The great unknown: Will Super Rugby Pacific give the game the stability it craves?

Sorry Brett, for the late response. "Laying out the product" would be "we think this competition is worth $X because these are the expected viewer numbers, they represent this sort of market segment etc, and here is our detailed plan around how we will increase the viewer numbers over the life of the contract." That is a thousand miles from "pick a competition and tell us what you think it is worth". Castle was just desperate because RA had overseen the implosion of the value of its offerings since 2015 while needing an increase in revenue to cover its blown out costs. I agree on the collaboration issue. As I have repeatedly written recently the broadcaster and RA are joined at the hip. TV numbers will drive match attendance and match attendance will drive TV viewers. I have seen nothing in memory indicating that either are working together to advance their mutual goals. That will be driven by the original negotiations and clearly RA are not smart administrators identifying the value and how it can be increased. AFL and NRL are much more in sync with the broadcasters' needs and how their game serves them. In soccer there is some sort of collaborative benchmarking where the value of the broadcast contract increases. There is huge upside in revenues just by doing the basics better.

Let’s see them contract some of our brighter prospects beyond 2023. That will give us some clues as to competence and whether we’ll be able to compete with the NZ Super teams.

As opposed to: 1. The system is broken 2. So let's lock it in 3. Let's shoot all the livestock, burn all the structures, hand the land over to the neighbours and go live out of our cars hoping one day everything will all turn 'round? No assumptions in that, just basically giving up because they've already blown it. Idealistic perhaps, but before that I'd like for them to at least strip back the curtain and honestly assess what value they got for the things they spent the money on, relative to what they could/should have spent the money on. Especially anywhere where it went on overheads rather than more/better product, smarter expansion, or meaningful player development to produce better results. They might stumble on a way forward, but as a minimum they might also avoid repeating all those same mistakes in wherever they move next. And if that now amounts to unavoidably giving up control of their own destiny and revenue generation within Australian rugby, which is what losing control of the Test players amounts to (just ask the Pacific Islands), that they honestly acknowledge how it came to that and what the future realistically holds for the sport. Not BS excuses, or fanciful wishes/dreams, or even lucky pills that may or not eventuate due to things outside their control, but genuine thought through and measurable strategies that openly admit to the associated risks and threats to success with associated contingencies to address them. But then maybe it is me that is being fanciful. Easier just to let them flush five times and then accept whatever is left stuck to the walls while they all pay themselves and their staff of hundreds bonuses for making such a clean job of it.

What’s the alternative? 1. That the system is fine. 2. That all RA management of the last couple of decades has been hopeless. 3. This lot are about to come good. A few massive assumptions in that scenario.

Wish I had your confidence that those things occurred despite completely reproachless management by RA, that every cent they spent was more meaningfully applied to the goal of a successful sport than the things that are missing. If you honestly believe they've been flawless and the current situation was utterly unavoidable, then sure, perhaps they should be thinking about applying their peerless management to a replacement. If not, then trusting that they can even identify let alone manage 'better' may be far worse than trying to correct their shortcomings and seeing whether the current situation is retrievable. Especially as changing may irreversibly lock in both past and future failings. Like someone selling the family home, before even considering an examination of why they're consistently failing to manage a budget.

We've racked up 65M in debt, only managed to beat Kiwi Super sides about 10 times in the last 85 games going back to 2015. Have watched Super rugby crowds for our biggest sides go from 20K plus to less than 4K. Are seeing ever younger Wallabies and potential Wallabies head off shore and have dropped to an average of 7th in the world. Our Super sides are getting comparatively weaker, so what are we going to win in this new competion? Last year was 1:12.5 how low can we go? Meanwhile we saw attendance and viewer numbers rise for Super AU, then immediately fall away again for TT. Pretty sure Sir Humphrey would consider sticking with the multi-decade evidence of a failing competition 'brave'.

Fardy is an interesting example. Almost the poster child for a player who needed to get overseas early rather than spinning his wheels for five years in Australia. Who knows the career he might have had. Then again, at 24 he was a part time ARC player and unwanted at SR level. That is why he took not much in Japan, but in a world where the domestic comp was the ARC stripped of all its best players, he would probably have been sufficient for a perfectly adequate salary per your breakdown. If he was making that sort of money, would he have risked going overseas at all? He might well have played out his career as one of many average players in a mediocre competition, retiring unregarded with a million or so of RA's dollars and never having realised the player he could have been. Surprised at your last point though. You are saying that if it were in fact not SR but other areas wasting the money and the spend on that comp was in fact sustainable, you would still swap to a domestic comp at significantly lower standard, hope that overseas clubs would develop players to international standard, hope that the best wouldn't be poached by European countries, hope that the leftovers would agree to play for Australia even though it would diminish their value to their employers, and hope that the team that resulted would still be successful and make as much money for Australian rugby as now? What Sir Humphrey would call a very brave decision with pretty much the whole game on the line! :laughing:

Fardy was 28 when he made his Super debut. Before that he’d had three years at Kamaishi Seawaves where he won’t have been on much. what value are you seeing in sending all your Test players and Test hopefuls away and just playing a bit of local NRC ? A comp with uncertainty of outcome, increased revenue opportunity, something that can hopefully reverse the falling trend of viewing and attendance that Super has been delivering for the last couple of decades.

