OPINION:
Super Rugby has been a victim of hubris, greed and internecine politics, and with the mixed picture emerging around this year’s audience numbers, so too is it a victim of New Zealand’s chronic failure to modernise the live experience of being at games.
This failure extends to a lack of investment in infrastructure, a refusal to see fans as anything other than cash cows to be milked and an archaic belief that the experience should only cater for the knuckle-dragging, traditional Kiwi male.
Sooner or later, someone will realise that people don’t go to Super Rugby games because they think the competition is rubbish, but because the experience of being at the stadium is.
There were flawed logic claims midway through the tournament that the thousands of empty seats at most games were exclusively the result of Super Rugby’s perennial mismatches, confusing rules and endless driving mauls.
But the thousands of empty seats are not illustrative of a dying sport, but of one being hurt by its decision to put all its eggs in the broadcast basket.
Super Rugby Pacific saw uplifts in its TV audience this year, suggesting that the product appeals to fans, but that the idea of watching at the stadium doesn’t.
Rugby is paying a price for handing so much control to the execs of TV-land who have signed the giant cheques on which the sport has become so reliant.
Everything host broadcaster Sky TV has ever wanted it’s been able to extract, and while rugby bosses are at pains to stress that they have failed to put the fan at the forefront of their decision-making in recent years, that’s not true.
The living room fan has had everything they could possibly have desired: every game live, mostly at times that work for them and with clever hardware that can record what they miss.
The electronics industry has done its bit to enhance the experience by bringing the price of high-tech TVs down to be comparable with a season ticket and Sky has pitched in by (finally) embracing streaming so all anyone needs to bring rugby into their homes is a good wi-fi package.
How much better off the living room fan is now compared with 30 years ago is almost too hard to comprehend.
Back in the early 1990s, TVNZ had one live NPC game on a Sunday and so the shift from analogue to satellite to digital has revolutionised the broadcast experience.
It has also radically transformed NZR’s balance sheet as putting the living room fan front and centre of their thinking has been lucrative for the national body – it nets them $100m a year from Sky, which having been the content rights owner of all rugby since 1996, has pumped more than $1bn into the professional game.
But while the living room fan now enjoys a modern rugby experience, a day at the stadium in 2023 looks much the same as it did in 1993.
Fans are served the same old tired formula of overpriced beer, seats in the rain, crap food, bad music pumped into every stoppage and a half-witted stadium announcer screaming at them to have a good time.
NZR’s head of professional rugby Chris Lendrum said this week that it is a worldwide battle for sporting codes to get fans into stadiums.
But the growth in attendance numbers out of the English Premiership, the NFL, AFL and even the NRL, where there has been sustained investment in facilities and the fan experience, suggest that is simply not true.
The situation in Super Rugby is not part of a wider sporting malaise, but a specific, localised problem.
In the professional age NZR has had no financial need to care about the stadium experience.
The big money comes from its broadcast contract, and unlike its Six Nations rivals, it hasn’t made a capital investment in its own stadium and burdened itself with debt.
While lowering stadium debt has been a perennial worry for the likes of England, Ireland and Scotland, it has had the upside of acutely focusing minds on the need to fill seats and keep people coming back.
NZR, on the other hand, has had the luxury of knowing that it barely needs to market All Blacks tests or do more than the bare minimum to jazz up the live experience, because people have unconditional love for the team and are driven to games by loyalty and perhaps even a sense of duty.
Stadium fans know they are not the priority but each year they come in their droves and NZR banks about $25m of ticket revenue.
Super Rugby doesn’t have the same indefatigable pull as the national team, and nor does it have any voice at the broadcast negotiation table to fight for kick-off times that work for them.
Teams barely have a say in the competition scheduling – they just wait to be told who they are playing when and where, which leaves them with little to no independent means to redefine the stadium experience.
The clubs, who derive anything up to 40 per cent of their revenue from ticket sales, are victims of NZR’s control-all business model and the prioritisation of broadcast needs.
But while NZR is guilty of neglecting the stadium fan, it is by no means singly culpable in this regard.
It has been aided and abetted by civic leaders who have no vision and no idea how to build a suite of fit-for purpose stadiums that cater for different sporting and entertainment needs.
This problem is most acute in Auckland and to a lesser extent Wellington, where the Blues and Hurricanes rattle around in all-purpose stadiums that are far too big and wrongly shaped for their needs.
If Auckland had a boutique, fully covered, rectangular stadium serviced by strong public transport links, people might start drifting back to Blues games.
A night at the footy might grab the imagination – feel less of an ordeal and more rewarding.
It would help, too, if there was some sense that not everyone in the stadium was out to fleece them.
That’s the bit that really grates with fans – that stadiums work on the same principle as airports that its users are captive and therefore can be exploited without fear of recrimination.
Airports can get away with this because demand for travel is insatiable, but people will put up with a lot to make it to Australia – more certainly than they will to keep watching the Blues.
Stadium fans need to feel wanted and cared for and that’s going to take investment in infrastructure and the implementation of a new plan that says rugby can win a major broadcast contract and have full stadiums.
There is no need to choose between the two.
Where will Saturday's final eventually rank amongst the annals?