Despite the fact it isn't.
They lost money, almost $20 million. And they lost money the year before that as well.
Kirk ran the line that it was not a cash loss and that they had $170-ish million in reserves.
They also spruiked the fact that they were pulling in record revenue.
Now, I am a conservative when it comes to money. The fact they pulled in record revenue and still lost money is your real news, because if you can't make dough when you're raking it in, your model is broken.
Mark Robinson admitted as much by saying "there was further work needed to achieve a sustainable financial model".
This is no different to your household budget.
You had a pay rise, brought some good coin into the house, but you are still not getting ahead. Then you reassure yourself that although you got a pay rise, but spent it all and then some, don't worry – we still have the savings account.
The trouble for people like Kirk and Robinson is everyone is an expert. We all run rugby and, in a way, that is a good thing. We are not short of interested parties.
But what you can't argue with is the market rugby plays in. The global sports market is booming. The money out there for elite sport is eye-watering and NZR's revenue uptick indicates they might be seeing a bit of that.
But the simple truth is if you can't bank the buck in the golden years, you will be killed in the lean ones.
The experts who text me will tell you Robinson is a fool, women's rugby is a drain, and the provincial unions are run by people called Bruce who still drink handles of beer every Friday night with their shirt fronts hanging out.
But what all of that florid verbiage from the well-intentioned doesn’t address is the really big important question.
If you can't make money from your national game, either no sport can make money (which we know not to be true), or something is wrong with the way the national game is run.
If you're still in the red when it's raining money and your press releases have a desperation about them, someone needs to be held to account.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
They also spruiked the fact that they were pulling in record revenue.
Now, I am a conservative when it comes to money. The fact they pulled in record revenue and still lost money is your real news, because if you can't make dough when you're raking it in, your model is broken.
Mark Robinson admitted as much by saying "there was further work needed to achieve a sustainable financial model".
This is no different to your household budget.
You had a pay rise, brought some good coin into the house, but you are still not getting ahead. Then you reassure yourself that although you got a pay rise, but spent it all and then some, don't worry – we still have the savings account.
The trouble for people like Kirk and Robinson is everyone is an expert. We all run rugby and, in a way, that is a good thing. We are not short of interested parties.
But what you can't argue with is the market rugby plays in. The global sports market is booming. The money out there for elite sport is eye-watering and NZR's revenue uptick indicates they might be seeing a bit of that.
But the simple truth is if you can't bank the buck in the golden years, you will be killed in the lean ones.
The experts who text me will tell you Robinson is a fool, women's rugby is a drain, and the provincial unions are run by people called Bruce who still drink handles of beer every Friday night with their shirt fronts hanging out.
But what all of that florid verbiage from the well-intentioned doesn’t address is the really big important question.
If you can't make money from your national game, either no sport can make money (which we know not to be true), or something is wrong with the way the national game is run.
If you're still in the red when it's raining money and your press releases have a desperation about them, someone needs to be held to account.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
Mike, you only used the word "spent" once in the entire contibution and that word spent and its close relative "spending" is the issue . How many staff are poncing around NZR head office? How many unneccesary air flights, accomodation and expenses.?
As long as a Bruce is buying his own pint , even he could strip costs like DOGE in the US by just saying, reduce , remove , recalculate spending.
If any expense is not justifiable by any salaried management of a public , corporate entity it is theft.
The start of a long goodbye?
———————————————-
It begins, as these things often do, not with a thunderclap but a shrug. A dropped ball in Dunedin. A balance sheet quietly hemorrhaging red. A 12-year-old kid in Taranaki who’d rather try TikTok dances than tackles. New Zealand rugby, once the undisputed pole star of the global game, is drifting — not yet shipwrecked, but certainly no longer steering.
The numbers are merciless. Three consecutive years in the red for NZ Rugby, each more emphatic than the last, like a team defending increasingly wider margins. Revenue is lagging behind expenditure, a euphemism for the sort of financial slow bleed that even a Steve Hansen halftime speech couldn’t rally against. The partnership with Silver Lake — the Silicon Valley suitor who promised riches and revolution — now appears as inert as a lock forward’s autobiography: big, heavy, and gathering dust.
And where once there were whispers of genius in every schoolyard — the next McCaw, a baby-faced Carter reincarnated with a step and a boot, a Michael Jones or Zinzan Brooke and a Jonah or Cullen — now there is absence. A vacuum not just of talent, but of appetite.
Participation numbers are slumping, especially among the youth. In the regions, clubs with 120 years of history have barbecues with more smoke than players. “She’ll be right,” mutters the old guard, as yet another promising fullback defects to sevens, or Australia, or a finance internship in Auckland.
Even the All Blacks — that most mythic of brands, a team whose very name once conjured goosebumps — now seem to belong to a more innocent sporting era. Their aura, once woven from both mystique and margin, is now patched up with marketing slogans and nostalgic montages. They remain very good. But no longer inevitable. A 2019 World Cup exit. A limp 2023 sequel. A defensive structure that now looks borrowed from a mid-table Premiership side and a forward pack that creaks like a colonial villa in a Wellington wind.
At the heart of this malaise lies something more profound than coaching or conditioning. New Zealand rugby is, for the first time in its modern existence, grappling with averageness . The world has moved on. The game it mastered — brutal, beautiful, Bach-like in its rhythms — has been colonised by algorithms, spreadsheets, and venture capital. The global south is now globalised, and the old dominions are no longer dominant. France throws money. Ireland throws phases. South Africa throws bodies. New Zealand throws… what, exactly?
The provinces are pleading. Super Rugby is a simulacrum of its former self. The North Island civil war between traditionalists and modernisers — boots in the mud versus suits in the boardroom — shows no sign of armistice. And yet, at the heart of it all, lies the stubborn romance of the oval ball in the land of the long white cloud. A culture that still venerates its grassroots, even as they are being paved over for a digital car park.
Perhaps this is not a collapse so much as a reckoning. New Zealand rugby isn’t dying. But it is shedding — illusions, assumptions, and possibly its long-held primacy. The haka still stirs the blood. But it somehow seems it’s more performance theatre that’s given up it psychological advantage. The game will remain. It always does. But for the first time in living memory, the question must be asked — not whether New Zealand can save rugby, but whether rugby can still save New Zealand.
Interest in rugby is definitely declining in schools. And the competition from other codes and sport is in your face.
I could not help but notice the bombardment of advertising from basketball whilst watching some rugby games over the weekend.
My old high school was having a 50th reunion last weekend. I was saddened to read that school now struggles to field any teams.
Their first XV once played other high schools 2nd XVs and was at least competitive. Several went on to play first class rugby and one became an icon who sadly is no longer with us.
It's not so much my former teammates have been seemingly forgotten but the stark realization it's unlikely there will ever be another following generation.
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