NZ Rugby's (silver) lake of fire

Another internecine rugby war looms; stadium stuff Pt LXVII; netball has issues; and why watching Will bat is so delightfully frustrating.

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If you’ve followed the Silver Lake saga from start to nowhere near finished, you might have noted two interesting yarns on the topic in the past fortnight.

Trevor McKewen, who excavated the original deal in his Business Desk podcast Pieces of Silver alerted us to the mystery of the second capital raise here ($). The terms of the second capital raise was part of the compromise deal struck with the Players’ Association, that would allow big local investment operators - think ACC and the major Kiwisaver funds - to buy into NZ Rugby’s commercial operations.

Wrote McKewen:

A $100m capital raise is not insignificant in NZ business circles. 

Normally, lofty pageantry and senior figureheads would be associated with high-profile promotion of the opportunity from chairs, CEOs and others downwards presenting ritzy prospectus.

Yet NZR’s efforts in taking the opportunity to Kiwi institutional investors appear to have been underwhelming at best. There’s been no song, let alone dance. 

One source I spoke to even felt a vibe that NZR did not want any additional shareholding from the NZ investment industry.

This is critical, given that the deal had Silver Lake underwriting the second raise, which meant it could reinvest between $62m – which was the minimum offering to institutions – and $100m, depending on the local uptake to increase their equity stake in NZ Rugby CommCo from 5.6 percent to more than 8 percent.

Now, according to Gregor Paul, the Players’ Association appears prepared to go to court to prevent this happening ($).

It’s quite dense subject matter, but essentially boils down to this:

Did NZR make a desultory attempt to sell the remaining available stake in its business locally to strengthen its ties with Silver Lake?

 The 8.6 percent stake Silver Lake could now take would get them much closer to the original offer of 15 percent that was revised down to 12.5, and finally ended on 5.6 after the initial capital raise.

Most critically, and the hill that NZRPA appeared prepared to wage battle upon, is whether NZ Rugby needs a further cash injection?

Covid might still be around, but it is no longer playing havoc with the global sports market, which has largely recovered. Millions are sloshing around in NZR’s bank accounts. More is about to come with the money maker that is the Nations Cup. One of the upshots of the Pilkington Report should be the curbing of the power and the profligacy of the country’s provincial unions.

Where and what exactly is the argument for selling off more of rugby’s future revenues for a cash boost it no longer needs?

Underpinning all this edginess around Silver Lake are questions about what they have actually helped deliver, aside from a shiny new app on a world-class but expensive platform that has so far failed to deliver anywhere near close to the registrations expected ($).

At the very least, many observers are thinking, it would be nice to see a few obvious commercial and strategic wins on the board before Silver Lake starts carving off millions in perpetuity from the annual balance sheet.

Of course, what rugby desperately needs in 2024 is another NZR v NZRPA clash because, frankly, we didn’t get enough of it in circa 2020-21. 

As they say in Clichèville, a small hamlet in the south of France where all those interminable World Cup travelogue shows did their filming, watch this space. 

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More great ideas for Auckland to reject

The Auckland stadium debate has reached that icy plateau where a bunch of great ideas are competing with each other to see which will slip off the mountain first.

We have raised a quizzical eye at the crater on the waterfront.

We have laughed at the sheer audacity of Eden Park 2.0.

We know former mayor Phil Goff was wowed by the possibilities of a park on Ngāti Whātua and railways land at Quay St.

We have also known that a consortium was bubbling away in the background, preparing something big on the old tank farm land at Wynyard Point.

That began to show its face more fully last week in Business Desk.

The Auckland Waterfront Stadium debate has taken an intriguing turn, with the world’s most innovative stadium designers – Populous – entering the race alongside one of the world’s biggest venue operators.

Populous is an American-based global architectural and design company specialising in sports stadia. It is famed for its innovative approach, most recently employed with the dazzling US$2.3 billion Las Vegas Sphere.

It has linked forces with a group that wants the new national stadium built at the Tank Farm near Auckland’s Wynyard Pt.

Another compelling component to the hitherto little-known bid is the inclusion of the massive international operations group ASM Global, which runs almost 400 entertainment and sports venues globally, including 20,000 live events annually.