If you go the first path, $80k spent year after year on a players of no interest to the overseas development paths is just dead money. The last thing you'd want is the comp being clogged with journeymen that aren't ever going to be anything more, it just denies others an opportunity. There isn't that luxury when the strategy is to throw a lot of bread on the water in the hope that just some of it might come back, which is where you are when you accept that OS is developing Australia's Test players. If a Scott Fardy is so hard up as to settle for that sort of money, make him a coach. But what I'm talking about is a 24 year old winger who has never attracted any attention from the seriously professional competitions...is he seriously going to suddenly become a break-out success, or is he just blocking the pathway of an 18 year old who might? If the savings are available elsewhere and the spend is therefore sustainable, what value are you seeing in sending all your Test players and Test hopefuls away and just playing a bit of local NRC? If what you have works once the waste of resources is fixed, taking a big leap towards the Samoan model seems a huge risk with a pretty indeterminate pay-off.

starting them on the path to international competition, focus on professional development of U18/20 where the contracts that could be offered might actually be competitive with the other sports This is my thinking except I don't put an age limit on it. Get the guys into their professional development - most of them will be 18-20 but by the same token don't turn Scott Fardy away when he rocks up. Note - the estimate from NB was 50-100K EUR so could be as little as 80K AUD. If the number is such that we have an 80K flat contract for 280 players in an 8 team comp - so be it. Total salaries of 22.4m If your argument the other day that salaries aren't the issue and savings can be found elsewhere then you can have an 8 team comp with a salary distribution of: 45 players @ 40K (minimum wage) 45 players @ 60K 45 players @ 80K 45 players @ 100K 100 players @ 174K Total bill 30M - you were arguing that total salary amount was fine. Get a very good 8 team comp at those wages. Opportunity to cap the best of these guys from Oz and wish them well as they move offshore for higher salaries

JP is one, Joey Walton is the one who is top of mind. It is also a problem in NRL with players going into the 20s from school, and then into senior grade. There may not be much you can do about it either, the resilience of cartilage and bone may be an individual by individual factor. We used to say you can't put in, what God left out.

Sounds religious Brett, you may have been elevated.

Maybe that is what they are doing. But that is like Castle asking the broadcasters what they would like to broadcast, and how much they will pay. The RA Board should be the experts on rugby and the market for rugby in Australia. If they do not know, then who does? My biggest fear is that we come up with the best possible plan and it is rejected. What then? They will do what the English clubs did, and massively backload the deal so that a higher revenue share (increase 27% to 45% when a revenue threshold is reached) is paid to PE down the track. That might be OK in a competition, you just lower the player costs in that competition. I am very sceptical about that where we are talking about funding the whole sport in the entire country.

But that doesn't address your point that the current spend is unsustainable. So assuming that doing away with the Wallabies top-ups and retaining the SR spend would be enough to stave off bankruptcy, that would make it about $22M across 8 teams => $2.75M per team, across 35 players/team => average of ~$78k/yr. That compares to the current minimum starting contract under the last CBA of $75k, a starting salary in the NRL of $105k/yr, and that $160k/yr you note overseas clubs are prepared to offer players on the fringe of SR, let alone the next tier down from the Wallabies. Which is why I say it will become a waste of time, as it will neither be enough attract/retain young talent on entry money nor be enough to prevent the 50+ players below the Wallabies from also leaving (particularly when it becomes apparent no-one will make the Wallabies direct from the domestic comp). Once you accept that all the Wallabies will be selected from overseas, the best use of the money becomes getting as many of your best players into OS programs as early as possible. No point waiting until they are in their twenties before starting them on the path to international competition, focus on professional development of U18/20 where the contracts that could be offered might actually be competitive with the other sports. That might make U20s the defacto domestic comp, but the goal would be to get as many as possible overseas as soon as possible, to maximise the pool of players that might eventually consider playing for Australia. Anything else is just trying to be half-pregnant, as Australian players in a domestic comp gradually become too old and under-skilled to attract attention from the better rugby nations and the Wallabies (and cashflow) decline further.

It is the long hard graft of understanding the audience and marketing the game. The cost is in inspiration and perspiration, not throwing money at it. We have had 27 years where the solution is more money. 27 years of asking the wrong questions?

The two companies/websites are completely unrelated. A ‘wiki’ is a generic IT term for a website or database worked on by a group. Anyway, I know this isn’t central to what you guys are talking about so will step back out.

Yep but still involved in the overall concept. Not so much now with both the Yanks & Poms crucifying him.

Assange founded Wikileaks not Wikipedia