NZR must ensure it gets right sponsor
How to find right backer for the national rugby team: Many of the world’s major companies are knee deep in ethical dramas
An estimated $10 million of annual income will be lost in 2021 when AIG pull the plug on their All Blacks sponsorship and yet its disappearance will be met with relief rather than a sense of looming financial catastrophe.
New Zealand Rugby are the only ones getting misty-eyed about the impending loss of AIG from the All Blacks jersey.
Somehow heartland New Zealand will hold it all together at the thought of a giant foreign insurance group, bailed out by the US government to the tune of US$85 billion in 2008 to avoid bankruptcy, no longer having their corporate stamp on one of the most revered symbols of Kiwi excellence.
AIG, when the time comes to pack up their three letters and tootle back to New York, will wonder how it was they could be so loved by the national body but not by the New Zealand public.
But the answer is relatively simple. Their arrival as jersey sponsor in late 2012 marks the time when the All Blacks ceased to be the people’s team.
When NZR took AIG’s millions, it signalled they no longer viewed the
All Blacks as a rugby team, but a brand with global aspirations to use their rugby excellence to create wealth. The agenda switched from winning to winning while making money, but not necessarily in that order.
NZR didn’t just take AIG’s cash and say thanks; they invited their sponsor into the boardroom, virtually gave them a seat at the table and a licence to take the
All Blacks wherever they wanted.
A year later, and the All Blacks played a test in Japan — supposedly as part of a rugby plan to give a wider group of younger players exposure to test football.
The facts are these, though: In August 2012, the Fijian Rugby Union wrote to NZR asking if they could play the All Blacks in Suva to celebrate their 100th anniversary.
In May 2013, NZR said no — the All Blacks had a full schedule. In July, NZR announced that the All Blacks were to play an extra test, in Tokyo on November 2 . . . one of the potential dates the Fijian Rugby Union had proposed.
AIG don’t do much business in Fiji, which has an economy that could fit in a sock. Japan, however, is the world’s third-largest economy and AIG’s second-largest place of business.
In 2014, the All Blacks played the US in Chicago — the epicentre of AIG’s business. The original plan had been to play a Barbarians-type team made up of European-based Kiwis, Australians and South Africans in an exhibition-style game.
But former Saatchi & Saatchi boss Kevin Roberts was chairman of USA Rugby at the time and said if the All Blacks were coming to American soil, they had to play the Eagles in a “real” test and the goal should be to host it at an iconic stadium.
The game was set for the joint home of the New York Jets and Giants until AIG pointed out that their arch rival in the insurance world owned the naming rights to the venue and they couldn’t agree to the All Blacks playing at MetLife Stadium.
The curious thing was that no one knew AIG had the power of veto. Just as big a surprise was that AIG had the ability to plonk clients and staff on the sidelines of supposedly ultra-secret All Blacks training sessions.
It was bamboozling that in 2014, as the All Blacks prepared to play the Boks in Johannesburg, former coach John Mitchell was at one end of the field explaining to AIG’s guests what specifically the team were working on.
Plenty of people called former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen paranoid, but he was hardly wrong to be concerned that there were unvetted South Africans roaming free within the inner sanctum. And to be even more concerned that the only game the All Blacks lost in 2014 . . . was at Ellis Park.
It was just plain disappointing that a year earlier, AIG’s guests were drinking champagne while they watched the All Blacks train in a suburb of Paris where the impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis were still apparent.
A week later, and it was obvious Richie McCaw wasn’t delighted that on the Friday before the test against England, half his team were being dragged across London for the amusement of AIG staff in various satellite offices.
The All Blacks had been humiliated by England in 2012 at Twickenham and they were back in 2013, hungry for revenge as well as being determined to post the first perfect season in a calendar year.
McCaw obviously didn’t feel that high performance preparation was best achieved by athletes working the room in an industrial park on the outskirts of Slough.
When the All Blacks returned to Chicago in 2016 and Tokyo in 2018, the influence and power of AIG became undeniable.
NZR, who will collect around $75m in total from AIG, say the partnership has been brilliant — that AIG have helped them fulfil their global marketing and financial aspirations for the All Blacks.
But for everyone else, it has felt wrong that a sponsor should have so much sway and that a rugby team built on pioneering values and honest to goodness Kiwi humbleness should be forced to perform like a dancing bear so insurance brokers around the world can have their picture taken with them.
The tail has wagged the dog, and worse, wagged it in a direction that has felt uncomfortably wrong at times.
Whether AIG are corporate good guys or bad guys is a matter of debate, but they were never the right fit for a fan base that thinks the All Blacks are doomed if they stop being quintessentially Kiwi.
Whether AIG are corporate good guys or bad guys is a matter of debate, but they were never the right fit for a fan base that thinks the All Blacks are doomed if they stop being quintessentially Kiwi.
Which leads to the question of what happens next in regard to replacing the lost cash?
A jersey sponsor has become a necessary evil in the professional world.
Ideally they will find a company that appeals to wider New Zealand and speaks to the hard-working and innovative values of the All Blacks.
But which company can tick those boxes and muster the sort of cash NZR are looking for?
And more importantly, who can do all that and satisfy an ever vigilant, crusading global climate change youth movement that the money is generated ethically, sustainably and socially responsibly?
The obvious contenders in New Zealand are making their money in sectors that are undeniably going to incur the wrath of Greta Thunberg. If NZR looks offshore again, it will create the same problem of the All Blacks having to be dragged around the world to serve their paymaster.
Besides, glance through the largest companies in the world and most of them are either knee deep in fossil fuels, funding the exploration of fossil fuels, making children fat with sugary drinks and fast food, or doing their best to inflict them with an addiction to devices and social media.
NZR will be tempted, as all organisations in need of funding are, to not take a principled stance when it comes to accepting sponsorship. But principles are way more valuable and NZR needs to be guided by its moral compass as it looks for a way to guide the All Blacks back to the summit of the world game.