{"id":901187,"date":"2026-09-22T10:42:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901187\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T10:42:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:42:20","slug":"new-zealand-rugby-weigh-up-ditching-super-rugby-pacific-three-options-tabled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901187\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand Rugby weigh-up ditching Super Rugby Pacific: Three options tabled"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand<\/a> Rugby and its stakeholders will discuss three proposals on the future of the game in Aotearoa during crunch meetings in Wellington on Thursday, according to a report.<\/p>\n

New Zealand\u2019s continued participation in Super Rugby Pacific will be one of the options discussed, according to The Post journalist Paul Cully, who has obtained the NZ Rugby document titled Rugby Summit \u2013 Men\u2019s Elite Competition Possible Options.<\/p>\n

Bombshell option B: ditching Super Rugby Pacific<\/p>\n

The bombshell option to ditch Super Rugby Pacific would see a new 8-10 team national competition to replace the southern hemisphere\u2019s premier club<\/a> tournament as well as the NPC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The report<\/a> emphasises the fact that the push to replace Super Rugby with this tournament \u201cdoes not reflect NZ Rugby\u2019s<\/a> position and has originated from the provincial unions setting the scene for a showdown before NZ Rugby makes a decision on the future in late October.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under this proposal, all other rugby underneath this competition would be deemed amateur, with each of the 8-10 teams receiving player payments of $8m-$10m, and would be run by provincial unions.<\/p>\n

This would allow possible private investments into the unions, while NZ Rugby would supply the licences to the teams. NZRPA chief executive Rob Nichol floated a similar idea to the same publication in February<\/a> this year with the report stating that cutting Australian Rugby adrift would \u201cbe the biggest change to rugby since the sport went professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, this isn\u2019t likely to solve the global calendar issue, as it reported that the competition would remain in a similar window to Super Rugby (February-June window) from 2028 \u2013 it would also require tough negotiations with Australia to exit the joint Super Rugby venture.<\/p>\n

Murray Mexted claims Super Rugby \u2018too easy\u2019 with some All Blacks \u2018absolutely out of their depth\u2019 against the Springboks<\/a><\/p>\n

New Zealand coach\u2019s Super Rugby theory for scrum struggles \u2018hit nail on the head\u2019 as ex-All Black offers \u2018no argument\u2019 response for possible solution<\/a><\/p>\n

Alternative options<\/p>\n

Another option that has been tabled is the expansion of Super Rugby Pacific with New Zealand adding a further two teams.<\/p>\n

This is known as Option C in the document with a new entity known as \u201cSPR Hold Co\u201d set up to operate the tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cSRP HoldCo holds cross-border, pooled team commercial rights, funds logistics, marketing. NZR and RA keep broadcast control,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n

The report explains that \u201cthe five Super Rugby clubs and their provincial unions would again be amalgamated, reducing the number of high-performance environments from 19 to 14 across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document states that this proposal \u201cwould require Rugby Australia agreement to be convinced of the financial viability and strategic value of the expansion clubs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for world-class coverage you can trust.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Option A would see single-city Super Rugby Pacific organisations form a centralised \u201cSRP HoldCo\u201d to operate the competition.<\/p>\n

In this proposal, Super Rugby and the NPC would both be unchanged. However, savings would be made by combining the five New Zealand Super Rugby clubs with the provincial unions based in their city.<\/p>\n

This could result in a saving of around $5.75m a year for NZ Rugby, according to the 2024 Men\u2019s Pathways and Competitions report. Like Option C, this would open the door for more private investment into the Super Rugby clubs and would create the opportunity to pay players \u201cover and above\u201d what NZ Rugby contributes.<\/p>\n

The report concludes that NZ Rugby wants to bring a final proposal to its board meeting in early December.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0All Blacks: Dave Rennie puts 10 internationals on NPC duty after returning from Greatest Rivalry tour<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand Rugby and its stakeholders will discuss three proposals on the future of the game in Aotearoa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,3925,5386,29897,215801,818,10569,1736,44,46678,760,85,29898],"class_list":["post-901187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blues","tag-chiefs","tag-crusaders","tag-highlanders","tag-home-page","tag-hurricanes","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-npc","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-super-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}