Middle East money is bad for the game, but NZR will cash in
Financial squeeze will dictate stance Qatari petro-dollars; Eden Park rumours
For a tournament so long in the making and with private equity and Middle East petrodollars driving it, news of the so-called “Nations Championship” landed with a dull thud this week.
Dull because ultimately the competition and the motivation for creating it is hollow.
Is this really the best World Rugby and its member nations can come up with in taking rugby forward as a bona fide top-flight sport?
A Middle East money-grab every two years? Reinforcement of elite nations over aspiring ones? A meek surrender to grubby sportswashed dollars in a tournament played out in stadia built on the backs (and lives) of exploited migrants?
Once again, rugby has put dollars ahead of its soul.
But you could see it coming. The Daily Mail tried to dress up its supposed scoop that Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth fund has offered World Rugby £800 million ($1.62 billion) to host the Nations Championship four times over a period of eight years from 2026.
In reality, World Rugby and a handful of elite national unions have been talking to private equity and the Qataris about a biennial clash between competing Six Nations countries and their Sanzaar opposites in the Southern Hemisphere since 2019.
That was around the time Luxembourg-based private equity giants CVC bought into the Six Nations and English Premiership and a year before New Zealand Rugby’s planned deal with rivals Silver Lake leaked out.
The Qataris also kicked the tyres on potential investments into South African and Australian rugby last year before deciding, without explanation, against it.
So they’re hardly new on the scene.
As others have already commented, Middle East investment into rugby was always going to happen. It’s surprising it has taken this long and perhaps suggests the interests behind shaking up world sport are still not convinced of rugby’s merits.
This could be a dabble rather than an upheaval.
The so-called “Super Bowl of Rugby” will kick off in November 2026, with six matches between Six Nations teams and Southern Hemisphere rivals over one threeday weekend in Doha.
Fiji and Japan will be added to the current Sanzaar nations that play the annual Rugby Championship to round out the competing nations to a tidy 12, allowing for a format of 12th v 12th, 11th v 11th, etc and culminating in a de facto world championship final between the top nations from each hemisphere.
Why NZ Rugby (and Australia) will embrace the Qatari dollars
New Zealand Rugby (NZR) issued a strategically meek and limited response to news of the Qatari offer.
But within headquarters, the board, senior management and the beancounters will be jumping for joy.
The Nations Championship windfall has been long awaited.
NZR has been an enthusiastic supporter of the then Nations Cup from day one and was bitterly disappointed when the concept fell over five years ago.
The national union has long resented rich northern unions using their annual autumn internationals to host southern giants such as the All Blacks to fill their stadiums while retaining all of the commercial benefits.
The Nations Cup concept was borne out of that inequality with the northern unions eventually buying the south’s narrative that a bigger pie could be baked where slices are larger than before for those at the table (remembering there’s only 12 seats; but more on that in a minute).
But, more than anything, this couldn’t be more timely for NZR.
The national union is in a horrible position, finding itself financially squeezed by an underperforming Silver Lake deal, harried by provincial unions anxious about the prospect of their funding being cut and at war with the New Zealand Rugby Players Association.
Cold, hard dollars — no matter where they come from — are a panacea right now.
Qatar is reportedly promising commercial returns of up to £800m ($1.62b) over eight years to the competing Six Nations and Sanzaar unions.
On an even split, that’s $135m for each of the 12 unions, an annual boost of almost $17m over the contract period.
But the commercial pie is more likely to be shaped by existing status and qualifying positions in each hemisphere and European autumn internationals every second year between the north and south.
With Sanzaar’s Rugby Championship traditionally dominated by the All Blacks and the side generally doing well on most European tours, New Zealand can be expected to feature highly in the Nations Championship weekend.
With the likelihood of additional prizemoney also being tiered, NZR’s annual booty from the new competition is more likely to be around the $30m-plus mark.
This imminent windfall takes the pressure off the finances at least.
Another national union that will be jumping for joy is Rugby Australia, who have just taken out an A$80m loan at 10 per cent interest just to keep the lights on, and posted a $A9.2m ($10.13m) loss on Monday at their annual general meeting.
But I wonder if any of the 12 competing nations will spare a thought — let alone a commercial penny — for the have-nots such as Georgia and Portugal and, in our neck of the woods, Samoa and Tonga, all of whom have just seen the gulf between them and the elite widened.
Is it just coincidence that the Qatari offer comes when prominent unions like New Zealand and Australia are stressed? I think not.
In bed with nasty people
NZR will be grateful it is the Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund, controlled by the Qatari royal family and in particular Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and not its Saudi Arabian counterpart that has made the Nations Championship push.
The Saudi shake-up of professional golf, and now tennis amid a host of other sports, has hardly endeared them to global sports fans. Indeed, golf viewing coverage internationally has shrunk 20 per cent since the LIV rebel tour controversy. The Saudis are the poster boys for “sportswashing” and cannot shake the fact that their human rights violations include the murder and bone-saw dismemberment on Turkish soil of an American-based journalist.
The Qataris somehow seem a little less offensive than the Saudis — but don’t be fooled.
The stadiums the All Blacks and others will play in, including the Lusail Stadium that hosted the 2022 Fifa World Cup final, are monuments to at least 6500 migrants who lost their lives in the 10-year build of infrastructure and stadiums.
Women in Qatar must gain permission from a male guardian to marry, study higher education, work in the Government or travel abroad. Extra-marital sex carries a death sentence.
Tainted Middle East petro-dollars is not the rocket fuel rugby needs. The sport is getting in bed with some nasty people.
Has Silver Lake had a free ride or were the Americans involved in the deal?
Sports Insider has long maintained Silver Lake’s $262m investment into NZR was a deal the national union should never have done — and recent revelations from the Herald of underperformance only reinforce that.
But at the height of my criticism while making a podcast last year on the subject called Pieces of Silver, NZR chief executive Mark Robinson took issue with my claim Silver Lake were getting a free ride (and dollars) off the back of projects like the Nations Cup.
My argument was those tournaments were always going to happen and why should the likes of Silver Lake earn 5 per cent plus of any profits coming NZR’s way when they had nothing to do with it.
Robinson told me Silver Lake were involved in the Nations Cup discussions and brought value, although he wouldn’t elaborate.
But given World Rugby was already talking to the Qataris before Silver Lake came on board with New Zealand, it’s not like the door needed opening.
Even if it did, the Nations Championship windfall will only just wipe out the annual payment Silver Lake will draw down off NZR’s finances — so by my reckoning, they have work to do.
Stadium update
Last week’s column revealing a rebuilt Eden Park has the inside running over waterfront options for a “National Stadium” project in Auckland caused quite the stir and comment.
Rumour 1: There are suggestions Eden Park has promised it can fund the estimated $800m-plus rebuild needed to secure its future without any Auckland ratepayer or central Government contribution.
If so, that’s a remarkable achievement from an ownership trust and chief executive Nick Sautner who have no experience in raising that sort of capital.
So who is going to provide the money? Given Auckland ratepayers will be the safety net if they don’t come through, perhaps that should be more transparent.
Rumour 2: Did Robinson jump the gun in his embracing of the Quay St waterfront stadium plan as the country’s national stadium? Sports Insider is told the endorsement wasn’t wildly popular in the corridors of power at the new NZR Auckland headquarters of Saatchi & Saatchi. The suggestion is members of the board and other senior figures may not have been told NZR was about to swing its might in behind a select stadium bidder.