Williams signing puts profile ahead of profit
Wolfpack hope New Zealand star has same impact that soccer phenom Beckham brought to MLS
Two minutes into the second half of the 2015 Rugby World Cup final, New Zealand star Sonny Bill Williams grabbed a pass and plunged into a thicket of Australian players.
Defenders converged on Williams, who at six-foot-three and 238 pounds routinely attracts multiple tacklers. With Wallabies players dangling from him like Christmas tree ornaments, Williams calmly flipped the ball to teammate Ma’a Nonu, who raced away for a game-breaking try in the All Blacks’ title-clinching win.
The flawless off-load was a skill Williams polished playing rugby league, where he first turned pro in 2004, then used to bedevil defenders in rugby union, from which he retired after the recent 2019 Rugby World Cup.
And now, with two World Cup titles on his resumé, along with a pair of titles from Australia’s
National Rugby League, Williams will bring his diverse skill set and polarizing persona to Toronto, where he will embark on the lucrative final leg of a remarkable pro career.
The Wolfpack announced Thursday that they had signed Williams, ending a long and public recruitment with a contract reported to be the largest in the history of either version of the sport. Published reports have valued the twoyear deal at up to $10 million, and Wolfpack ownership has confirmed that Williams was offered an ownership stake in the club.
It’s too soon to tell whether the Wolfpack’s massive expenditure on one of the sport’s biggest names is an investment or a gamble. But it’s a bold move signalling that the Wolfpack, who join the RFL’s Super League in 2020, are more committed to winning and to boosting their profile than they are to short-term profit.
For his part, Williams reassured Wolfpack fans that he’s here to win and not just to cash the biggest cheques in the sport’s history.
“I’m not coming over for a holiday,” Williams said in a video message posted on the Wolfpack’s Twitter feed. “I’m coming over to do some work, and God willing we can have a successful season on and off the field.”
Wolfpack chairman Bob Hunter said the club hadn’t just acquired a player, they had signed a global sports icon.
“Sonny is a phenomenal athlete and we believe he is rugby’s LeBron James,” Hunter said in the team’s news release. “His addition to our league is comparable to when David Beckham joined L.A. Galaxy.”
Except he’s not quite Beckham, who joined the Galaxy as worldwide celebrity.
But Williams is best-known in places such as Australia and his native New Zealand, where every version of rugby is a major sport. In Toronto, he’ll be tasked with cultivating new fans, including those who might not have heard of him before this week.
The James comparison is more apt, given Williams’ commitment to off-the-field social issues. He travelled to Christchurch last year to support Muslim victims of a mass shooting committed by a white supremacist, and the year before that he clashed with his club team over his refusal to wear a sponsor’s logo he said violated the tenets of his Islamic faith. And Williams has openly advocated for New Zealand’s rugby union to make a Maori or Pacific Islander its next national team coach.
All of those factors should endear him to both hard-core and mainstream fans in a city that, while beset with systemic racism, still values multiculturalism. And his profile in vibrant overseas rugby league markets will boost the Wolfpack’s visibility in places such as New Zealand and Australia and help attendance for Super League road games in England.
Every dollar Williams’ presence adds to tangible revenue streams such as ticket sales, and hard-to-define assets such as brand value, is vital, because if published figures are correct, Williams is stupendously expensive for a club that averages 7,000 fans at home games.
The Wolfpack have acknowledged losing money in their first three seasons as they covered expenses of lower-tier overseas opponents travelling to Lamport Stadium. Reaching the Super League was supposed to make the club profitable, with better-funded opponents paying their own way and with the league’s revenuesharing cash heading straight to the Wolfpack’s top line.
But Williams’ salary could alter that equation.
If he stays healthy — which isn’t guaranteed with a 34-year-old — he puts the Wolfpack a big step closer to its goal of averaging 8,000 spectators at home games.
Either way, the signing raises the Wolfpack’s profile.
Now the club has two years to make the move profitable.