Cameron McMillan and Christopher Reive speak to Ryan Bridge about the new format of the Super Rugby Competition, Ryan Fox at the PGA and Warriors news. Video / Herald NOW
THREE KEY FACTS
Super Rugby Pacific struggles financially despite delivering exciting matches and reducing travel costs.
Clubs face significant financial challenges, with some, like the Hurricanes and Brumbies, experiencing substantial losses.
The league prioritises commercial needs over high-performance goals, leading to complex play-off formats.
It’s easy to understand why there are predators circling professional club rugby, dreaming up big plans to build breakaway competitions and put that level of the game on the sort of firm financial footing it so far hasn’t been able to find anywhere other than in Japan.
Whatever problems international rugby has had balancing the books, they pale in comparison with the difficulties experienced in trying to make professional club competitions stack up financially and discover a sustainable investment formula.
The problem is as acute in the Southern Hemisphere as it is in the North. For all that, Super Rugby Pacific has delivered an endless stream of rollicking, grip-your-seat matches from February through to early June – and for all that, it has tightened the collective belt by reducing its geographic footprint to lower the associated travel costs – it remains a competition that can’t make ends meet.
Teams get by and survive in Super Rugby Pacific. Rarely does any side finish a season with a heap of cash in the bank, and a good year is universally considered to be one in which the club breaks even.
After almost 30 years of professionalism, the sad truth is that Super Rugby – like mostly every other club competition in the world – can’t crack the code on how to become financially sustainable.
Taking a deep dive into the balance sheets of the 11 clubs would not make for optimistic reading. The sea of red would be overwhelming.
The Hurricanes, who may well be crowned champions, have lost $2.1m over the past two years and are trying to raise another $1m from a share offering.
Peter Umaga-Jensen of the Hurricanes runs in to score a try against Moana Pasifika. Photo / Photosport
They are far from alone in being financially troubled, however, and it’s likely that Moana Pasifika will be carrying a level of operational deficit, as will the Highlanders.
Across the Ditch in Australia, it is equally challenged, with the Brumbies having been effectively bailed out with a $1m loan from Rugby Australia last year.
It’s a decidedly odd and juxtaposed scenario where the rugby goes boom but the clubs go bust. It’s this which lies at the heart of the introduction of what many have found a difficult to understand play-off format where there will be three games this weekend and a lucky loser.
The new system that has been introduced (it isn’t as complex or as bemusing as some fans have said and perhaps the confusion says more about them than it does the format), is underpinned by the perennial truism that gate revenue is the single-most significant source of income for all teams.
The coaching staff at the Chiefs and Crusaders, having respectively finished the round-robin first and second, would undoubtedly have preferred to have had this weekend off.
A week of lower intensity training and rest and recovery for the players would be their reward for finishing as high as they did.
But their respective executive staff want the team on the park so that they can put bums on seats and make money, because the accounts will look a lot better if they host at least two, but preferably three home playoff games.
And here lies the dichotomy from which Super Rugby can’t escape – it constantly has to make decisions that ultimately place commercial imperatives ahead of high-performance desires and then try to sell imperfect scenarios to fans.
The competition can never quite find that sweet spot where financial, high-performance and fans’ needs all converge at their apex, to produce simple, integral play-off structures that make sense to the fans, appease coaching staff and don’t prove to be financially punitive to the most successful teams.
Something always has to be compromised, and this is why there are predators circling – the likes of former England player Mike Tindall and his consortium trying to launch the breakaway R360 club competition.
Blues fans show their colours at Eden Park. Photo / SmartFrame
The R360 is fanciful and ambitious, but even if it were to fail there will be other investors in time proposing alternative competitions because like everyone else, they can see the vulnerability within professional rugby and its colossal potential.
Someone or some consortium of investors will crack the code on how to make professional club rugby sustainable, appealing and non-conflicting with the international game, unless the current cohort of administrators and executives can get there first.
And this really is the biggest question looming for rugby in the Southern Hemisphere: can New Zealand and Australia, whose respective national bodies are both losing cash, rescind more control and financial autonomy and independence to Super Rugby Pacific’s joint venture commission, to shape and determine its own future?
The two national bodies continue to see Super Rugby Pacific almost exclusively as a means to produce players for their respective national teams rather than as a competitive and potentially lucrative and valuable entity within itself. As a result, they continue to hold control over the funding mechanisms and all major decisions.
Maybe that element of control needs to be lessened if Super Rugby is to thrive rather than survive.
