Fabian Holland’s impressive All Blacks debut highlights a potential new commercial pathway for New Zealand Rugby.
Holland’s journey from the Netherlands to New Zealand could boost rugby’s popularity and marketability there.
Targeting foreign players like Holland may offer a more effective way to grow the All Blacks’ global fan base.
Fabian Holland has simultaneously presented himself as the long-term future at lock for the All Blacks and as the prototype to a more viable commercial pathway for New Zealand Rugby to follow as it looks to grow the global reach of its flagship team.
In 160 minutes oftest action, Holland has produced a stunning portfolio of lineout takes, crunching tackles, big horse-power cleanouts and a delightful offload.
His one negative has been a missed kickoff receipt, and even that feels like it should be seen as a positive to avoid him having posted an otherwise flawless return, as perfection is a touch unbecoming.
It’s not just that he’s played like a seasoned veteran, Holland has embraced the All Blacks’ ethos with an understanding that is perhaps deeper than his New Zealand-raised peers’.
After the previous Saturday’s win in Dunedin, he proactively began searching for a broom to literally sweep the sheds and he just seems to get that for the All Blacks to be loved by the people, they have to connect with the people.
How readily and aptly he has found his place in New Zealand and the All Blacks is a story almost too ridiculous to comprehend.
His journey from gangly teenager growing up in the Dutch village of Alkmaar – famous for its cheese market (but then which Dutch village isn’t?) – to playing for the All Blacks is unfathomable.
Fabian Holland urges his pack on during his debut test against France, in Dunedin. Photo / Photosport
New Zealand’s middle classes can barely cope with relocating their 18-year-olds to university in the South Island. The whole business of settling their precious Olivers and Sophies into a fully catered, warm and secure hall of residence is considered so traumatic as to require the whole family to be in attendance – and even then, there are tears and meltdowns.
Holland, at just 16, took off on his own to a foreign country – where there was a language barrier – settled himself into school in Christchurch, relocated to attend university in Otago and then got himself on New Zealand’s elite rugby pathway.
The equivalent would be a Kiwi teen heading to Brazil, finishing their education there in Portuguese and then making the national football team.
It’s so nuts that of course the small rugby fraternity in the Netherlands is hooked on following Holland’s career, and if New Zealand Rugby (NZR) plays its marketing hand smartly, interest in the 22-year-old could extend way beyond the realms of only those already familiar with the sport.
There are 18 million people in the Netherlands and NZR has to be thinking about developing Holland as his own brand in his homeland.
The content opportunity is vast – there could be a line of personalised merch; get him on the media circuit and all the time have that All Blacks story serving as the backdrop.
The impact could be incredible and certainly it seems that having a marketing plan built around an impressive Dutchman is likely to be a more cost-effective, better and ultimately more lucrative way for NZR to win and monetise offshore fans than their current strategy of playing tests in foreign lands.
Fabian Holland puts pressure on French halfback Nolann Le Garrec in Dunedin. Photo / Photosport
The All Blacks will be back in Chicago later this year to play Ireland again, and it’s a sure bet that Soldier Field will be filled with largely the same expat Irish fans it was nine years ago when the two sides first met on US soil.
Rugby hasn’t grown much in the USA since 2016 and nor, despite NZR’s insistence otherwise, have the All Blacks grown their brand profile in that period either – or at least not to the extent that it can be more easily or better monetised.
Playing Bledisloe Cup games (2008 and 2010) in Hong Kong didn’t do anything to grow the All Blacks’ fan presence in Asia either, and one brave decision by a Dutch teenager, that cost NZR nothing, could prove to be a far greater commercial venture than pumping millions into flying all over the world to play games.
It’s a proven strategy to target the recruitment of foreign players and then market them in their homeland.
The arrival of Yao Ming at the Houston Rockets put the NBA on the map in China, just as Manchester United grew their fan base in South Korea after signing Park Ji-sung.
NZR is rightly protective of developing homegrown players and maintaining that Kiwi essence within the All Blacks: that understated, boy-next-door homegrown charm that comes from growing up not wearing shoes often and living outside.
But NZR has also spent close to $20 million over the past two years making content that very few people watch on its digital platform. It’s against the ineffectiveness of that spend to grow the All Blacks brand offshore that the alternative of actively recruiting foreign talent has to be considered.
Christian Lio-Willie (left) and Fabian Holland share a moment after victory over France. Photo / Photosport
Why not ditch making in-house fluff that reveals nothing to prospective fans, and instead invest in global musters where New Zealand’s high-performance teams trawl through the USA, Japan, the rest of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe looking for future All Blacks?
Holland found New Zealand, but what if the All Blacks went looking? Maybe it would unearth the richest pipeline of talent and millions of new fans ready to part with their cash to invest in a globalised All Blacks that feature players from all over the world.
It could make the All Blacks both better and richer.
Too far-fetched? Possibly, but New Zealand has effectively been doing this for years with players from the Pacific Islands – it’s just there isn’t much of a commercial return to be had from Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.
