Super Rugby obviously has a bit of a weird structure now with only 11 teams after the Melbourne Rebels collapsed.
It got me thinking a bit about what NZR & ARU could change assuming no other countries are going to join, and one thing I wondered was whether New Zealand should deliberately weaken our Super franchises to help make the Australian ones more competitive & hopefully make their public a bit more interested (if they win more).
So I started to think about what the population spread was like around New Zealand and one thing that really sticks out is how bottom heavy our current distribution of clubs is. 1 million punters in the South Island get 2 franchises, but 4.5m odd North Islanders only get 3 + Moana Pasifika. Its actually a bit silly that the Highlanders still exist given the population shifts since the 90s.
Anyway, that made me wonder if it might be possible to in effect add a 6th New Zealand franchise - which including MP would make 7 based in New Zealand in total, so came up with this before & after table to show how its a much more equitable split. And then 7 NZ, 4 Aus & 1 Fiji gets us back to 12 Franchises and at least in NZ gets more games in front of more people.
| Super Franchise | Population Approx | Provinces | Population (2018) | Stadiums | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland Blues | 1850k | Northland | 186k | Semenoff Stadium | 19k |
| Counties-Manukau | 1 | Navigation Homes Stadium | 12k | ||
| North Harbour | 1 | North Harbour Stadium | 25k | ||
| Auckland | 1655k | Eden Park | 50k | ||
| Waikato Chiefs | 920k | Bay of Plenty | 321k | Rotorua International Stadium, Mercury Baypark | 26k & 20k |
| Waikato | 476k | FMG Stadium | 25k | ||
| Taranaki | 121k | Yarrow Stadium | 25k | ||
| Wellington Hurricanes | 950k | Hawke’s Bay | 172k | McLean Park | 24k |
| Manawatū | 248k2 | Arena Manawatu | 15k | ||
| Wellington | 526k | Sky Stadium | 35k | ||
| Canterbury Crusaders | 725k | Tasman | 103k3 | Trafalgar Park | 18k |
| Canterbury | 623k | One NZ Stadium4 | 30k | ||
| Otago Highlanders | 335k | Otago | 235k | Forsyth Barr Stadium | 31k |
| Southland | 101k | Rugby Park | 17k | ||
| Moana Pasifika5 | - | North Harbour based | - | North Harbour Stadium | 25k |
- 1 Included with Auckland.
- 2 Includes Whanganui in the census data.
- 3 From 2026 I think the new stadium is supposed to be in use.
- 4 Includes Marlborough, same as the NPC Province
- 5 Moana Pasifika are currently, and for the forseeable future going to be playing most of their matches in New Zealand, neither Samoa nor Tonga have stadiums and infrastructure setup to host like Fiji Drua have.
- Population regions not included:
-
- Gisborne 50k - because its quite remote from either Hurricanes or Chiefs
-
- West Coast South Island 32k - because its remote from everywhere
| New Regional Franchise | Provinces | Population Approx | Stadiums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland North | Northland | 850k | Semenoff Stadium |
| North Harbour | North Harbour Stadium | ||
| Auckland South | Auckland | 850k | Eden Park |
| Counties-Manukau | Navigation Homes Stadium | ||
| West North Island | Waikato | 600k | FMG Stadium |
| Taranaki | Yarrow Stadium | ||
| East North Island | Bay of Plenty | 550k6 | Rotorua International Stadium, Mercury Baypark |
| Hawke’s Bay | McLean Park | ||
| Bottom North Island | Wellington | 770k | Sky Stadium |
| Manawatū | Arena Manawatu | ||
| Canterbury Crusaders | Tasman | 725k | Trafalgar Park |
| Canterbury | One NZ Stadium | ||
| Otago Highlanders | Otago | 335k | Forsyth Barr Stadium |
| Southland | Rugby Park |
- 6 I included Gisborne population in this one as with a franchise based in this part of the country they are a bit more included than they are with the Chiefs or Hurricanes.
Population isn’t what decides, but attendance is. A new club will struggle hard, a more sensible idea is to demote the lowest attended to NPC
It might sound counter-intuitive, but due to a couple of things (geography & number of games) less clubs in Super Rugby is actually worse for attendance.
