Three years on since it was refloated, agreement has finally been reached.
The Nations Championship will start next year when Italy, Ireland and France come to New Zealand in July, then in November, the All Blacks will play Wales, Scotland and England, with a finals series to be played in London (it will be in Qatar in 2028 and USA in 2030).
The competition will see six major Southern Hemisphere countries – New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Japan and Fiji – play each of the Six Nations (England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy) and the highest-ranked nation from the south after those six games will play the highest ranked nation from the north.
Agreeing the financial terms under which the competition will run was partly responsible for the delay, but the Herald understands that while each nation will keep the gate and match-day revenue from the home games they host, broadcast income, sponsorships relating directly to the tournament (Qatar Airways has agreed a $185 million, eight-year deal to own the naming rights), and all money made from the finals weekend (the format will see the two second-placed teams play each other, three will play three, etc) will be shared.
Details about the split won’t be made public, but it is understood that the Six Nations will take a slightly larger overall share to distribute between themselves.
New Zealand and South Africa are likely to have negotiated the largest shares of the Southern Hemisphere pot, and it is thought that Japan and Fiji have agreed to play their home games in neutral venues in alternate years to reduce the travel burden for travelling teams from the north.
One of the other hold-ups was reaching agreement about a relegation/promotion format with a planned-for second-tier competition that is hoped to be up and running by 2030.
And it’s this agreement on promotion/relegation that ultimately signals the sort of illogical, contradictory and almost self-destructive decision-making that has been at the heart of global rugby administration for the last decade.
It was a failure to reach a consensus on promotion/relegation that scuppered the first attempt to launch the Nations Championship in 2019 – which had an $11 billion guarantee on broadcast income, as it was being underwritten by a Swiss agency called InFront.
Scotland and Italy wouldn’t support promotion/relegation and just as this Nations Championship idea was being debated, private equity firm CVC offered the Six Nations $850m to buy a 14% stake in the competition.
Not all the broadcast agreements have been made yet for the Nations Championship, but it won’t net as much as was offered in 2019 and additionally, the Six Nations will lose another 14% that has to go to CVC and New Zealand Rugby (NZR) will be down 4% as well to pay its equity investor, Silver Lake.
Effectively, then, a Nations Championship has been agreed in 2025 that looks exactly like the one they rejected in 2019, but it now comes with lower broadcast income and major private equity distributions to be paid out.
It’s maybe no wonder that World Rugby chairman Brett Robinson told the Herald last year of the failure to secure the deal back in 2019: “We had InFront, who were not requiring an equity release from anyone, it was basically a broadcast rollout, two tiers, promotion and relegation and a women’s competition, and I think it was one of the biggest losses and misses that the game has ever had.
“I was devastated at the time that elements within the game wouldn’t enable it. Nations Championship is mission-critical for World Rugby and one of the greatest things we have been working on to get long-term value and performance outcomes.”
Christchurch ready to host France
When the fixtures for next year’s Nations Championship are confirmed, it is likely to be revealed that Christchurch will host the All Blacks’ July fixture against France.
While Super Rugby Pacific will play its so-called Super Round to open the new stadium in Christchurch on Anzac weekend next year, many will feel that the test against France will be the real christening of the Te Kaha facility.
Christchurch has hosted tests since the 2011 earthquake condemned its Jade Stadium, with Ireland visiting the temporary AMI Stadium in 2012, Argentina in 2015 and 2022 and the Springboks in 2016.
But having France play in front of 30,000 people in the centrally located and roofed One New Zealand Stadium, as it is known for sponsorship purposes, will herald a new beginning for the city’s hosting ability.
The fan experience that the new venue will provide, combined with its financial returns – it is expected to become the country’s second-most-lucrative domestic stadium for the All Blacks behind Eden Park – will be a literal game-changer.
The last few years have seen NZR share the major tests between Eden Park, Sky Stadium in Wellington and Forsyth Barr in Dunedin.
But Christchurch will now feature on that rotation, and the question is whether Dunedin or Wellington will effectively become the long-term loser as it pertains to the number of tests they host.
Dunedin has a world-class facility, but the city lacks accommodation, is hard and expensive to get to from the North Island and doesn’t have a large, high net-worth local population that can handle increased ticket prices.
Wellington has the more established wider infrastructure, but the venue is poor for fans because it is also a cricket ground and the city’s economic woes that have been inflicted by heavy Government job losses have made selling All Blacks tickets much harder.
The leak that NZR cannot plug
Last year saw New Zealand endure a tedious and at times toxic battle to agree a new governance structure and set the game up with the modern, independent leaders it needed.
In the previous three years, the NZR board had recommended to its members that they endorse what would have been a catastrophic private equity deal, they tried to take exclusive ownership of Super Rugby and presided over a chaotic and damaging process to appoint an All Blacks coach six months before the 2023 World Cup.
Not only was this a period of haphazard strategic operation, but it was also an era in which information leaked, with one director alleged to have been texting a journalist about confidential information during a board meeting.
By the end of 2024, a compromise agreement was reached and eight new board members were appointed, with Catherine Savage the only incumbent director to be retained.
