New Zealand Rugby on a mission to make the game more entertaining and ‘fan-centric’
All Blacks players celebrate a try during the Rugby World Cup in France.
New Zealand Rugby (NZR) have vowed to lead candid and vigorous talks with rugby union’s global leaders as they believe most of the sport’s fans want to see a more entertaining and free-flowing game.
Towards the end of this week, NZR chief executive Mark Robinson held several meetings in Auckland with crucial stake-holders in the game, and spoke about some of the important messages which emerged from those discussions.
Keen to improve the product for fans
Among the key discussion points which Robinson raised is a clear desire for NZR to play a leading role in talks around making rugby a better product for fans.
He told Stuff: “You are going to hear a lot of the term fan-centric” in the upcoming months.
Robinson said NZR views it as one of the major challenges in the game, and highlighted what the governing perceived to be issues in this area which came to the fore towards the closing stages of the recent Rugby World Cup in France.
“We saw some incredible rugby at the tournament, and early on we saw, especially in southern France, some incredible scenes around fans being able to get close to teams. We saw some great footy, and some significant upsets,” he said.
“It’s fair to say as the tournament grew there was fan frustration around some elements of the game. We are very interested to be part of the ongoing discussion that’s going to take place in the near future to look to address that.”
Robinson returned to the subject of rugby’s entertainment factor and its obligation to the game’s paying fans.
“We are very clear in New Zealand, and we believe in Australia, and we believe other parts of the world are starting to acknowledge that the fan has to be far more greatly considered in our consideration of what we’re going to do with the future state of the game,” he said.
“We will be looking at the challenge of making the game more fan-centric at the international level. There will be key meetings at the end of February in Europe between ourselves, our Sanzaar partners, the Six Nations and World Rugby and right at the heart of the conversation is how we look to continue to make sure we’re more consistently seeing the kind of rugby we believe all fans want to see.
”A number of key strands go into that work. We’ve got to have the right information so we’re clear on what fans want to see. How does that then impact on our laws? How can we support our match officials, and our players and coaches, to make sure the product can be truly spectacular and special so more and more fans around the world want to gravitate towards it?”
According to Robinson, New Zealand and Australia‘s actions show that they are at the forefront of this and they will continue to do so.
“If you look at Super Rugby Pacific [in 2023], we saw significant improvements in key stats around tempo, ball in play and match duration, resulting in a huge uplift in broadcast viewership and streaming numbers,” he revealed.
“That’s a key starting point. We now have a SRP Joint Venture which we think can take that sort of collaboration, innovation and creativity to a whole new level in the years to come. That Super Rugby commission interim board is meeting next week to carry on some of the work in this space as well.”
‘Work to do’
When asked how confident he is that New Zealand could influence Europe’s conservative nations to embrace change for the benefit of the spectator, Robinson said: “We’ve got work to do to elevate the fan consideration and the conversation about the game.
“We’ve also got to consider player welfare as part of that, but we think when fans become frustrated about the game it’s often because certain things happen either to slow it down or mean continuity and tempo and opportunities to see exciting spectacles are impacted upon.
“We all want the game to grow. Anyone in leadership of rugby has a fundamental obligation to want it to grow. If that’s our starting point, what are some things that have to happen at the professional level? That’s greater tempo, greater spectacles, less interventions, and helping to simplify the game where we can.
“I’m sure World Rugby will be open to that conversation, and other national unions will feed back into those conversations. We just hope fan consideration is elevated a lot.”
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