NZ Rugby chair David Kirk says new TV rights deal leaves the game on ‘firm footing’

Wednesday, 27 August 2025

New Zealand Rugby chair David KIrk has shrugged off the financial hit taken by the latest broadcasting deal struck with long-time partner Sky Television, the organisation’s new boardroom boss confident it will be more than offset by significant growth in international rights revenue.

Kirk spoke to The Post soon after Friday’s announcement that NZ Rugby had renewed with Sky as their local broadcasting partner for another five-year period. Details of the deal were not released, but the new agreement is expected to yield around $85 million annually for the Kiwi game.

That is well down on the previous five-year cycle that brought in an estimated $111m a year for NZ Rugby, boosted by the presence of Spark as a bidder at the time that deal was negotiated. The Kiwi sports streaming outfit have since bailed out of the market, with their ill-fated venture crashing and burning.

Kirk, in an interview with The Post, described the new deal with Sky as an “outstanding” result for NZ Rugby, given the circumstances. He also gave short shrift to any suggestions the drop in revenue would have a detrimental effect on the organisation's spending power at a time of rising costs.

The former World Cup-winning All Blacks captain, who took over from Dame Patsy Reddy as chair of the remade NZ Rugby board late last year, also confirmed that sponsorship revenue had now overtaken broadcasting rights fees as the organisation’s chief earning stream as it continued to fight a winning battle to fund the game in this country.

“I’m very pleased,” said Kirk of the new TV deal that had demanded protracted negotiations, with the two organisations starting out some way apart. “It’s great for NZ Rugby to continue to have Sky as our long-term partner. They’ve done it for a lot of years, and they know how to do it well. They’re a good partner.

“We’ve got a number that’s not as high as the previous number in terms of the domestic broadcast deal, and that’s understandable given that last time around it was a competitive situation.”

But this agreement carried significant extra layers, such as the carving out of provincial rugby in a separate free-to-air deal with TVNZ, and the separation of five additional, to be negotiated, offshore internationals over the five-year period, as ways they have worked around that decreased investment from Sky.

And Kirk said with significant change to the international schedule about to kick in, including the imminent launch of the Nations Championship and introduction next year of the Greatest Rivalry tours agreement between New Zealand and South Africa, it was anticipated international TV rights deals would take a major upswing.

“A real feature of this period is the quality of the content coming up, and that will be reflected in the size of the international revenue we get. So although our number is lower for domestic broadcasting revenue in this period, our international revenue is going to be significantly higher, which will get us back to square one, or even slightly ahead.”

Kirk confirmed the five potential additional offshore tests apiece for the All Blacks and Black Ferns, respectively, were more likely to come into the post-2027 World Cup period, but would “bring additional broadcast value”.

All of which, Kirk added, fell into the broader strategy of continuing to build and leverage global brands, such as the All Blacks, which he said remained the No 1 recognised rugby name on the international market.

”Building our brands in other parts of the world allows us to gain in some cases additional broadcasting media rights, but also definitively stronger sponsorship numbers. As long as we’ve got great global brands and lots of people are engaging with us, sponsors want to be beside that brand because they get a lot of reach and eyeballs on their brand.”

The new deal with Sky, added Kirk, brought the two organisations back on the growth path established by previous agreements, though he conceded NZR remained challenged around how effectively that revenue was spent.

“Those challenges are twofold: what are we spending our money on and are we getting a good return on that? So we have to look at our cost base and our return on investment, and what sort of growth can we expect from the growth capital we’re investing in?

“We need to grow, and there are opportunities to grow. [Private equity investor] Silver Lake have been good at helping us to understand what the nature of those opportunities are and how we can access them. That’s the building of the fanbase and content development capability, and having a global fan acquisition strategy.

“We need to do that in a way that gives us good return on capital and, frankly, which is within our means. We’re small – 5 million people and a long way away – and we have to engage with global lovers of rugby if we’re going to build our revenue sources beyond our own shore.”

For now NZ Rugby continues to stay ahead of the game in an ongoing battle to offset record expenses with record revenue. But, just ask captain Kirk, it remains an exacting process with fine lines of success, or otherwise.