DMac at the Rebels and a team in Hawaii - draft and expansion fuel Hamish's grand vision for Super Rugby

You're a bit confused on a few things Brendan. NZ isn't worth big bucks to Amazon, we are seriously tiny so they don't have a real presence here. Whoever owns the worldwide rights will probably sell to Sky. The TV rights that NZR sells Sky only loses three matches anyway - it keeps the RC and Super Rugby which are the big prizes. How three matches becomes this chicken licken disaster really doesn't make sense. Which matches are we losing a match fee for? I'm afraid the rest is very much a part of your vivid imagination. UK media has reported what the 6n and their CVC partners want and it is nothing like what you suggest. They very much want to leave the 6n as it is and they want to play the big SH teams in November as part of a proper comp with a final. Now that 6n is secure from relegation which was the stumbling block they have what they want.

NZR are in a difficult situation if WR sell July and November windows as one block Amazon will buy it and show NZ games on Prime in NZ. As good as they are as a product Sky deal would then only cover women's, XV, non test windows and Super rugby. WR already own the rights to women's XV and Pacific 4 so what does that leave the Sky NZR deal. NZ believe they will get more money being able to play games they organise but if you are playing every team every year then that becomes a problem to get extra games. NZR would also lose their match fee and it would be replaced by a participation fee that Scotland and Italy and Oz would also get. NZ would lose more money than anyone else by losing the fee to get more money. Last time a deal was but on the table WR and NZR said the 6Ns would be mad to turn down but CVC got them the same gain in income without having to concede control over their test. The EPCR will determine if the Nations league happens or if the 6Ns becomes the 8Ns. If the Black Lions are added into the Challenge Cup take it as a pointer that the 8Ns is another step closer. For the EPCR group which is 6Ns, PRL, LNR, SA and CVC they can make their own Nations league which the rest of the countries either accept or reject. Rugby Europe may also be made minor partners to also. It seems harsh but think of it this way, Autumn Series can easily be turned into a 4 group 16 team cup with the 7/8 EPCR members plus the best of the rest which EPCR group already own. 2 8N teams play the other two teams top team in each group play semi and final/3rd place, 2nd play for the shield, 3rd for the plate. No nation can say as either they have no tests with the 8Ns or they take what is on offer. Nothing WR can do either as the 8 teams has 22 votes and only need 4 more of which Europe and Romania hold 3. EPCR group will wonder why they should fund 30 million a year to allow Japan and Fiji join the RC when they could fund their own leagues more, fully fund the European Super Cup as the 4th European league and have 16 strong international teams for the same money all closer to home.

I don't see how any of the pro leagues benefit more from this than we do? I get that it's cleaner for them - their comps have different deals whereas we have just one - but surely their Amazon deal is worth more than the July portion of ours. The RC/Bledisloe has both a quality and quantity advantage and covers all four years. Super has a big quantity advantage. So I can't see it being a big percentage off our main deal. Sky needs NZR to thrive and vice versa, it's a very symbiotic relationship. NZR even own 15% of it. Sky is profitable BTW. So I don't see how those nations get a bigger rise than us and only a proportion of it will feed down to the clubs anyway. Also, thy need to pay a premium to get our players to move so their increase needs to be much more than us just to keep still. Whichever way you look at it, overall this will help our player retention.

If the Unions get more the clubs will get more from them too, it's a big hold up as they want to extend the window. The sky deal is the rights to all test rugby. Nations league will be 7 and if backed by CVC will be sold to the highest bidder not Sky automatically.

The Japanese, French and English clubs won't get more though and they are the biggest issue. We probably earn less from July than the others earn from November from Amazon and co plus ticket sales. Team sponsors aren't comp sponsors and it's only three matches of our TV deal.

The point is everyone gets more. NZR are the 3rd richest union. If NZR go from 30m to 50m because of the Nations league teams like Argentina, Italy, Oz, SA, Fiji and Japan go from 10-20 to 50m seeing a bigger jump. Italy have capacity to grow their attendances NZ don't. Not rocket since to work out if Scotland and Italy who are already taking players will be able to take more with even more money. If everyone gets more money wages will go up everywhere which is not what NZR need.

Why mention Italy? Why not mention England and France? Isn't it obvious that we will get more money with the Nations League, not less?

