NZ Rugby was warned about the risks of partnering with billionaires like Ratcliffe and Mohed Altrad.
The situation highlights the dangers of prioritising lucrative deals over maintaining the All Blacks’ brand values.
Some partnerships just scream out that they are a bad idea and almost certainly going to end in an acrimonious bust-up where the collateral damage is extensive.
Who, for instance, can’t see that Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s bromance isn’t going to spectacularly explode and leave Teslain a torrid world where its largest shareholder is battling with a President trying to plunge the world into a trade war.
Much closer to home there has already been a spectacular example of a bad-idea partnership somewhat predictably blowing up, and that’s the case of Britain’s fossil fuel magnate, Sir Jim Ratcliffe falling out with New Zealand Rugby.
Ratcliffe, who might now be down to his last $30 billion amid the European Union’s increased attempts to de-industrialise the continent, has pulled his Ineos sponsorship from the All Blacks three years early.
NZR has lodged a case at the High Court in Wellington and expressed all the requisite shock-horror to get across both its surprise and outrage at such a cad-like move, but it’s hard to muster much sympathy given how many analysts and commentators warned the national body just how much of a risk it was taking to sign the sponsorship in the first place.
The danger for NZR wasn’t just the reputational risk it was taking in associating the All Blacks with a petrochemical company at a time when climate activists have never been so powerful and the South Seas in such global warming-related peril.
It was making itself vulnerable to the decision-making vagaries that come from being in a transactional relationship with a billionaire.
Ineos has only the veneer of being a conglomerate answerable to shareholders and governed by a board of directors, as Ratcliffe, it would seem, can act unilaterally and like so many of his billionaire brethren, doesn’t appear to have much respect for contract law or fear the consequences of breaking agreements.
There can’t be much confidence that NZR’s other billionaire investor, Mohed Altrad whose name is on the front of the All Blacks kit, has any greater respect for conventional business practice as he’s currently appealing an 18-month suspended sentence for corruption relating to his acquisition of the naming rights to the front of the French team’s jerseys.
Mohed Altrad. Photo / Getty Images
NZR, having jumped into partnerships worth a combined $60 million, always seemed a touch naive to believe that the courts would be able to protect its investments from the mood swings and mind changes of two supremely rich men.
Its confidence that the judicial system would have its back should Sir Jim or Altrad throw the ultimate tantrum and cut their funding, has long felt misplaced.
There is a fundamental rule of life that billionaires, no matter the conflict, always win and with NZR now in the midst of what could be a costly legal battle to force Ineos into making some kind of compensation payment, the mistake of not respecting who is paying and only asking how much, has to be recognised.
This is a supremely pertinent teaching moment as rugby has big holes opening in its accounts once again, just, as it would seem, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund’s appetite for sports acquisitions has become insatiable.
The Saudis have been on a spectacular shopping spree in the last few years – acquiring golf, tennis, boxing and football – and as nothing appears to be off limits, speculation is growing that it’s only a matter of time before some kind of proposition is put in front of rugby bosses.
The Qatar sovereign wealth fund has already made its play, making a bid to host the final weekend of the soon-to-launch Nations Cup in 2030.
As the game’s premium brand, the All Blacks will be the property at the core of any investment thesis to capture rugby, and while a partnership between NZR and the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund would no doubt be spectacularly lucrative, it would present all the same reputational dangers and contractual vulnerabilities as being in bed with two billionaires.
If, and presumably when, some kind of offer is made to NZR, it would be a catastrophically bad idea for the national body to convince itself that it has no choice but to say yes.
Rugby’s whole schtick is that it’s a values sport, a champion of diversity and egalitarian to its core.
It’s still selling itself as a sport rooted in the Victorian ethos of fair play and respect – something that will become impossible to do if it aligns itself with a political regime that it couldn’t possibly be said shares the same beliefs.
What rugby decision-makers in New Zealand should consider, is the power of saying no to the Saudis – to cite the lessons learned in the Ineos debacle and be brave enough to hunt for the right partners, not the richest.
If the All Blacks are to maintain their brand value and more importantly, be considered to have brand values, they can’t keep being forced into partnerships that are so predictably going to end badly.
