Rugby Australia could still walk away from Super Rugby in 2024, with the governing body left disappointed after New Zealand Rugby walked back on promises.
“They’ve been naughty boys,” RA chair Hamish McLennan told foxsports.com.au.
It comes as RA is fielding calls about private equity deals, which promise to inject between $100-200 million into the game.
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Almost six weeks ago the long-time partners met in Adelaide ahead of Australia’s historic double header against New Zealand’s Black Ferns and South Africa’s Springboks.
In the City of Churches, the NZR board, headed by chief executive Mark Robinson, sat in a meeting room with their RA counterparts, and attempted to nut out a deal to secure their domestic future through to 2030.
There, Robinson, NZR board members Bart Campbell and Bailey Mackey, as well as Blues chairman Don Mackinnon, showed modelling on a whiteboard about the way forward for Super Rugby Pacific.
They addressed RA CEO Andy Marinos, McLennan, director Matthew Hanning, Waratahs chair Tony Crawford and Brumbies chair Matt Nobbs.
At the centre of the meetings was a financial imbalance and how the two Unions could make Super Rugby once again the envy of the world.
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At present there is a huge imbalance between the two broadcast deals, with RA’s deal with Stan/Nine only amounting to $33m per year. That figure is well short of the estimated $100m Sky Sport pay the NZR.
So when Robinson came to the drawing board with their version of RA’s 50-50 split, the governing body, with the support of their various stakeholders, agreed.
Since then, however, the tide has shifted with the NZR presenting an alternate proposal.
With a Lions series on the horizon in 2025 and a home World Cup in 2027, as well as a private equity deal nearing, RA believes they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they accepted the deal.
“The idea of that meeting in Adelaide was to get everyone together and try and ink a deal,” Nobbs told foxsports.com.au.
“And they had done a body of work, but it seemed that they had done the body of work before consulting with their members.
“It seems once they presented to us, they’ve then gone back to their members and said this is our proposal to RA and I think their members have obviously gone, hold on, ‘I think you probably need to try a little bit harder and let’s see if we can screw a bit more out of RA’.”
Nobbs said RA and their Super Rugby franchises were just trying to get “parity”.
The Brumbies chair has backed up McLennan’s call that if an equal deal is not presented, they will still consider forming their own domestic competition.
“I think if you’re going to have a fair and equitable partnership, which is what RA is striving to do, you don’t want a situation where you’ve got a dominant partner,” he said.
“At the end of the day we’ve got to try and make this competition the best provincial competition in the world, and I don’t think it is at the moment because I think if you look at the results of the Wallabies and the results of the Kiwis against Ireland the notion of this being the best provincial competition in the world doesn’t stack up anymore.
“I think those northern hemisphere nations have caught up to us.
“Personally, I think we’ve got to work together to make this a really, really strong competition.
“To do that, it’s got to be a fair and equitable partnership because you don’t want a dominant part that is attempting to screw the other.”
The tensions come as NZR attempts to push RA towards signing a private equity deal with Silver Lake.
After a year of negotiations, the NZR signed off on a $AU180m deal with the US firm. A number of other unions, as well as the Six Nations, have signed deals with CVC.
It means the NZR could be isolated if RA don’t sign a deal with Silver Lake.
“I mean they did a private equity deal on the proviso that the Australian teams were part of a Super Rugby competition moving forward,” Nobbs said.
While Nobbs admitted the two Unions had time up their sleeves, he said it was vital they made the competition as “solid as strong as we can”.
“It’s important for it to get it done, we do have some time but the certainty is the big thing, particularly when you’ve got commercial departments that are wanting to sit down with potential sponsors or partners,” he said.
“It’s far easier to turn around and say, ‘listen, we’ve signed a deal with New Zealand Rugby through until 2030, the competition is here to stay. We’re going to make it the best provincial competition in the world.’
“Then all of a sudden you’re having a far easier conversation with potential sponsors and investors than if you’ve got a competition that’s rolling from one year to the other.”
