New Zealand Rugby (NZR) is poised to vote on the sale of a multimillion-dollar stake in its legendary All Blacks franchise to a US private equity firm, opening a new front in the battle over big money in sport.
NZR is expected to approve the US$280 million offer from Silver Lake, a California-based investment firm, at an annual general meeting in Wellington today.
However, the proposal faces a potential veto from players, some of whom believe that the soul of rugby union’s most storied national team is being sold.
Photo: AP
The vote comes just one week after the European Super League fiasco, when Europe’s top soccer clubs shelved a US-backed breakaway competition within days, after an outcry from fans and officials.
The All Blacks are a national obsession in New Zealand. Their players are household names and countless youngsters dream of running out to perform the famed haka pre-match challenge to opponents.
Over the decades, the team has won worldwide recognition for the attacking verve that has delivered three World Cups and a win rate of almost 80 percent.
That success has made the team a valued asset, attracting Silver Lake, which wants a 12.5 percent stake in NZR’s commercial rights, and the right to negotiate merchandise and broadcast deals worldwide.
The deal would value NZR’s commercial assets at a substantial US$2.2 billion.
The deal would be “transformational” for rugby in New Zealand, and for club sides that are perennially short of cash, despite the All Blacks’ on-field success, NZR chief executive Mark Robinson said.
The game’s financial woes — partly driven by rising player wages and the limited broadcasting funds available in New Zealand — had worsened during the pandemic, he added.
“We believe the game needs to change and we have a strong leadership role to play in providing opportunities for that to happen,” he told reporters.
However, critics point to the European Super League debacle as evidence that mega-rich foreign owners often chase cash, and care little about a sport’s tradition and culture.
“Clubs have sold their souls and then had to do a complete backflip,” former NZR chief executive David Moffett told Radio NZ.
He said that Silver Lake, which boasts assets under management of US$79 billion, was not buying into NZR as a benefactor and would want to squeeze all it could from the All Blacks brand.
That might involve the team playing “meaningless” exhibition matches in the US to generate income from large crowds, without providing a genuine sporting contest, he said.
“You will see the All Blacks playing more games, and perhaps more meaningless games, and that just devalues the greatest brand in rugby,” he said.
All Blacks fans reacted angrily to a shirt sponsorship deal with US insurance giant AIG in 2012, flooding the team’s Facebook page with comments accusing NZR of disrespecting a jersey that, until then, had been largely commercial free.
However, in contrast with the fury vented by soccer fans recently, Kiwi rugby supporters have been largely silent about the private equity proposal, seemingly content to let the players’ union spearhead opposition to the move.
Silver Lake, which started out as a technology investment vehicle, has moved into sport, taking a 10 percent stake 18 months ago in City Football Group, owners of English Premier League giants Manchester City.
City were among those willing to participate in the short-lived move by 12 top clubs in Europe to form the rebel Super League.
Documents released before the vote revealed that US$28 million of the Silver Lake money would be released to NZR stakeholders and a proportion would also be put into a long-term “legacy fund” to ensure that the game remained sustainable.
Stuff.co.nz sports columnist Mark Reason said that Silver Lake had no interest in rugby as a sport.
“They want to up NZR’s paper value and then sell their share on, as they have done numerous times before — cash in, more cash out,” he wrote.
The NZR Players’ Association, which can veto the plan, has raised concerns about appropriation of Maori and Pasifika culture, including the haka.
Mediation between the players and NZR has so far failed, meaning Silver Lake’s proposal is far from a done deal.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier