“He’s only played two tests,” veteran All Blacks hooker and long-time Hurricane Dane Coles said of Savea later that night.
“He might be Wellington’s favourite son; Snakey [Conrad Smith] has gone and no-one likes me. Ardie Savea … it actually p***ed me off … nah good on him, I was jumping up and down if you’d seen me when he got his runaway.”
Ardie Savea in action for the All Blacks in his 100th test match. Photo / SmartFrame
Nine years later, the crowd at Eden Park also started chanting, “Ardie, Ardie, Ardie,” after Savea, on the night he won his 100th cap, pulled off a match-winning turnover in the 78th minute to beat South Africa and secure the All Blacks’ 51-game unbeaten record at Eden Park.
In those nine years, Savea has proven he was worthy of the early adulation.
He’s been an impact bench player, reinvented himself as a No 8 with the most stunning post-contact leg drive, and switched back to being an old-fashioned tearaway openside.
He can carry in the tight, use his pace to beat defenders in space, win lineout ball and turnovers and produce, on demand, inspirational moments that turn games.
And he’s done all this while selling himself as a modern, urban, new-age figure, a million miles removed from the vibe of toxic masculinity that has clung to All Blacks heroes of the past.
He’s a family man, a devout man, he’s also an entrepreneur, a content creator and social media influencer.
The New Zealand public love him. Overseas fans love him – when he was in Italy with the All Blacks last year, the locals couldn’t get enough of him.
Savea has earned his global superstar status through the way he’s played and because his partly crafted, partly organic brand growth strategy has made him one of the most marketable figures in the game.
But for all that he is revered and adored, there has been long-running tension between him and New Zealand Rugby’s (NZR) executive class.
Savea’s brand building, commercial ventures and career pathway have not always conformed to the relatively conservative expectations held by NZR execs.
As much as the national body has proclaimed it wants its athletes to have character, personality and to engage with fans in a way that drives interest, it has spent periods of the last five years in conflict with their best player trying to rein him in and redirect him.
Savea is walking in the footprints of giants, and NZR has never been overly comfortable with the fact that his feet have not literally landed in the same places as the big-name All Blacks who have gone before him.
Best foot forward
In 2017, Adidas approached Savea to pitch him a joint-venture collaboration where the two of them would design, promote and sell dual-branded streetwear.
The German firm had been the All Blacks head-to-toe apparel partner since 1999, and individual collaborations like the one it proposed were not uncommon.
But Savea rejected the partnership concept, launching his own clothing label called ASAV.
The Herald understands that the All Blacks management were supportive of Savea’s venture – it was the sort of off-field, entrepreneurialism they wanted to see from their players: a bold move from which a young man would learn about real life and live the “better people make better All Blacks” mantra.
All Blacks loose forward Ardie Savea has walked his own path. Photo / Dean Purcell
But Adidas wasn’t so enamoured by the rejection, feeling that Savea had worked off the blueprint they had presented to him.
The tension mounted when Savea several times flouted the strict rules of the player collective agreement and made social media posts about his clothing line while he was in camp with the All Blacks.
The rules are clear that All Blacks can have associations, sponsorships and ambassadorships with non-NZR/All Blacks-affiliated entities, but when they are assembled with the national team the only commercial relationships they can promote or endorse are those with official partners.
The All Blacks are also obliged to wear Adidas – head-to-toe – while in camp (excluding formal wear), and it is understood there were several times when players were wearing ASAV gear.
Adidas, whose apparel deal was worth around US$10 million ($17m) a year, is believed to have regularly complained about the kit infringements and the rebel promotions – and the fraught relationship between such a high-value partner and a rising All Blacks star understandably had head office nervous.
There had previously been similar non-compliance issues around the Adidas agreement back in 2001 which had been a factor in the contract almost being lost, so it was an area of heightened sensitivity for NZR.
It is understood that some NZR staff managing sponsor relationships and some executives felt Savea was operating from a position of indifference to a rules-based commercial system that was there to protect those big firms who were effectively paying the All Blacks’ wages.
Previous All Blacks – notably Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Kieran Read – had at times found the commercial framework needlessly restrictive and overly protective and occasionally even exploitative.
But they were all careful to abide by both the spirit and letter of the law about when and how they promoted products.
Richie McCaw and Dan Carter worked within the commercial framework of New Zealand Rugby. Photo / Photosport
Savea was part of a new generation, though: one that had grown up with social media and an instant gratification mindset, and perhaps, too, a slight anti-capitalist bent or at least with strong inclinations to side with the little guy.
