{"id":595174,"date":"2026-09-09T17:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/595174\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T17:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:10:10","slug":"waikato-tainui-dismisses-report-its-backing-a-new-nrl-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/595174\/","title":{"rendered":"Waikato-Tainui dismisses report it&#8217;s backing a new NRL franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tainui Group Holdings has shot down a report from Australian media that the company is secretly negotiating with the NRL to establish a rugby league team in Hamilton.<\/p>\n<p>Tainui Group Holdings is the commercial arm of iwi authority, Waikato-Tainui. Chair Hinerangi Raumati-Tu\u2019ua confirmed in a brief statement that the report was incorrect.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;TGH is not in discussions with the NRL and is not considering an investment of this nature,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The Australian reported Tainui officials travelled to Townsville to inspect the North Queensland Cowboys\u2019 stadium with a view to build \u201csomething similar\u201d if the bid was successful.<\/p>\n<p>TGH had previously owned a major stake in the Warriors in the late 90s but offloaded the investment in 2000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tainui Group Holdings has shot down a report from Australian media that the company is secretly negotiating with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[161135,4432,111,139,577,69,213],"class_list":["post-595174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-hakinakina","tag-maori-issues","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595174","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=595174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}