The ‘least known’ All White Tim Payne now has more followers than the All Blacks

Sunday, 31 May 2026

What: Fifa World Cup warmup match, All Whites v Haiti. Where: Chase Stadium, Fort Lauderdale. When: 12pm Wednesday (NZT), TVNZ 2 and TVNZ+.

Boca Raton, Florida: Some form of outside noise was always going to be a factor in the build-up to the All Whites' first World Cup appearance in 16 years.

But no-one expected that noise to surround Tim Payne – and for it to have arrived so early in the piece.

As the All Whites trained as a full squad for the first time ahead of the World Cup in Boca Raton, Florida, there was plenty of banter flying around about the veteran fullback's new-found social media fame.

On Wednesday morning, Argentine influencer Valen Scarsini – El Scarso – put a call out for his followers to get behind the Wellington Phoenix defender, who he'd identified as the “least-known World Cup player”.

In a little over 24 hours, Payne went from having fewer than 5000 Instagram followers to having more than 1 million – more than Scarsini himself.

As at 9am on Sunday, he had 2.9 million – and climbing – leaving the All Whites' highest profile player, English Premier League star Chris Wood, who has 162,000 in the dust, as well as a whole host of other Kiwi sports figures.

Believe it or not, that now actually includes the All Blacks, one of the most iconic sports brands in the world, who have 2.8m followers.

Instagram accounts far and wide have been desperate to leverage any potential link to Payne. Auckland FC posted photos of Callan Elliot – the other right back in the All Whites squad – “for no specific reason”. The All Blacks Sevens – in action in Spain – said a try set up by a grubber was a “Tim Payne inspired try”. The official World Cup account kept it simple: “Two words. Tim Payne”.

ESPN, The Athletic, the BBC and The Guardian have all written about it, in addition to the New Zealand media, but it looks set to be a while before anyone gets to interview the man at the centre of it all.

As All Whites training ended on Saturday (NZT), Wood quipped that they should include Payne in the traditional photo of the winning team from the end-of-session matches (in this case matches of foot tennis) to boost the metrics, even though he was on one of the losing teams.

Payne was instead taken off to one side to answer four questions from NZ Football's media team as Stuff watched on, having been denied the chance to join in.

In that in-house interview, which was later distributed to media, Payne said that when he first started “getting a few random notifications” on Tuesday afternoon in Florida, he was initially at a loss to understand why: “My Spanish isn't great”.

“So I passed it on to my missus who is fluent in Spanish and was able to let me know what it was saying.”

Payne had only posted twice on Instagram this year before this week, sharing a couple posts from the All Whites account that marked him reaching the 50-cap milestone in the team's win over Chile in Auckland in March.

“Probably, as everyone can tell, I'm not massive on social media, so for [this] to happen is a bit strange for me,” he said.

“At the same time, I'm trying to embrace it all. It's hard. I'm trying to process it all, but a the same time have a bit of a laugh and a bit of banter with it.

“I think it's come from a cool place in terms of how positive it has been.”

The All Whites are now set to have millions of people paying attention to them who otherwise might not have, as they face Haiti and England in friendlies next week, before turning their focus to their World Cup opener against Iran on June 16.

Centre back Tommy Smith said the way Payne's profile had “blown up” has “blown his mind”.

“We're all asking him every day – you keep track of how many followers he's got.

“In this day and age it shows how quickly social media can take off and become viral.

“It's great for him and it's a nice little side story, but we obviously don't want that to become a distraction for him at the same time.”

The world No 85 All Whites have a warmup match against world No 83 Haiti on Wednesday (12pm kickoff NZT).