I can’t escape the irony in the way professional rugby union is set up in the Australasia.
Those who run the game are generally successful businessmen, captains of industry and finance, disciples of free market capitalism and entrepreneurship, and probably, in the vast majority of cases, Liberal Party (or National Party in New Zealand) supporters.
Most of them have had successful business careers in the private sector. These men are the rugby elite, a clique that includes Bill Pulver, Steve Tew, the board members of the Australian and New Zealand Rugby Unions, the CEOs of the various franchises, and sundry other members of the Blazer Brigade who tag along and exert influence from time to time.
The irony is that this rugby elite – who are, in the main, believers in free market capitalism and entrepreneurialism, and who have themselves lived according to and benefitted from the fruits of that ideology – continue to insist rugby union in this part of the world should be organised like a 1950s Siberian goat farm, whereby SANZAR and the unions control and own everything.
This control over the players, coaches and teams is the antithesis of the free market spirit these people live and die by, and is all-ecompassing. Furthermore, it is holding rugby union back behind football, AFL and NRL in this part of the world, and it has reached ridiculous levels.
Criticism of referees by players and coaches is strictly curbed in a shocking limitation on freedom of speech. I once read somewhere that SANZAR rugby union referees have more protection from verbal abuse and criticism than Pope Francis I.
Players cannot play outside of their home country if they want to play for the national team. This is a draconian measure that significantly limits a player’s ability to earn income over the span of their career, and amounts to corporate blackmail.
The five New Zealand franchises can’t even pick their own kit supplier, or main sponsor. And, if you want to invest money in a franchise, you have to do so ‘for the love of the game’ as you won’t get any return on your investment because the unions will cream the profits and control everything from marketing (not that there is any), player rosters, branding, jersey design, and salaries.
The Australian and New Zealand unions exert this control because they are paranoid about the effects private ownership will have on their respective national squads.
You can’t argue that since the game went professional, the Wallabies and All Blacks have enjoyed excellent success, both on and off the field. But any monkey could make money off the All Blacks brand, and there’s an argument that, as one of the best international sports teams in history, it should be making much more.
With the establishment of the NRC, the Australian Rugby Union has missed a golden opportunity to create a well-funded and well-promoted league that will seriously compete with the other codes. Super Rugby can’t even do it at the moment, so why does anyone think the NRC will? I’ve never seen so much fanfare for a competition where only one game a week is going to be shown live on television.
Apologists will say “You have to start somewhere”, but if you’re going to start with that, you may as well not start at all.
And here’s the point. The Bill Pulvers of this world will say “Rugby has to live within its means”, and “new competitions need to be financially sustainable”. But if you are going to limit investment and control of the NRC to a Soviet-style entity like the ARU, only a pitiful amount of money is going to be available.
The means within which the NRC has to live will be ridiculously small. In the battle for the hearts and minds of the Australian people, rugby union brings a peashooter to the table.
And here’s what I can’t understand. The ARU, NZRU and SANZAR boards, the boards of the Super 12 franchises and the top clubs, as well as other upper-level management in the rugby elite are stacked with people who’ve made names and a good standard of living for themselves by adhering the pursuit of commercial success.
They know private investment is the most efficient way to allocate resources and make progress in a highly competitive world. They know they don’t have enough money to compete with the NRL or AFL. They know de-regulated private investment will unlock millions of dollars in desperately needed funding for the NRC.
They vote for political parties who push this ‘pro-business’ or ‘free enterprise’ agenda. Yet these same people refuse to let the control of rugby out of their hands.
When it comes to rugby, somehow those dearly-held laissez-faire principles go out the window, and they want to control everything.
The NRC should have been a club-based competition where a group of existing (and predominantly Sydney-based) clubs were privatised and bought by rich entrepreneurs; similar in structure and organisation to the NRL or Top 14 in France. Such a competition would give rugby union the best chance possible in the Australian market, because it would have unlocked millions of dollars in private investment funding.
If the ARU board was running, say, a private software company that had the next best thing to compete with Microsoft or Apple, but just didn’t have enough money to take the product to the next level, their collective expertise would tell them they would need to either borrow money, or seek private investment.
In the sports context, borrowing money is out of the question, but why should private investment be, especially when all your training, instincts and experience supports it?
As rugby fans, we tend to look in awe at the size and scale of the English Premier League, or Indian Premier League or National Football League. We wonder how localised competitions like the AFL, Top 14 and NRL can unlock billions of dollars in TV money between them.
The short answer is that these competitions are successful because they are not run by the ARU, New Zealand Rugby Union or SANZAR. They are not shackled by an unhealthy control of all things commercial, or by the conflict of interest created by focusing on the national team.
Investment in these competitions and clubs is open and free. Billionaire entrepreneurs are welcomed, not shunned. This is what the NRC needed. It’s what Super Rugby needs.
This is not a rugby revolution, but simply an application of the very same principles the elites who run rugby have already used to achieve success in their own private and professional lives.