To the untrained eye, the Wynyard option presents a compelling case, with the land already marked for redevelopment into a rather dull looking dog-walking park and some cookie cutter apartments. Auckland would lose nothing by shelving this plan and getting more ambitious.

Critically, it is centrally located and also within easy access to the city’s best hotels, the ASB Theatre, a convention centre that could be repurposed, and nightlife precincts at Wynyard Quarter and the Viaduct Harbour, with Britomart and Ponsonby Rd just a little further afield.

Where it might get tripped up is moving people effectively in and out of the stadium without snarling up Auckland’s already clogged transport arteries, but this might be true of every option in a city that has long struggled to get people out of cars and onto public transport.

The Tank Farm and Quay St (Te Taongaroa)  ideas shape as not just a sports and entertainment but also a real estate play, a trend best captured in this Guardian feature headlined: “‘The stadium is secondary’: how sports teams became real-estate speculators.”

Mixed-use developments where people can live, work, shop, dine, drink and play have become ubiquitous as teams seek to squeeze as much profit as possible from their land. The old paradigm was to build a new stadium with high-end facilities inside to cater to the corporate set, boosting matchday income and attracting showpiece events such as Super Bowls, World Cup games and blockbuster concerts by stars like Swift.

Now teams also want to dictate how dollars are spent each day in the streets around their venues, a trend turning billionaire sports owners into influential city planners.

In this case it wouldn’t be a single “team” but the stadium owners, but the concept remains.

Now that the Tank Farm idea is looking mostly fully formed and compelling - it includes an external amphitheatre that looks to the harbour in anticipation of events such as SailGP - wait for those with vested interests to tell you myriad reasons why it can’t get done. This is why nothing ever gets done in the only major Australasian city that can’t have nice sports things.

Many of those vested interests will be tied up in the status quo, ie Eden Park.

Which brings us to…

There is an irony in the fact a very bad idea, one whose only redeeming feature is that it isn’t Eden Park, is the one most likely to get done.

Auckland Cricket are on a mission to kill the sport in the country’s biggest city and have found the murder weapon - taking the game to a bang-average suburban park that Roald Amundsen and his team of ill-fated dogs would have struggled to find.

Walking distance from the CBD (if you’re drunk and have lost phone and wallet).

The move to Colin Maiden Park makes little sense (and not just due to its location), as has been highlighted more than once in The Bounce. It just seems like a silly placeholder that ensures that big white-ball matches will remain shoehorned into Eden Park (although NZC doesn’t want that and the park itself would choose Taylor Swift above cricket any day of the week).

CMP has been labelled by some cricket administrators I’ve talked to over the past year as “the least-worst option” and while it’s a nice line in deprecation, it’s still wildly overselling the park. Another called it a “convenient short-term solution” but the only true words in that line are “short term”.

That town burgher Desley Simpson got away with this line in the above linked Herald piece is probably reflective of the fact she knows that people have stopped caring.

“I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t think Colin Maiden isn’t a good location. Everybody is keen for it to happen.”  

In which case one can only assume Simpson hasn’t found anyone, full stop.

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Troubling times for netball, as reported by Radio New Zealand. a sport that seems to have been in the doldrums for an extended period. The popularity of certain sports does go in cycles, but few are in a position like netball is where they have to suddenly counter the rapid rise in investment in direct competitors for talent, eyeballs and commercial partners. 

Insiders are warning Netball NZ is “close to having a crisis on its hands” after Sky’s bid for rights for the ANZ Premiership and Silver Ferns tests was significantly lower than previous deals, reported former Stuffer Dana Johannsen.

One official with knowledge of the negotiations told RNZ the offer from Sky was “less than half” its current broadcast rights agreement, which will expire at the end of the 2024 season.

The lowball offer is said to have generated panic within Netball NZ's offices, with the broadcast deal, thought to be around $10 million, covering the salary caps of the six ANZ Premiership franchises.

“The broadcast revenue essentially funds the entire model,” the official said. “If Netball NZ can’t find a way to cover that shortfall, then the future of the league, and the future of the sport, is looking very, very shaky.”