Per game attendance is ok, but there aren’t enough games to let the franchises boost their revenue, so more teams = more games. Also, more games = more chance of hosting a game in places that rarely see a Super match which might boost interest and average attendance due to not saturating markets.
Taranaki used to be a part of the Hurricanes franchise, but they left to join the Chiefs with an agreement to get a guaranteed match every year in New Plymouth. This was because back then the Hurricanes would only play 2 matches a year outside of Wellington and it was rotated between Hawke’s Bay, Manawatū and Taranaki. Things have gotten worse since then as now the Hurricanes play a maximum of 1 match outside of Wellington and its almost always against a poor draw like the Western Force.
The reason I believe its important to play games in the provinces is because otherwise you have huge chunks of population missing out on live Super Rugby altogether, almost nobody is driving the 4+ hours from Napier to Wellington to watch a Super game.
So Scottish rugby does very bad at getting it’s pro teams about the place. But that’s because they’re home stadia are so well attended now. And even tier 3 can sell a shit ton of tickets for Murrayfield (see Portugal next month). But for the growth of the game it is fucking awful. So NZ have it correct, and I would love to see Edinburgh out in Hawick, and Glasgow in Stirling, especially for a Munster or Edinburgh match
How spread out is the rugby fandom beyond the higher population areas in the south - Perth/Dundee west to Irvine/Ayr etc? Because if 90% of the fans are in that area then it does make a lot of sense to play so much in Murrayfield - especially if the tickets are selling. Its just so much closer than most rugby fans in NZ.
But I agree with you, its hard to get your local people interested in the game if you don’t bring the game to them!
Just splitting points into different comments because i’m terrible at excessive word counts :)
Can’t demote anybody to the NPC from Super Rugby as they’re completely separate competitions. Eg the Highlanders are in effect already playing NPC, just as their constituent parts - Southland & Otago.
In part a move to expand the NZ based franchises to 7 teams is to alleviate what NZR want to do to the NPC (along with their media pundits) which is to completely trash it as its costing so much money and not pulling in huge eyeballs.
There’s a big contrast between stories like the below, where Hawke’s Bay have made profits 25 years running compared to most of the provincial unions which are constantly spending below their means and being a net drain on NZR.
So as much as I hate the idea, the NPC probably does have to change to downgrade its expense, but if that’s not coupled with expansion of Super my fear is that NZ will grow increasingly disconnected from Rugby and NZR will essentially be biting the hand that feeds.
That sounds reasonable then. But will changing the NPC to support a 6th/7th SR sife make financial sense? In order to do so I think it’s cost cap time so ARU can try to meet too
Its pretty hard to say. Super Rugby’s success drained interest from NPC, but as noted below Super Rugby just doesn’t spread itself around New Zealand much anymore and there are large population bases that don’t get many games nearby. One NZs largest population centres in Bay of Plenty has a 3 hour round trip to get to a Super Rugby match, and there just aren’t that many folks who will do that for a 7pm kick off.
Palmerston North - Wellington is a 3hr30m round trip, Whangarei to Auckland is 4 hours, Napier to Wellington is 8 hours, Nelson to Christchurch is 10 hours. You might do those trips for an All Blacks test match, but you’d have to be fairly die hard to do it for what is in effect just a quite high level club footie game.
So my thinking with that fantasy franchise setup is to get back to 12 teams in Super Rugby, make the Australian clubs more competitive and then in order to balance downgrading the NPC move Super to a double round-robin (same as the NRL is). That’s 22 regular season games which is a lot more than now which helps the franchises make more money (because the live attendance is much more important for them) and more matches gives them the flexibility to spread them around a lot more.
The NPC would have to make way to give this competition room - potentially splitting into a smaller, more development focused regional series and proud provinces like Hawkes Bay would have to accept the trade of Super Rugby games instead of NPC filling McLean Park. But getting 4-5 guaranteed Super Rugby games a year with a new Eastern franchise splitting the remaining 6-7 with Rotorua & Mt Maunganui is a hell of a lot better than 1 every other year.
Cost cap… there’s a lot of merit to spreading the talent around but i’d have to think about how it could work in the NZ context.