That is what the other top leagues in European soccer thought until Premier league teams started making 100m a year in income from gate receipts and TV wanted to pay more because of the bigger stadia filled with fans. If the Nations league comes in then NZ will be getting the same as Italy from TV and sponsership for July and EOYT games. I'm not saying don't send it to the Regions just be able to add in 10k more seats to stadia. Will the tv and sponsership pay to keep the 60+ players in SR needed to run the ABs and XV/A/Maori squads.

You're thinking tactically not strategically. The big money is in TV and sponsorship, not matchday revenue. Both have increased massively and that's where the big upside is. We'd be foolish to alienate most of the country and take on all that debt.

but can NZR continue to do it if it is costing them millions. If every game was played in Eden Park and could fill it they could keep about 10 extra players at home. Is there any talk of building bigger stadiums on Auckland or Hamilton to at least have two stadiums that can have 50k and have the people within 2 hours to fill them. This isn't a dig just a big concern that NZ not getting 25k for Arg games has to be a worry in terms of funding. Only Italy in the 6Ns would get that for an EOYT when no traveling fans really. There are only a certain number of home games to make money on.

I probably didn't make my point very clearly - we need to spread the games around the country so that people around the country can watch the All Blacks. Personally I think that's the right thing to do to keep the game alive. It would be very difficult to change that after 120 years. Crowds have gone down in Australia because they keep on losing, simple as that.

All that is true but it was also true in 2005 and thats the problem when we talk geography, it hasnt really changed. When Oz could get 30k more in 05 than they did in 2022 there is more to it. Geography has not changed in 25 years other than it is easier to do intercity travel not harder. I would put the drop in Oz attendances down to teams like the Tahs having less which means at test match in Sydney has a much lower base of tickets sold meaning more casual fans need to be found. In 2010 the combined total of the 4 Oz teams attendance was 79k, NZ was 72k which has probably only dropped a little bit. SA was 130k. There is 1.4m people in Auckland which should be more than enough to fill 60k. Hamilton should also have a 50k stadium as its close enough to Auckland. There is over 2m between those too cities and probably close to the Welsh population. Tell cities there is a minium capacity to host AB games in 5 years time and it would quickly get capacity up. If NZR and RA want to put the eggs in test level they are going to have to make hard choices as I am not sure they can move it around and lose atleast 1m per game not played in Sydney or Auckland. The Unions also losing the ticket sales from SR is also causing the test to have to make more. Reason test cricket is unprofitable is not enough people show up. Ashes is profitable because fans show up for it. In the UDA basketball and hockey get less fans so must play more games.

Hi Brendan, thank you for your considered and reasonable response. I think we're getting closer to each other. I would say that the ratios are moving as you suggest in some countries but not to the extent that the priority has moved from international to club or vice versa. I will summarise the past 10-13 years. NZ and Australia have always been heavily test focused and have become more so. South Africa is more club focused but the insistence on workload control shows that tests are still the priority. France has moved slightly towards test in some of the areas mentioned in my just submitted France article e.g. fewer games, tighter national eligibility clauses. England has done similar, also their clubs without sugar daddies are in crisis. Welsh clubs are in real crisis. Scotland only has two. Ireland's clubs have grown, but a big majority of the money is primarily international and all that resting shows that it's not the top priority overall. It's been a long time since Munster or Ulster won the Heineken too. So things have changed, but not drastically away from internationals from a strategic big picture point of view.

Hi Brendan, the big difference between the big European and SH nations is distance. In England just about everyone is within a couple of hours of London by train. With Ireland, Belfast, Galway and Limerick are all within 2.5 hours of Dublin by car. Wales' population is mainly concentrated in a pretty small area in the south and Scotland's in the middle. And the rest of Britain with its massive population is an hour's flight away. So everyone can get to the national stadium with ease and it's acceptable to play all the big games there. At the very least that's five tests a year. It's over 7 hours from Auckland to Wellington, let alone the South Island. Over 9 from Sydney to Brisbane or Melbourne, let alone Perth. South Africa it's even further. And there are no big rugby playing countries nearby. So the games need to be spread around the country. You can't build a mega stadium for a couple of matches a year.

