as Herald senior rugby writer Gregor Paul reported that year,<\/a> NZ Rugby was targeting one million registrations by the end of the 2023 Rugby World Cup and ended up with around 60,000.<\/p>\nToday, that number sits at just under 450,000. NZ Rugby had initially been targeting an ultimate figure of five million.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tracked okay in terms of the number of people who have actually engaged with us, but in terms of the signed-up, really valuable fans … that\u2019s not [at] a level that would be material for our economics,\u201d Kirk told Q+A.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, the return on that is low … but in business, not everything is hit out of the park. There\u2019s a range of different things that you need to undertake, and you need to undertake them in a measured way so that you\u2019re not blowing the budget on just one thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that is certainly something that\u2019s underperformed compared to our hopes and expectations at the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"NZ]()
NZ Rugby chair David Kirk. Photo \/ Sylvie Whinray <\/p>\n
Kirk was adamant that NZ Rugby needed its own digital presence and brand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to have an owned digital channel to our fans … otherwise you\u2019re building it through someone else\u2019s infrastructure, and someone else. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason we need to own the fans is that we need to be able to demonstrate to sponsors around the world and media around the world, that we can put those fans either on their products, if it\u2019s media, or put their products in front of those fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
A NZ Rugby spokesman said the organisation had changed the distribution model of its content two years ago, \u201cand NZR+ is one way we connect with fans\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cFans watch content across a number of platforms, including YouTube, which has seen the All Blacks channel grow to 1.35 million followers, up from 500k when this strategy started in 2023. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe regularly recalibrate the content strategy, particularly as fan behaviours change. This includes an increasing focus on short-form vertical video content.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years, NZR had reduced the cost base for content production by a compound annual growth rate of 40%.<\/p>\n
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new-look All Blacks-Black Ferns app is coming in the next few weeks. Image \/ NZR NZR has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5263,219941,95,2724,4496,2943,7022,8136,58831,2688,10541,2082,2936,49720,1073,117,111,139,69,86298,3545,6327,213,3291,219942],"class_list":["post-429303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all","tag-allinone","tag-and","tag-app","tag-attempt","tag-base","tag-black","tag-blacks","tag-ditching","tag-farewell","tag-ferns","tag-for","tag-insider","tag-introducing","tag-media","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nzr","tag-platform","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-streaming","tag-supercharge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}