Gregor Paul: What All Blacks XV broadcast tells us about NZR’s plans

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The latest broadcast arrangements for the All Blacks XV offer some insight into the thinking going on behind the doors of New Zealand Rugby House in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
THREE KEY FACTS
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
OPINION

The make-up of the 29-man All Blacks XV squad picked to play in Europe gives a
little insight into the country’s high-performance future, but the team’s broadcast arrangements provide a much bigger clue about the direction in which New Zealand Rugby’s commercial strategy is heading.

The All Blacks XV – a team dreamt up a few years back as much to create a subsidiary and marketable brand as to provide the next tier of talent access to international rugby – will play games against Munster and Georgia, both of which will be livestreamed on NZR+.
The games will be free to access and available, according to New Zealand Rugby (NZR), in around 150 countries, in an arrangement that appears to be partly about showcasing the product, but more specifically, data-gathering and taste-testing the appetite for rugby content in markets that have not been historically well-served by mainstream broadcast deals.
And ultimately, this is an exercise in providing NZR and its equity partner Silver Lake with an evidential basis to feed into the future broadcast strategy and to start weighing up whether there is a viable commercial future in using its own streaming platform as a live broadcaster.
The purpose of NZR+ has never been clear since it launched on the eve of the World Cup last year.
Initially, NZR said it would be a content hub carrying 100-plus hours of long-form and behind-the-scenes content and that it would likely serve as a gateway to being a wider portal where fans could buy merchandise, match tickets and read All Blacks news.
A year on and Craig Fenton arrived as chief executive of New Zealand Rugby Commercial [NZRC] – the company set up to manage the game’s revenue-generating assets – and said the new plan was to produce a broader portfolio of content that would play mostly on channels such as YouTube and that the storytelling was about growing the audience and building a data set to provide greater leverage when it comes to selling media rights and sponsorships.
Neither plan seemed likely to succeed. NZR+ burned through $11 million of cash in 2023 and picked up a relatively tiny number of registrations in the process, while it’s debatable whether any potential uplift in sponsorship and broadcast agreements gained by winning an improved following will be greater than the cost of generating the content to grow that audience.
The road to financial viability for NZR+ has long been clearly signposted and it requires the brave decision to put live content on the site behind a paywall.
That’s the only way NZR+ can survive, and the decision to broadcast the All Blacks XV’s two games on the channel is the clearest sign yet that NZRC’s executive is starting to come around to the same way of thinking.
It will be softly-softly, a case of NZR making content such as All Blacks XV games available for free in markets outside of New Zealand (and Ireland and Georgia where mainstream agreements are in place) and trying to hook the audience on to rugby.
If the demand is high, and it likely will be, the next step will be to stick up a paywall and see what that does to interest.
It makes sense, because it’s a non-competitive opportunity – NZR won’t be going into competition against its own broadcast partner Sky as it will geo-block access within New Zealand – to service and monetise so-called dark markets that don’t have access to All Blacks content via any other means.
Trying to make a direct return from selling live content on a pay-per-view or subscription basis has to be a better business model than spending $11m on long-form content no one wants to watch for free?
Or at least broadcasting live content on NZR+ gives rugby fans more reason to go there and potentially watch other things once they have been drawn in.
And who knows, it may prove surprisingly lucrative going direct to consumers in Portugal, Spain and Germany, where rugby is growing and knowledge and interest in the All Blacks (and all related versions of) is significant.
There’s likely to be long-term viability in this strategy too as NZRC can agree a new broadcast agreement that will run from 2026 to 2030 and try to maximise the number of established rugby territories in which it signs rights deals with mainstream broadcasters to increase and guarantee its income, leaving ample opportunity to continue to livestream in countries that aren’t covered by these deals.
Effectively it means NZR can ensure that it will be bringing in money from around the globe every time a team in black plays.
Of course, what everyone will inevitably start wondering is whether NZRC should be thinking beyond playing around in the margins.
If servicing dark markets through NZR+ proves popular and lucrative, is it mad to start wondering if, in time, NZRC should dispense with signing agreements with international broadcasters and telling the world if they want to watch the All Blacks, they have to buy a subscription to NZR+ or a pay-per-view package?
That may prove a risk that NZRC can’t justify, but the process of gathering the evidence on which that decision will be made will begin in November when the All Blacks XV play Munster and Georgia.
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