At the heart of this plan was the creation of an in-house dedicated channel called NZR+, which was quietly folded into the pre-existing All Blacks website earlier this year.
The figures show that total global viewing time of all teams in black and competitions was 136 hours this year. That was split into 118 hours of people watching broadcast footage, and 18 hours of digital consumption.
Digital consumption was, therefore, just 13% of the total audience – showing that NZR may have made a significant strategic blunder by investing so much in its own dedicated content channel.
All Blacks captain Ardie Savea and Panthers playmaker Nathan Cleary. Photos / SmartFrame, Photosport
The Herald has long believed that the figure Sky paid to renew its ownership of NZR’s media rights between 2026 and 2030 was $80m – a drop of about $30m on the 2021-25 cycle.
The document entitled Rugby System Programme, which is a deep dive by the national union into its own finances, lists total forecast broadcast income this year as $84m.
With TVNZ likely to have paid about $3m to secure the co-exclusive rights to the NPC, and some international media rights sold in the UK, Sky would appear to be paying about $75m a year to NZR.
That is a significant drop in annual income for NZR, equating to a paper drop of $36m a year compared with the original deal struck in late 2019.
The value of that agreement was $111m a year. It also came with a 5% shareholding in Sky, worth $20m at the time.
But that $111m figure had to be revised when the Covid-19 pandemic forced a restructuring of Super Rugby and some disruption to the 2021 international season.
NZR’s annual accounts show that, between 2021 and 2025, $463m was collected in broadcast income, almost all of which came from Sky, as there was no significant international rights deal in that period, nor was there a co-exclusive arrangement with another local player.
That equates to an average annual broadcast income of $93m in that period. The figure jumps to $95.5m when 2021 is removed from the calculation (Super Rugby was played as a domestic-only competition that year and the Rugby Championship was played in Australia).
In 2022, NZR made $102m in broadcast income; $100.3m in 2024, and $95.2m in 2025. These were the three “standard” years – not affected by Covid-19 or the Rugby World Cup – in which the average income was $99.4m.
Whichever numbers are used comparatively, NZR appears to have suffered a near-catastrophic drop in the value of one of its core income sources.
Two things make this drop hard to rationalise: firstly, it has come after the arrival of fund manager Silver Lake as an equity partner.
The US firm was supposedly a master of media rights negotiations and would deliver a hike in value through the creation of a content hub that would grow the audience and reach of the All Blacks and rugby more generally.
Secondly, Sky has paid significantly less to acquire a larger audience, as the numbers from Super Rugby and Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry show the sport remains enormously popular to watch.
The All Blacks remain a big revenue earner for New Zealand Rugby. Photo / Photosport
A third failure in this scenario is that NZR was forecasting earlier this year that deals were on track to sell media rights to international broadcasters that would be of sufficient value to offset the drop in domestic broadcast income.
These agreements have clearly not materialised, and NZR is now banking little more from broadcast rights than it was in the 2016-20 cycle, when total rights were bringing in about $73m a year.
Much has been made of the so-called rugby summit in Wellington this week trying to reformat Super Rugby and the NPC to help squeeze $20m of costs out of NZR’s operations, but that process is arguably a red herring, given the drop in media rights.
The entire rugby ecosystem is being squeezed to cut costs and change structures, but the single biggest issue is that NZR sold the public a growth story with Silver Lake that has not materialised.
NZR has put the heat on its stakeholders to streamline, but neither Super Rugby clubs nor provincial unions appear to be the most significant reason the accounts remain in the red.
The national body has an equity partner that has shown no discernible ability to increase value in its supposed fields of expertise, and it is taking $10.5m of annual interest payments.
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.
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