Read, who captained the All Blacks between 2016 and 2019, said in the book Black Gold published in 2023, that he was conscious of the changing commercial landscape at that time, and that younger athletes were arriving in the team less respectful of NZR’s financial model where it controlled and sold all the commercial deals, using the proceeds to pay the players.
“We never spoke about it in the team, but I think we could feel it was turning a little bit,” he said.
“There was probably a swing around that point where players were questioning what they were getting out of these things [team promotions of official sponsors] and ‘why can’t we do it ourselves?’.
“Social media exploded around then as well. Guys were starting to explore their individual brand. I had done that myself but away from the game and had real clear guidelines.
“The day of the game for example, you can’t post about a sponsor who has given you a free pair of something that is in competition to Adidas.
“Guys could do that on their day off or on their week off so there were all these conflicting things, and it became a question of guys having to ask themselves, ‘is it the All Blacks who are making you where you are and you need to pay your respects’.
“Or, ‘I am going to create my brand that is going to help something else’. It was all new and it was difficult trying to establish how it could work.”
Adidas and some within NZR may have seen Savea as having chosen to be the “something else” Read suggested, a disruptor hell-bent on doing his own thing oblivious to the consequences.
But one well-placed source says that Savea’s unsanctioned promotions and distributions of his own clothing brand were driven more by ignorance of the wider commercial ecosystem than they were by arrogance or belligerence.
They say that after a couple of years in which Savea butted heads with Adidas and NZR, he came to see and better understand the big commercial picture and started to run his own business ventures in a way that no longer conflicted with those of the team.
For the last two years he’s been the off-field leader for the All Blacks, running point as it were between sponsors and the team, and universally heralded as easy to deal with, accommodating and respectful.
From the Kremlin to Jay-Z
In 2018 and 2019 angst was brewing at NZR HQ about the overall financial health of the game as more money was going out than was coming in.
It feared it was losing control of an emerging generation of All Blacks who felt they had the right to pursue their own commercial interests regardless of whether these agreements conflicted with official partners paying millions for the association.
There were more brands looking for low-cost associations and sponsorships in rugby, and there was no easier entry point than a rival apparel manufacturer giving a player a bag of kit and a few thousand dollars to make a few social media posts.
NZ Rugby House, in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The volume of commercial activity was almost too great for NZR to effectively police.
The big worry was that all the guerrilla marketing was going to alienate and infuriate the big brands sponsoring the All Blacks, to the point where they would quit or not renew their existing deals and New Zealand’s income would collapse.
“The area that is most complex and problematic is the commercial area,” Warren Alcock, New Zealand’s most trusted and longest serving player agent, said in Black Gold.
“There you have got competing interests. You have got the player wanting to do one thing, NZR wanting to do its thing and maximise what it can get out of a deal and it is trying to keep sponsors happy, and sponsors are never happy if they are seeing a player suddenly endorsing a competing product.
“It is that commercial space where we have our greatest difficulties.”
For the first 20 years of professionalism, NZR had run the commercial world as tightly as the Kremlin had run the Soviet Union.
But by 2017, there had been the equivalent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, with more companies targeting more players with direct routes to their audience through social media.
A cohort of professional athletes was prepared to deviate from traditional pathways to build and monetise their personal brands and use their own channels for social advocacy.
This was an organisation that liked control and conformity, and NZR struggled to accept and adapt to the new market realities that the likes of Savea, Perenara and Sonny Bill Williams were building strong fan connections and cult followings in ways that were different to their predecessors.
Sonny Bill Williams and Ardie Savea ahead of the All Blacks test against Samoa in 2017. Photo / Photosport
The issue of control was paramount as NZR had to provide sponsors and commercial stakeholders with the confidence that its players would abide by the agreements.
There was also an underlying element of conformity tacit in all the commercial agreements – that All Blacks universally accepted their obligation to work with official sponsors and respect the investment they had made.
One powerful way NZR held control was by having a heavily regulated player agent market, that effectively led to two firms dominating the sector – Halo and Wasserman, whose staff have intimate knowledge of the collective agreement and its framework around commercial activity.
NZR has a long and established relationship with both, and there is an element of security the national body feels having its best players managed by an agency in which there is high trust.
Savea had been with Halo, but stunned the establishment in mid-2021 when he parted company with them to represent himself in contract negotiations.
No one within NZR was suggesting Savea had gone rogue by handling his own negotiations, but there was some surprise at HQ when he gave the reasons why he’d taken control of his career pathway in a three-minute video posted on Instagram.
“When players start talking to each other around their contract and what they’re on, that puts power to the players because what agents will tell them, who they’re negotiating with tell them, it could be so different to what the players [are actually getting],” he said.