Wal
Roar Guru
Everyone seems to look at this completely the wrong way, the NZRU are a company who own a product and its rights, NZ Rugby. Like any company they have assets, brands, and employees. Divide clubs players etc however you will, the premise is still the same. Like any global business they have local (Rugby League) and international (SARU, ARU) competitors. Who like Samsung chips to Apple are also business partners. NZRU currently owns majority share of the SR franchisees so therefore funds and administers then as such - A Corporate comparison would be Goolge's ownership of Motorola. The company is run as a separate entity but Google wouldn't happy send staff off to work for Apple and accept them back for conferences. This also applies to the argument of sponsors, Google will not be putting iOS on any Motorola handsets but will allow some freedom of design. Likewise as the major owner the NZRU are free to dictate the major sponsor but allow some freedoms around 2nd and 3rd tier agreements. This is a truly capitalist venture it just happens to be a different model to say England where they have sold off some of their product to clubs and expect it back whenever they want. That to me is the far more communist setup. The club pays for the player but the country retains control
BrisbaneBhoy
Guest
How?
Westie
Guest
And there's oz rugbys problem right there.
Michael Lee
Roar Rookie
So you have changed your argument from the popularity of Field Hockey in Australia to our success in it and global player numbers. Just admit it was a stupid comparison and move on Johnno. I am sensing some stubbornness though so perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree on this.... and most other things apparently.
RobC
Roar Guru
Like in any economy, Billionaires are made once the conditions are right for them. No right minded billionaire will enter a market: -with rules (or conditions) are stacked against them - they cannot change the rules There is already a billionaire who has done that in Rugby. His name is Rupert Murdoch.
Sandgroper
Guest
For an Irish flagged Kiwi you seem to have a remarkable understanding of the Australian Rugby scene.
Tah-Man
Roar Pro
Well I guess we'll agree to disagree. I just think that sports like handball and vollyball can't be compared with even small semi-pro Union comps here. Sure they're played by people, but they're not big in any real sense. I also think you're forgetting another fairly large factor: market size. Europe is the single wealthiest market on the planet, so it has a lot more sponsorship dollars to go around. In Aus the pie is much smaller, and yet we have four fully professional football codes. In any case, this wasn't even my original point. Mostly my point was that the author of the article has his head on backwards if he thinks that a touch of "socialism" is bad for a sport, because the NFL is the best run and most valuable football comp on the planet and it is pretty 'socialist' by the metric he presents here.
Rugby stu
Guest
I would say a lot of this comes from the amateur roots of the game which still linger in much of its cherished values of the gameand although conservative its more of old fashioned Tory conservatism that rugby has always been associated not necessarily the ambitious, free-wheeling, free-marketeering conservatism the writer is referring to.
nickoldschool
Roar Guru
Disagree with your analysis Daniel. most europeans love and follow more than 1 sport. Sure football is the undisputed n1 but other sports are big too. I would say basket is bigger in France, Spain, Greece, Croatia and other countries than soccer is in Oz. Please don't compare the status of volley ball or hand here in oz to what it is in Europe (Germany, Spain, France, Denmark). Sure there are differences: here you have 2 big codes, afl and nrl, then 2 smaller ones, football and rugby. In most euro countries you have 1 massive code then 4-5 pretty decent ones which are bigger than rugby and football in Oz. So ye, there is much more competition for money/sponsors over there. that's what I think anyway.
Tah-Man
Roar Pro
True, and college football games actually also have higher average attendance than the EPL...
Rugby stu
Guest
hear hear
Tigranes
Guest
Lazza in the us, the equivalent would be that fans of these small clubs support college and high school sides If they love their team and the r sport, I'm sure they would stick with their side even if they didn't have the opportunity to lose to Manchester United
Tigranes
Guest
Lazza One of the beaut things about the NFL is that it is competitive throughout the whole season...the epl can be extremely long if you are a crystal palace or West Bromwich Albion fan..
In Brief
Guest
Correct, another article of pure fantasy which all the bandwagon gleefully accept. The idea that rugby in Australia can shunt the Wallabies to one side, and thrive on private ownership is pure drivel. The very concept of the NRC is based around financial viability, and yet this concept is rubbished by the author despite his pretence to support the free market. Twilight zone stuff.
In Brief
Guest
Mate, I used to work with Jamie Dwyer, and believe me hockey has a very low profile in Australia. No one knew who he was and he had to move the Holland to make a living and get any recognition. The field hockey comparison is so wrong it's not funny.
In Brief
Guest
As working class rugger posted yesterday even the Shute Shield alone got 27k in NSW/ QLD on the weekend which wasn't far behind the nationally broadcast Wanderers match. Meanwhile the Super rugby games got higher rating than the A-League. So your assumption about the relative popularity of rugby union are pure fantasy.
Tah-Man
Roar Pro
All those sports are professional or semi-pro here mate, and none of those sports you mentioned are football codes, so it just doesn't compare. The difference is also the scale. In Europe, it's soccer, then daylight and everything else. There's nothing else in Europe that is big like soccer. Rugby is pretty big in parts, but that's it really. The reality of their market is therefore drastically different than ours, and there's simply not the diverse range in football tastes competing for similar audiences. Sponsors on the back of tour de France bikes notwithstanding, there just isn't the same competition for the same segment of the market.
chris
Guest
SH can get the supporters back by first letting SA going along and back with the Currie Cup and targeting Black South Africans alongside Kenya etc. NZ and Oz can do it by having a Trans Tasman comp involving the Kiwi NPC/ITM teams and the Aussie S15 teams and forget about the stupid NRC.
Magic Sponge
Guest
The ARU is that mad oligopolie or monopoly that has squeezed the comp to death thru massive administration costs.
warastew
Guest
I agree with your sentiment. Right now I think I'd get as much enjoyment from a tahs Super Title as I would from a wallabies world cup title!