Rugby, football, league, cricket and even AFL now offer viable pathways for the best female athletes. Whereas netball’s biggest challenge once came from basketball, now it is multipronged. Innovation cannot start and finish with the Fast5 - life must be breathed into the ANZ Premiership, and fast.

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Women’s rugby is not without challenges either, as young females “flock” to the game.

From The Guardian:

Since the Black Fern’s victory, participation in women’s and girls’ community rugby in New Zealand has grown by 20 percent and almost 30,000 played in the 2023 season, according to New Zealand Rugby. However, the jump in popularity has exposed challenges: female players often lack access to their own change rooms…

“When we go [to away games] and use men’s changing rooms, they are not female-friendly at all,” says Jodie Somerville, adding that the club is using a $30,000 grant to fit out its change rooms for next season. She says men’s change rooms often only have one toilet and numerous urinals. “There’s a lot of waiting so team talks are short,” Sommerville says.

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A rain-shortened thrashing of Bangladesh by a New Zealand 2nd XI would not have quickened the pulse for many, so we will not linger long in Dunedin, other than to say there might be nothing prettier in New Zealand cricket at the moment than Will Young scoring runs.

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He’s so damned lovely to watch, it only increases the frustration because you suspect he will end his career as one of the great what-ifs.

What if he’d been given an extended run of unbroken matches?

What if he’s turned one of the half-centuries early in his test career into a match-defining century?

While his career has been badly mishandled, it still has to be acknowledged that he has had chances to nail down a test spot and it just hasn’t quite happened.

Instead it appears we’ll have to satisfy ourselves with snippets of his talent as he continues as Gary Stead’s most easily dispensable toy.

There was some gentle pushback on my column headlined “International cricket is withering on the vine, so why do we still play so much of it?” It was mostly around the idea that this 2nd XI team was of limited interest or, in my words, provided a “wet fart” of a start to the Black Caps’ summer.

Some noted it was the perfect opportunity to blood some fresh faces and to increase the depth.

If cricket was a purely high-performance exercise, I would have no argument there, but you cannot ignore the public relations element.

Those that mentioned the above were noted cricket tragics. Being one myself, I can sympathise with all who are far more interested in what Will O’Rourke might be able to offer than watching Tim Southee’s 7000th appearance.

But NZC doesn’t have to worry about people like myself, Dave B, Tania W and Andy. For better and sometimes worse, they have us for life. They do have to worry about the next generation of fans, however, and to that end my point remains valid.

If you are bulk-resting the cream of your team for a series, you are effectively telling the public it has no meaning. Sport without meaning has limited value.

There has to be a better way of managing not just schedules, but the rotation of players.

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As was widely expected, Pakistan offered about two days worth of fight in the first test against Australia at Perth. The series is meant to be all about David Warner, and he certainly played his part with a big ton in the first dig, but Nathan Lyon ended up stealing his limelight with 3-66 and 2-14 taking him past a landmark that only seven before him have reached. Here’s a piece explaining his greatness, that has a couple of nice lines.

Taking the ball in Sri Lanka in 2011 is a baby version, head ringed in duck down, face thin and anxious. There are glimpses of his future - start with turn away from the left-hander to get Kumar Sangakkara at slip, end with a diving return catch for a fifth. But there is the confusion of his present, a player unsure how to celebrate when each wicket falls, waving his limbs and jumping sporadically like a foal tangled in a fence…

He has 501 wickets now. Glenn McGrath’s 563 is close. Shane Warne’s 708 is distant but not impossible. He would probably never admit it was a goal, but Nathan Lyon is the kind of character who could just keep quietly grinding towards it.

Xmas schedule (and gift idea!)

As the holiday season hits, The Bounce plans on purchasing a vat of SPF and trying to sneak a few days off, so the emails might become slightly more sporadic and irregular. I’d like to say that was the reason why no columns have appeared over the last week, but that was due to events unforeseen, so apologies for those who might have been waiting on tenterhooks yesterday.

Going forward, I hope to be able to to provide a more solid weekly schedule. For example, look out this Friday for a wrap of some of my favourite stories of the year.

In the meantime , if you’ve left your shopping until the 11th hour and are looking for a timeless gift for your sports mad father-in-law, cousin, colleague or cellmate, click on this…