“Say in my position, I might be the best playing loosie so far for the last year and a bit, or two years, and then you have another loosie who’s probably there as well but he’s just behind you.
“And then you come to negotiation and the agent or NZR are going ‘This is a great deal, mate. You’re on fire. This is what we usually offer guys that are on 50 caps, that are playing well, starting’.
“Obviously you believe [what they tell you], sign it, but then you go talk to the guy that’s just behind you and you go, ‘Hey bro, do you mind if you let me know what you’re on?’.
“And he sends you a contract and he’s on 50% more than what you’ve been offered. That’s when you go ‘Hold on, I’ve been starting the last two years. This guy is behind me but my new contract offer is … 30% or 50% [less] than what he’s on’.
“That’s when people start figuring it out, start going ‘Hey, they’re telling me lies.’ And that’s where the negotiating, bargaining [comes in].
“Agents and obviously the people we’re negotiating with don’t like it, but that just puts the power to the players and it allows you to pretty much negotiate more and provide for the family more.”
A month later, Savea announced he’d signed with Roc Nation, the sports arm of US rapper Jay-Z.
The client list included NFL and NBA stars, as well as Springboks Siya Kolisi and Cheslin Kolbe and England’s Maro Itoje.
“The agency will represent Savea in both on-field and off-field endeavours, and focus heavily on his brand, entrepreneurial projects and philanthropy work,” a statement said.
This was the new world rugby had entered: players aligning with entertainers, selling themselves as people – not just athletes, and trying to build global, personal brands that in Savea’s case, was not exclusively defined by him being an All Black.
Roc Nation had no knowledge of the complexities of New Zealand’s collective agreement with the players or the subtle expectations ingrained around player behaviour and activity.
As one source told the Herald, this deal with Roc Nation put Savea in his natural place but took NZR well out of its comfort zone.
Moana beckons
Savea finished 2023 having captained the All Blacks for more minutes than Sam Cane, and as World Player of the Year.
While Savea has done things differently off the field to great All Blacks of the recent past, he’s been aligned with them on the field, where his work ethic, dedication, commitment and desire are every bit as intense.
But in July 2024, he found himself being challenged by All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson and NZR’s high-performance team over a late and unexpected decision to join Moana Pasifika.
Ardie Savea had a stellar season with Moana Pasifika in Super Rugby. Photo / SmartFrame
Savea had been in advanced talks to rejoin the Hurricanes in 2025.
The late switch of intention spooked the All Blacks coaching team, who, reasonably, felt that it was a risk for the world’s best player to join Moana, who had finished last in 2022.
Robertson felt that the high-performance security of the Hurricanes – who had moved their training base to the NZCIS facility in Upper Hutt where the All Blacks now stay when they are in the capital – was the better option.
He also feared that Savea would be asked to shoulder too heavy a workload at Moana where the playing resources were not as deep.
And because the club was not under the NZR high-performance umbrella but developing players for Tonga and Samoa, Robertson didn’t have the jurisdiction to pre-agree Savea’s workload with the Moana coaching group.
Savea counter-argued that Moana had been set up with provision to sign three All Blacks and that he should have been better supported in wanting to be part of a club that was aligned with his Samoan heritage.
All parties who were part of the negotiation, agree that while they reached an outcome that gave Savea the opportunity and remuneration he was looking for, and the All Blacks coaches some safeguards around their high-performance concerns, that tensions were high and that NZR could have handled things better – more sensitively.
Savea is understood to have felt that he was actively discouraged and almost warned off joining a club that he felt a strong personal connection to and mattered to him – one that NZR owned the licence to and partially funded.
Perhaps pointedly, only journalists of Pasifika heritage were invited to his press conference to announce that he was joining Moana.
His own man
Savea is New Zealand’s most popular player, and while he may once have been viewed as a high-maintenance grey-area operator by his employer, there’s universal agreement that is no longer the case.
NZR and Savea have learned to work better with one another, and video clips providing insight into the closeness of his relationship with Springboks captain Siya Kolisi – something that would have been discouraged five years ago – have gone viral with the national body’s permission.
But there is still a question of whether Savea has been embraced by NZR in the same unconditional way that great players of a similar ilk were.
Carter, for example, also ran his own clothing empire, took two sabbaticals (as Savea is doing) and came close to joining the Blues, who at the time (2009) were viewed internally as a high-performance liability.
He did all that with the full support of his employer and yet Savea has been questioned, doubted and labelled for doing all the same things.
NZR and Savea may now work together better than they ever have, but few believe that the past seven years haven’t left scars and created perceptions that are hard to shift.
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.