Gregor Paul: Why Kiwis’ access to the All Blacks is being squeezed

All Blacks hooker Codie Taylor takes a selfie with supporters. Photo / Photosport

OPINION

The 2024 season hasn’t kicked off yet and already domestic followers may be feeling that their access to the All Blacks is being squeezed and that they are slipping into a kind of second-class citizenship, as plans ramp up to build an international fanbase and find foreign cash to plug increasingly large holes in the accounts.

Given the exponential rise in the cost of test match tickets over the last two decades and the fact that all live content sits behind a paywall, domestic All Blacks fans may already be conditioned to seeing themselves as a cash cow that needs to be endlessly and relentlessly milked by New Zealand Rugby (NZR).

But there’s a sense now in early 2024 that NZR has moved into a new economic era entirely, where its need for more money, and ambition to find it offshore, are going to combine so potently as to leave home-based fans feeling like they are most definitely now a lower priority to keep happy.

As the Herald revealed last week, NZR’s short-to-medium term financial outlook is relatively bleak, with revenue not growing in line with expectation and costs blowing out more than anticipated.

There are murmurings that revenue projections for this year and next are tracking $50 million short of where they were forecast and this financial pressure is manifesting precisely how those who were sceptical about selling off a key part of the game’s income stream to US fund manager Silver Lake said it would.

In quick succession at the tail-end of last year, decisions were made which illustrated how aggressively the All Blacks are being corporatised and globalised and how determined NZR is to build the brand in offshore markets.

In December, the provincial unions opted to take another $62.5m from Silver Lake and in doing so, killed any prospect of domestic investors being able to buy directly into the success of the All Blacks as per the initial agreement that was made in June 2022.

That initial deal set out a clear and legal expectation that New Zealanders – mums and dads, high net worth individuals and institutions – should be given the opportunity to invest in New Zealand Rugby Commercial (NZRC), the company set up to house the revenue-generating assets, and have access to the same sort of financial returns as Silver Lake.

But it’s been apparent since NZR first began talking about raising capital back in 2020 that it’s never had an appetite for a public offering of any kind – arguing that it would come with too many regulations, restrictions and requirements to divulge commercial information and that it would rather stay private.

It was the New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association that pushed the idea of mums and dads being able to buy into teams in black and it’s the trade body’s contention that NZR behaved in such a way, after signing the initial deal with Silver Lake in June 2022, as to ensure that any attempt to raise up to $100m domestically was destined to fail.

Wherever the truth lies in terms of what process was followed and what intent various parties had, the outcome is not open for debate – the public won’t be given the chance to invest and by being shut out, it means Silver Lake will be the only beneficiary when it sells what is now a 7.5 per cent shareholding in NZRC.

The second major slap to the face of local fans came when NZR revealed that it will be playing a scheduled home test against Fiji in the USA.

The All Blacks playing tests in neutral venues has been happening for more than a decade, but opting to play home tests in foreign markets is a new development.

In a year in which the All Blacks will play 14 tests, only five of them will be in New Zealand and with NZR having signed an agreement to play more in Japan and chief executive Mark Robinson saying that it is now a goal to help the USA build rugby’s exposure ahead of hosting the 2031 World Cup, it seems inevitable that there will be exponential creep in the number of fixtures played outside New Zealand.

It also could be argued that the decision to play this year’s five home tests in just three venues – Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin – is a further sign that NZR’s need to maximise revenue by playing at larger stadiums will now outweigh any desire to keep the team visible and accessible to the provinces.

The realities of keeping a high-performance team together in a predatory, global labour market are well enough realised and mostly everyone understands that the All Blacks can’t survive financially on the hard toil of five million Kiwis alone.

But nor can those five million Kiwis be left to feel like they are holding the thin end of the wedge - their loyalty taken for granted and their access to their team diminished.