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All Blacks will play the name game
By GREG FORD - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 30 March 2008
All Blacks will play the name game - Rugby news & coverage - Stuff.co.nz
How long do you think it will be before we see a sponsor's name emblazoned across the front of an All Blacks jersey?
The very thought a few years ago would have been enough for hundreds of long-departed All Blacks to turn in their graves. But as the sport's evolution in the professional era gathers pace - who would have thought a Bledisloe Cup match would be sold to the highest bidder? - there's a resignation that it's a matter of not if the famous black jersey will one day have logo splashed across it but when.
When will it follow in the footsteps of the New Zealand Sevens jersey or for that matter just about every other test jersey?
Some in the sponsorship industry are wondering why the New Zealand Rugby Union has not done it already, especially in these money-conscious times. The answer to that is the NZRU indirectly has. New Zealand rugby's main sponsor, adidas, effectively pays the NZRU not to have a shirt sponsor, which has preserved the jersey's character. But their reasons are not purely altruistic.
The adidas name and logo is stitched into the right side of the All Black jersey, except for at the world cup when it moves to front and centre and the tournament logo sits opposite the silver fern.
Adidas believes its logo has more impact on the jersey when it's unsullied by a name plastered across the chest - even their own. So they at least subscribe to the less is more theory. However, for how long remains unclear.
There's no doubt the jersey has lost some of its lustre after repeated failures at world cups. Its value has hardly been enhanced either by players cashing in on their All Black status by giving up the jersey after only a few tests to head offshore. Adidas' loyalty will come under the microscope when the sponsorship agreement with the NZRU comes up for renewal at the end of 2011 and there's every chance the matter is already on the agenda now.
Both parties went to the bargaining table two years before the previous deal expired. The NZRU was able to carve out, or unbundle as they say in the world of marketing, the rights to what balls are used in test matches and a shirt sponsor on all the team's training apparel.
Gilbert and Steinlager respectively snapped them up - more than making up for a small dip in value in the adidas deal, which is still a massive chunk of the NZRU's annual income (about $US6 million a year).
But now that the New Zealand dollar is so strong, times are becoming tough for the NZRU which earns the vast majority of its income in greenbacks, and it has openly admitted it is looking at new ways of making more cash.
Every other test-playing nation has a shirt sponsor. Qantas pays a seven-figure sum to have its name on the Wallabies' jumper, and if the rumours about the Steinlager deal are true, then it would cost a sponsor at least twice the $1m a year the brewery coughs up every year to be on the training gear. While this would be the final straw for some of the game's traditionalists in this country, the game must keep apace with the times and in sport you should never say never.
One of the most famous football teams in the world did just that for 107 years. The Barcelona football team withstood some mind-boggling offers from the biggest companies in the world wanting to splash their names across the front of the distinctive Barca strip.
For more than a century they said no but less than two years ago they buckled, albeit in a rather novel fashion. Instead of accepting an offer from a large telco or betting agency, they seized the initiative and approached Unicef.
The charity is now the name on Barcelona's shirt and they didn't have to pay a cent. In fact Barcelona agreed to pay the food aid charity $2m a year. It was both a marvellous gesture and a marketing masterstroke.
Barcelona was showered with praise and shirt sales sky-rocketed. So what they lost in terms of sponsorship dollars they regained in merchandise revenue. Best of all, the team's major stakeholders, the fans, were happy. How the NZRU appease the fans if it's to take a similar path will make or break such an arrangement.
There would no doubt be outrage from many sectors of the community if the All Black jersey carried a large logo on it, but really, should we be that appalled? Would it be that much of an indignity?
If we still believe the silly pretence that the All Black jersey is some sort of mystical object, then the answer is yes. But if we're mature enough, or simply don't care about rugby as much as we used to, then we should be able to stomach the commercial reality that the All Blacks jersey one day won't be all black.
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Originally Posted by Coach
