The New Zealand Herald

Why Sky have played the free-to-air rugby card now as commission scores victory

For so long, the narrative around Super Rugby has been focused on what’s broken that it may have prevented many from seeing how much has been fixed and how many mini-victories have been secured in the last year.

To be fair to the doubters and pessimists, there are, seemingly, good reasons to be fearful about the longterm future of Super Rugby Pacific.

The Rebels have gone into administra­tion and may not exist beyond this year, Moana Pasifika have not yet built a following to sustain their existence and Australia’s lack of player depth continues to be a sort of buzzing fridge problem.

But against that, there have been a few key developmen­ts that may have tipped the balance in favour of being relatively optimistic that Super Rugby Pacific is grinding its way back towards its glory days of yesteryear. This season should kick off amid heightened anticipati­on that the Southern Hemisphere may be rebuilding something that again becomes the envy of the North.

The arrival of former Wallaby Phil Waugh as chief executive of Rugby Australia has given the game across the Tasman a pragmatic leader who is not wed to any pre-conceived notions of his predecesso­rs.

Waugh has stepped in to bail out the Rebels for this year but has made it clear that he doesn’t support Australia running five Super Rugby teams at any cost.

The financial collapse of the Rebels may, therefore, prove to be the catalyst to Australia cutting its representa­tion and in doing so, immediatel­y making their surviving teams more competitiv­e.

The other major victory Super Rugby secured late last year was the formation of the independen­t commission to run and market the tournament.

Again, this has been viewed by many as an abstract, intangible gain that will unlikely have any direct impact.

But already the commission has scored a massive win by reaching an agreement with Sky to show one live game per week on its Free to Air [FTA] Sky Open channel.

This is neither abstract nor indirect and shows the value of having a dedicated body set up to operate in the best interests of Super Rugby without having to pander to the ambitions of national bodies.

The world’s most successful competitio­ns all offer an element of FTA access, but for the last two decades, New Zealand Rugby has pursued a dangerous path of putting everything behind a paywall to maximise the sale price of its broadcast rights.

Dangerous because it has proven hard for sports to win new followers if they don’t showcase what they have to a wider audience.

The world’s most successful competitio­ns all offer FTA access.

Accessible live content is a great tool to convert light users to heavy users and despite the overwhelmi­ng evidence that subscripti­on broadcast rights-holders and competitio­n owners benefit from FTA, NZR has not been inclined to pressure Sky into making some Super Rugby content freely available.

It has never been persuaded that the long-term future of Super Rugby is more important than the upfront, short-term financial windfall that comes from selling all its content to a pay TV operator.

But once the commission was set up late last year, it identified immediatel­y Super Rugby Pacific needs more fans and invested followers and there is no better way than by having FTA exposure.

Barely two months after its first board meeting and the commission signed off on a deal that will see 19 games available FTA.

It does, though, have to be asked why Sky, after years of resistance, suddenly agreed to give Super Rugby the Free to Air presence it so desperatel­y needs in its quest to rebuild its brand and reestablis­h itself as the world’s premier club competitio­n.

And the answer is that it presumably felt it was facing something of a perfect storm.

Having seen Spark Sport collapse in late 2022, Sky likely feels the inflationa­ry pressures it felt in securing broadcast rights will now rescind and that it has some noncompeti­tive breathing space in which to build empirical data to determine what the true cause and effect is of offering 19 FTA Super Rugby games.

It’s also on a stated mission to build advertisin­g revenue and FTA games are prime and additional inventory.

But perhaps most telling would have been the sense of inevitabil­ity that rugby in New Zealand has no option but to recalibrat­e its broadcast strategy and include an FTA component in all future deals.

Sky has presumably gazed into the crystal ball and decided that it needs to demonstrat­e its ability to be a willing and accommodat­ing FTA partner now, to ward off the possibilit­y of TVNZ entering the rugby fray and building on its sports streaming service.