Scaffolding around ABs in danger of collapsing
Ponder for a second what next week might look like for professional rugby in New Zealand.
There’s a possibility the All Blacks will be bottom of the Rugby Championship, seventh in the world rankings.
A board that unanimously decided to retain head coach Ian Foster after the All Blacks began the year with two victories from their first five tests — and just two victories from their last seven — will have to work out whether to double down in the face of intolerable pressure and stay resolute, or risk admitting they made a mistake and appoint a new head coach just one year before the next World Cup.
Next week will also see a court case begin in France where Mo Altrad, the billionaire owner of the eponymously-named scaffolding company which has the naming rights to the All Blacks jersey, has been charged with “active bribery of a person charged with a public service mission”.
No matter the outcome of the trial, the scenario of someone with such a close and material link to the All Blacks being charged with such an offence is already acutely embarrassing for NZR.
It’s not like they could have known or discovered the danger lurking through any due diligence process available to them, but when they also signed a major sponsorship deal with a petrochemical company that has been deemed by environmental groups as one of the world’s worst ocean polluters, and another with a Japanese pharmaceutical company that own multiple health brands, yet has chosen to make its association with the All Blacks through an energy drink, it does generate wider questions about whether NZR has partnered with highest bidders rather than the right strategic partners.
To make things yet more volatile and fascinating, NZR now has a signed agreement with Silver Lake and possession of the first of two $100m payments the US firm will make as part of the deal to buy an equity stake in the commercial interests of the national game.
And because the deal has now been completed, that has triggered the clock on an agreement made last year with the Rugby Players’ Association that a full, independent review of NZR’s governance will begin within 60 days of the agreement being signed.
The professional game has never experienced a period like this, where so many big initiatives, with such a high level of interconnectivity, are all converging to conclusion together.
Never have we seen such a conflicted picture of administrative ambition running at an all-time high with the All Blacks results running at an all-time low.
And it is this widening gap which perhaps provides the answers to why next week could be the worst in an already annus horribilis.
Somehow in the last two years the commercial tail has been allowed to wag the high-performance dog. Making money has become a goal itself rather than a by-product of onfield achievement.
The All Blacks didn’t set out to become a commercial machine at the dawn of the professional age: it was something that organically happened when they were able to continue to build on their incredible performance legacy.
NZR, for the first two decades of professionalism, understood professional rugby was a sport and a business, but mostly weighted its investment and resource towards the former which it realised was the bit that it had to get right to ensure there was a business to run.
What attracts sponsors is the culture of success. What persuades fans to buy test tickets, broadcast subscriptions and merchandise, is the culture of success.
Brand All Blacks is built on one simple idea, which is that this relatively tiny nation somehow manages to defy its demographic and geographic disadvantages to conjure phenomenally successful rugby teams.
They keep winning and the story keeps becoming more compelling and on the back of that.
But in the last few years, NZR has perhaps lost sight of the importance of high-performance success in delivering the commercial outcomes it desires and has focused too much time, energy and resource in monetising the brand rather than investing in measures to ensure its continued high performance success.
Professional rugby is a sport and a business and if the game is to dig itself out of the hole into which it is falling, the sporting success side needs to be re-established as the priority.