Just on EP is there any plan to build a bigger stadium. Currently Italy is getting a higher average in the 6Ns than NZ can due to capacity. Is there any way that a design for extra temp seating can be added in. Argentina is always played in small stadia so not sure if they could even sell over 25k but surely having SA in a bigger ground is important. Scotland sell about 65k per game for 6/7 games on average which obviously gives them a big step up if they want to target and NZ Scots. It also can't be pleasing to the NZ fans when NZ plays 15 tests but only 6 (maybe 7) in NZ and the rest overseas with more planned overseas. With the Fern they will end up hosting the Pac4 once every 4 years and in theory the Women's XV (not to be confused with the NZ A called the XV) every 6 years. this year they secured the XV but that means for the next two years do they play any games at home.

Sorry I misunderstood what strawman you were referring to. Text rugby does matter but it matters less then it did 20 years ago for NH teams while it matters more for SH teams especially NZ and Oz compared to 20 years ago. One of the trends we are seeing outside of EPCR, Japan and SR is Unions are setting up basic professionals to allow them a platform to get top level professional contract elsewhere. It is why teams like Uruguay and Chile are starting to get more Players into the top leagues. Super Rugby in 2005 was getting 26k a game, SA lead the way but teams like the Blues and Tahs where over 20k. Same year 3N was getting 50k, that year Oz v NZ got 83k. Compare that to Europe where 61k for 6N and about 10k for Club. Today 6Ns is 67k and club about 14k while RC is 38k and SA are the highest on 50k while the Oz v NZ got 53k and SR is about 13k average. So the only reason that Test rugby is so important to Oz and NZ is that club has halved while test rugby has only say 25%. If we included July and November tests the increases or drops would get bigger. Test Rugby is so important for NZ and OZ but it is OS tests not domestic tests as they are getting less and less profitable which is why both Unions are not looking to play home games. In Europe the big growth in income is club rugby which has fed into test rugby. Take Ireland as an example, in 2004/05 none of the provinces were averaging over 5k in the league, now 3 get double that and on average and club games can now sell out the Aviva meaning more money charged for test games because about 50k show on a URC weekend if all 4 provinces are at home. OZ and NZ have to sell tickets cheaper as selling less and the 55k max at EP is never used. Champions League is not as big as the World Cup or European Championship in soccer same with Rugby where the 6Ns and WC are bigger than than the Champs Cup but the Champs Cup is probably as big as the EOYT tests. Soccer internationals are different as England don't play Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and all the top European teams in their games, if they did it would be bigger than Champions League but playing the 15 best team in Europe in soccer can't be compared to paying the 4th or 5th best team outside of Europe in Rugby.

Yet the NH allowed South Africa into the URC. Plenty of precedents have been set.

For the second time, the straw man was that I said that the clubs don’t matter, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that money doesn’t matter, I clearly wrote in my previous post that it does. But test rugby matters the most. That’s why it gets the biggest audiences, that’s why if a country has pro rugby most of its test players play at home. Money is a factor which is why some go overseas but it remains a fact you don’t seem to be prepared to acknowledge that most stay at home. And you keep banging on about cricket. Tests have been in decline and losing money outside of England and Australia for decades. People go to one day internationals and Twenty 20 internationals not tests, five days for one match is too much. Rugby simply doesn’t have the problem of a shorter format usurping the main game, a couple of hours is fine for the modern attention span. A little thing I’ve observed. It’s pretty obvious that you are an intelligent person with great ideas who loves rugby. But you really do seem to have a problem with seeing something happening in one situation and expecting the same to happen elsewhere in very different circumstances. The world doesn’t work like that. You need to evaluate each set of circumstances in its own right when making predictions. BTW on a lighter note, there is a reason why we struggle to get 50,000 to a test match. None of our grounds hold that many. :laughing:

Am not sure players are coming back because players that leave generally are seen as inferior. Blues have 3 tightheads that have player SRP this year the youngest was 29 I think. Afoa at the Crusaders. Surely the two best producing regions can get younger good players. As you say the choice is be an AB stay but that is like 3 players per position and the rest have no reason.

Yep they are free to leave. It's happening already. Have they have desires to play for the ABs, they can come back to Super. Players leave and new players take their place and make their mark. It's been happening for a long time and will continue to happen without changing eligibility.