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.
  • Olap@lemmy.worldM
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    2 months ago

    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

    • TagMeInSkipIGotThis@lemmy.nzOP
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      2 months ago

      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.