2016, many of whom are keen to leverage their association with the team in a market they are eager to break into.
The lesson of 2016 is that there needs to be greater separation between the All Blacks and the commercial activity and a clearer appreciation of how best the players can drive the marketing narrative.
And so while this will be the biggest commercial week of the year for NZR, the players will have a low-key presence.
The Chicago Bulls are playing three NBA games while the All Blacks are there, but the players will attend a maximum of one.
They won’t be locked up in their hotel rooms, but the New Zealand coaching staff have hammered the need for the players to follow the same routines they always do and for there to be no additional pressure put on the players to sell the fixture, the merits of the USA or be overutilised by sponsors.
At the core of this new blueprint is the certainty that the best way for the All Blacks to align with the commercial strategy is to win the game.