With former All Blacks captain David Kirk installed as the chair, optimism was high that after a turbulent few years in which the boardroom appeared to be fractious and operating on ego and self-interest, decision-making would be strategic and unified and the new custodians would operate to a higher professional level.
But some of that hope within stakeholder circles has been lost in the last two weeks as firstly, names of possible shortlisted candidates for the soon-to-be-vacant CEO job leaked out and secondly, because the names themselves have been a little underwhelming.
Responsibility for finding a replacement for current chief executive Mark Robinson lies entirely with the NZR board and there has been a level of angst within the national body’s governance team that the Herald was able to publish a story last week which revealed that it believed that Six Nations chief executive Tom Harrison and former New Zealand Cricket (NZC) boss David White have both been interviewed for the role.
Tom Harrison, chief executive officer of Six Nations Rugby. Photo / Getty Images
The process, which is being facilitated by the recruitment firm Sheffield, is supposed to be confidential and this new board was brought in on a mandate to ensure that unlike its predecessors, information about processes, such as hiring a CEO, didn’t end up in the media.
Of more concern still was that the Herald knew that former Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle rang Kirk personally to inquire whether she would have any chance of winning the role, should she apply.
Hiring a chief executive is the incumbent board’s first major task and it hasn’t provided the definitive proof that it will operate to the higher standards it promised, while there is also intelligence building that the hoped-for unity between all nine members has not materialised either.
Various sources have told the Herald that the board is culturally, philosophically and strategically divided into two distinct groups that fall into broad camps of those with rugby experience and those without.
It just so happens that this split also runs directly down gender lines, with the non-rugby group comprising Julia Rauie, Marise James, Caren Rangi and Savage and the other comprising Grant Jarrold, Greg Barclay, Keven Mealamu and Doug Jones.
It’s just not cricket
There has supposedly been executive chatter within both Sanzaar and the Six Nations about the prospect of NZR hiring a chief executive whose experience has exclusively been in the Northern Hemisphere.
Such a move has caught a few people by surprise as to some extent it would feel to be contrary to and potentially debilitating for NZR’s successful campaigning to change the shape of the game by driving innovations such as shot clocks, 20-minute red cards and law innovations to speed games up and make them more fan-friendly.
Arguably, the two great achievements by outgoing NZR CEO Robinson have been the relationships he has built with his international peers and the progress he has made in changing mindsets and winning law-change concessions that are designed to make rugby a better mix of aerobic and power athletes.
It has been a long, painful struggle to persuade the Six Nations to embrace the idea of reducing stoppages, empowering referees to be less reliant on the TMO and to limit the sanction attached to red cards.
To suggest that Harrison, should he be given the job, simply by dint of being from the Northern Hemisphere, will be pro reversing these initiatives and operating contrary to New Zealand’s best interests, would be ridiculous.
But there is a uniquely Kiwi mindset that applies to the shape of the game and how the All Blacks and Super Rugby Pacific teams want it to look, which may not be the natural inclination for someone not steeped in Southern Hemisphere rugby.
It’s a hot topic because World Rugby is understood to be hosting a Shape of the Game conference in February next year – a forum that will have a major impact on what laws and ethos will be in force at the 2027 World Cup.
The other element of NZR’s CEO recruitment process that is raising eyebrows is the strong link that both Harrison and White have with cricket, and how influential board director Barclay may have been in selling these two as prospective candidates.
Barclay, a commercial lawyer by trade, was chair of NZC between 2016-2020 and then spent four years as chair of the International Cricket Council.
All Black Will Jordan of Team Rugby after being bowled out during the Black Clash. Photo / Photosport
Are Scotland coming to Dunedin … ?
One of the great scheduling anomalies is in talks to be amended, with Scotland looking to play a fixture in New Zealand for the first time in what will be 27 years.
The All Blacks’ past 10 games against Scotland have been played in Edinburgh and the Scots haven’t faced them in New Zealand since 2000.
But the Herald understands that discussions are advancing to agree a World Cup warm-up fixture between Scotland and the All Blacks in Dunedin.
The Scots will be heading to Australia in mid-September 2027 for the October 1 start of the World Cup, and are now planning to arrive there via New Zealand to take on the All Blacks.
Dunedin, given its strong Scottish heritage, is the obvious place for a test to be played and both the city and regional councils are believed to be looking at ways in which to financially support the game.
The most significant barrier, however, to the game being agreed is the World Cup draw, which takes place on December 3. If Scotland are drawn in the same pool as New Zealand, that will kill any prospect of them coming to Dunedin and NZR will have to start making alternative plans about who the All Blacks could play between the end of the Rugby Championship and the start of the World Cup.
The 2027 Rugby Championship will, unusually for a World Cup year, be played in full, but despite the expanded programme, there is still likely to be a five- or six-week gap between the last game of the Southern Hemisphere’s showpiece event and the global tournament’s opening game in Perth.
It’s a dead zone that has been hard for the All Blacks to fill in the past. In 2015, they didn’t organise a game in that window and regretted it because they were clunky and out of sorts for much of their first pool clash against Argentina.
In 2019, the only team they could find to play was Tonga, who provided little to no resistance, and in 2023, they played South Africa in London, falling to what was then a record defeat and suffered a serious injury to Tyrel Lomax.
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.