To be make or break

For more than 20 years, Sky has been the sole TV rights holder of All Blacks tests and have probably spent somewhere in the vicinity of $1.5 billion to secure their exclusivity.

the past 20 years. But this mutually beneficial relationship is no certainty to survive beyond 2020. Sky didn’t face any real competition to secure the current rights when they were agreed in 2014. It had the right to make the first bid — uncontested and undisclosed — and if it was high enough, NZR wouldn’t open the floor to any other company.

Sky doubled the value of the previous deal that ran between 2011 and 2015 and NZR accepted, knowing it would be banking between $80m and $100m in annual broadcast income from 2016 to 2020.

Technology, consumption habits and the media landscape have all changed dramatically since the last deal was struck and there is massive uncertainty about how the next negotiation will play out later this year.

No one knows yet whether new bidders such as Amazon, Netflix, Lightbox and Vodafone — and maybe others — will enter the fray. Nor does anyone have a good feel for what digital rights — the ability to stream tests — could be worth and how they will be sold in conjunction with traditional terrestrial TV rights.

All that NZR can be sure of is that its expenditure forecasts are rising and that if it wants to keep the best players in New Zealand, there is no effective mechanism to slow the outpouring of cash.

The national body can predict its income — because 80 per cent of it is secured through long-term broadcast, sponsorship and licensing agreements — with certainty through to the end of 2020 and also its costs.

The accounts balance through to 2020 but to sustain that, the next broadcast deal has to be bigger than the existing one.