The Crusaders celebrate with the Super Rugby Pacific trophy. Photo / Photosport
The Crusaders celebrate with the Super Rugby Pacific trophy. Photo / Photosport
OPINION
For so long, the narrative around Super Rugby has been focused on what’s broken that it may have prevented many from seeing how much has been fixed and how many mini-victories have been secured in the last year.
To be fair to the doubters and pessimists, there are,seemingly, good reasons to be fearful about the long-term future of Super Rugby Pacific.
The Rebels have gone into administration and may not exist beyond this year, Moana Pasifika have not yet built a following to sustain their existence and Australia’s lack of player depth continues to be a sort of buzzing fridge problem.
But against that, there have been a few key developments that may have tipped the balance in favour of being relatively optimistic that Super Rugby Pacific is grinding its way back towards its glory days of yesteryear and that this season should kick off amid heightened anticipation that the Southern Hemisphere may be rebuilding something that once again becomes the envy of the North.
The arrival of former Wallaby Phil Waugh as chief executive of Rugby Australia has given the game across the Tasman a pragmatic leader who is not wed to any preconceived notions of his predecessors.
Waugh has stepped in to bail out the Rebels for this year but has made it clear that he doesn’t support Australia running five Super Rugby teams at any cost.
The Rebels have struggled with financial problems for years. Photo / Photosport
The financial collapse of the Rebels may, therefore, prove to be the catalyst to Australia cutting its representation and in doing so, immediately making their surviving teams more competitive.
This is neither abstract nor indirect and shows the value of having a dedicated body set up to operate in the best interests of Super Rugby without having to pander to the ambitions of national bodies.
The world’s most successful competitions all offer an element of FTA access, but for the last two decades New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has pursued a dangerous path of putting everything behind a paywall to maximise the sale price of its broadcast rights.
Dangerous because it has proven hard for sports to win new followers if they don’t showcase what they have to a wider, not yet committed audience.
Accessible live content is a great tool to convert light users to heavy users and despite the overwhelming evidence that subscription broadcast rights-holders and competition owners benefit from FTA components being available, NZR has not been inclined to pressure Sky into making some Super Rugby content freely available.
It has never been persuaded that the long-term future of Super Rugby is more important than the upfront, short-term financial windfall that comes from selling all its content to a pay TV operator.
But once the commission was set up late last year, it identified immediately that Super Rugby Pacific needs more fans and invested followers and there is no better way to achieve this than by having FTA exposure.
Barely two months after its first board meeting, the commission signed off on a deal that will see 19 games available FTA and in doing so, greatly advanced the credibility of its stated mission to put fans at the heart of every decision it makes.
It does, though, have to be asked why Sky, after years of resistance, suddenly agreed to give Super Rugby the free to air presence it so desperately needs in its quest to rebuild its brand and reestablish itself as the world’s premier club competition.
And the answer is that it presumably felt it was facing something of a perfect storm.
Having seen Spark Sport collapse in late 2022, Sky likely feels the inflationary pressures it felt in securing broadcast rights will now rescind and that it has some non-competitive breathing space in which to build empirical data to determine what the true cause and effect is of offering 19 FTA Super Rugby Pacific games.
It’s also on a stated mission to build advertising revenue and FTA games are prime and additional inventory.
But perhaps most telling would have been the sense of inevitability that rugby in New Zealand has no option but to recalibrate its broadcast strategy and include an FTA component in all future deals.
Sky has presumably gazed into the crystal ball and decided that it needs to demonstrate its ability to be a willing and accommodating FTA partner now, to ward off the possibility of TVNZ entering the rugby fray and building on its fledgling position as a serious sports streaming service.
