Rugby Australia has a new chief executive and a shiny new broadcast partner, but on the eve of the 2021 season, the game in this country remains beset by problems. The decline of Australian rugby has continued over many years, so much so that systematic failure now appears to be the new normal for the once thriving code.
It now falls on new Rugby Australia CEO Andy Marinos to reverse Australian rugby’s fortunes. In his first press conference since taking on the role, Marinos stated the Wallabies needed to start winning to turn things around. That is a statement of the obvious. The issue is how to make the Wallabies successful again.
The first thing RA must do is demand excellence from not just the Wallabies, but the five Super Rugby franchises – the Brumbies, Melbourne Rebels, NSW Waratahs, Queensland Reds and Western Force.
Consider the difference in the reaction to the performances of the All Blacks and the Wallabies last year, playing under new coaches Ian Foster and Dave Rennie respectively. The All Blacks, at times, received scathing criticism for their play, yet they won both the Bledisloe Cup and the Tri Nations. Conversely, the Wallabies finished last in the Tri Nations behind the All Blacks and Argentina in a tournament that was played on home soil, yet they got off relatively lightly.
Has Australian rugby become so accustomed to mediocrity? Have expectations sunk so low? It is just the Wallabies’ luck that this year they face a revitalised French team and the possible return of the Rugby Championship, including world champions South Africa, but at least they will know where they are at.
The other major problem facing Australian rugby is the economic fragility of the game, which preceded the coronavirus pandemic, but has been exacerbated by the devastating impact of Covid-19. RA has reduced the annual grants to the Super Rugby franchises from $5.5m to $4m and slashed the Wallabies’ match-day payments, making it more difficult to keep players from heading overseas. Wallabies and Waratahs backrower Jack Dempsey is the latest to join the mass exodus of Australian players to rich clubs in Europe and Japan.
Still, new beginnings bring fresh hope. RA has taken a calculated gamble on a new broadcast deal with traditional free-to-air network Nine and streaming service Stan, parting company with Fox Sports after a 25-year partnership. The deal is believed to be worth around $90m over three years, but a fair chunk is being paid in contra. The cash component is likely to be only about $18m a year, well down on the $57m of the previous contract with Fox Sports. This will not solve Australian rugby’s financial problems.
The big difference is that the Nine/Stan deal involves free-to-air coverage for Super Rugby for the first time, something administrators have long believed was necessary to grow the game, but whether this is the right fit remains to be seen. Many rugby fans probably expected Super Rugby games to be shown live on the main Nine channel, but they will be televised on the broadcaster’s secondary channel 9Gem.
The season kicks off on Friday night with a clash between traditional rivals NSW and Queensland and there will be a lot of pressure on those two big teams from the rugby heartland to perform.
Nine has recycled several former Fox commentators such as primary caller Sean Maloney, Nick McCardle and Drew Mitchell as well as picking up former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika, whose insights will be fascinating. The new broadcaster must be careful in its effort to attract a wider audience for rugby that it does not further alienate the game’s core supporter base, a process that is becoming an existential threat to the sport.
The measure of the success of the new broadcast partnership will not just be ratings on Nine, but whether rugby is a driver of subscriptions for Stan. If there had been an upsurge in subscriptions since the broadcast deal was done late last year, one of the Nine-owned media platforms would have trumpeted the good news. Instead, Stan is offering a 30-day free trial, which is almost half the Super AU season, indicating a slow uptake.
With only five teams in the competition, and just two games a week, 50% of Super Rugby AU’s content is free. In the short-term, Super Rugby AU is a code-saver, but it is unsustainable in the long-term.
Australia desperately needs to align itself with New Zealand’s highly successful Super Rugby Aotearoa to create a trans-Tasman competition or even forge ties with the Top League in Japan. The Brumbies may be defending champions of Australia, the Reds the coming team and the Rebels the dark horse, but Australia’s teams will need to be competitive with the Kiwis to regain credibility.
But when will a full trans-Tasman competition take place? Even the proposed crossover competition after Super Rugby concludes this year appears to be in serious doubt.
Without a significant investment from private equity, it will be difficult for Australian rugby to dramatically improve its financial position over the next three years, impacting on the competitiveness of the teams. It is a vicious cycle. Yet there is still enormous dormant support for Australian rugby, which could be awoken by the Wallabies and the Super Rugby sides – if they could just find a way to perform.
