There should be an acute level of embarrassment among New Zealand Rugby executives at Stade
de France on Saturday night that both teams will have the Altrad name writ large across the front of their jerseys.
How Altrad’s name came to be on the national rugby shirts of both France and New Zealand is a story involving bribery and corruption in the case of the former – and in my opinion – incredible misjudgment and/or blind greed in the case of the latter.
Mohed Altrad, the billionaire owner of his eponymous construction services company, was convicted of acquiring the naming rights to the French jersey through bribery and corruption in late 2022.
He’d been charged with this, but not tried, at the time New Zealand Rugby (NZR) signed with him to take over from AIG as the All Blacks’ front-of-jersey naming rights holder in a six-year deal worth a total of $240 million.
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But incredibly, despite rugby’s pious claims that it’s a values-based sport with a code of ethics built on ideals of honesty, hard work, discipline and fair play, Altrad has been able to extend his deal with the French by a further two and a half years.
The proviso is that the deal comes with a code of ethics clause, the presence of which only highlights the lack of integrity that shrouds this ongoing relationship, as surely sponsorship contracts don’t need specific and additional reminders to both parties that they need to observe the law?
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To be clear, there is no suggestion that there was anything untoward or corrupt about the process NZR ran to secure Altrad as the All Blacks’ front-of-jersey sponsor, but there is genuine dismay that it pressed ahead with the deal knowing the accusations French authorities had made, and equally, that once the court made the conviction and handed down a suspended 18-month prison sentence, that the sponsorship wasn’t terminated.
NZR continues to hide behind two weak arguments – which are that Altrad has appealed the decision and that the deal is with the company and not the individual.
But while this may provide the thinnest veneer of justification to continue with the sponsorship, it washes off when the All Blacks play France.
Seeing both teams with the same name on their jerseys highlights that the arrangement is not exclusive – a poor look in itself that the All Blacks weren’t able to find a partner with no ties to any other national union – and the taint of the French deal can’t help but smear itself by association all over NZR.
At various times over the last two years, with various senior NZR personnel, I have discussed the wider implications that their choice of sponsorship partners has had on the All Blacks brand, and these debates always get steered towards a grey area where they say that almost any company, entity or investor could be considered contentious.
Banks fund things they shouldn’t – arms dealers, dictators, drug lords – airlines come with environmental impact, soft drinks and fast foods fuel the obesity epidemic, big tech runs addictive algorithms, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds are attached to political regimes with human rights issues.
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It is a deliberate ploy designed to suggest that this is an unwinnable battle for NZR – that it wouldn’t matter whom they partnered with as the tree huggers, Puritans and Fun Police would find grounds to object regardless.
Again, it’s a weak response from a body that believes the All Blacks are the moral guardians of the game – upholding and promoting rugby’s most treasured values.
My argument in response has always been to suggest that the basic test should be whether the All Blacks themselves are encouraged or even allowed to consume or associate directly with the products that are listed as sponsors.
If they are not encouraged to eat fast food or drink sports drinks or soft drinks, this category of sponsor is inappropriate for the team as it compromises players to help sell something they themselves won’t use as high-performance athletes.
Secondly, it should be apparent to NZR that any brand, entity or company that obviously has the capacity to divide opinion, and/or taint the All Blacks by association – either because of its reputation or activities – is also not the right fit.
It really shouldn’t have to be spelt out that doing a deal with a billionaire in 2021 after he had been arrested in 2020 was clearly fraught with reputational risk even if Altrad was acquitted.
And signing a $10m-a-year-deal with petrochemical giant Ineos to put its name on the back of the All Blacks shorts was also an obvious no.
Ineos, owned by Britain’s richest man Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has been deemed by Greenpeace to be Scotland’s worst polluter and no matter how hard NZR protests otherwise, a billionaire funnelling his fortune made by mining fossil fuels through an iconic rugby team is egregious greenwashing.
“We want to enjoy and partake in this big national institution of the game of rugby [All Blacks] knowing that sponsorship from Ineos, that they are using our game and using our players to basically greenwash the destruction that they are causing and that is directly affecting our communities and families,” Greenpeace plastics campaigner Juressa Lee told me last year.
Right now, world leaders are in Baku Azerbaijan for the UN Climate Change Conference, with everyone’s concern focused on the probability that President-elect Donald Trump will reverse the US out of its carbon emissions commitments.
And the concern is highest in the Pacific region, where many countries and island states – places where significant numbers of All Blacks are from or trace their heritage to – are already feeling the impact of rising sea levels.
Climate change is real and NZR is currently sitting next to Trump, on the wrong side of it.
If there is a bright spot on the horizon in this sponsorship debacle it is that NZR is unlikely to extend the agreements with Altrad and Ineos.
Both deals were struck before the formation of New Zealand Rugby Commercial (NZRC) – the entity set up to house and manage the game’s revenue-generating assets after the agreement to sell equity to US fund manager Silver Lake.
Now that NZRC exists and is responsible for all commercial deals, the process to find new All Blacks sponsors will look a little different.
The problem with Ineos and Altrad isn’t just the reputational taint, but that both are owned by billionaires, both are business-to-business companies and both sponsorships come with a heavy requirement around matchday hospitality.
These are big problems – as the sponsorships generate negative publicity, they come with the heightened risk of being at the whim of two billionaires rather than working with companies that have shareholders or multiple investors, and both are relatively expensive to service given the way Altrad and Ineos want to leverage the association.
When the time comes to renew – both Altrad and Ineos are signed through to 2027 – ideally, Silver Lake and the rest of the NZRC board would like to see the All Blacks have at least one global consumer brand on the front of the jersey, and ideally one with minimal risk of generating any adverse public opinion.
Having a relationship with a consumer brand makes it easier to create simple and effective promotions, and it will also increase the probability of the All Blacks being more heavily advertised in mainstream channels.
One of the issues of having business-to-business naming sponsors is that they do little to no advertising, and the All Blacks don’t get the breadth of exposure they would if they were in partnership with a consumer brand.
Just who is leading the way for NZRC when the time comes to find new jersey sponsors is a question that won’t be answered until later next year.
The organisation is currently without a chief executive after the shock departure of Craig Fenton last month.
Fenton’s departure was a shock only because of the timing, and the admission by NZRC that there was a fundamental disagreement between chief executive and board about the best strategic direction for the company to take.
While the split was sold as a lack of alignment in direction, it was, as I understand it, more a lack of compatibility in management style.
Fenton, who was engaging, hospitable and easygoing whenever I met him, apparently wanted to move too quickly for everyone’s liking.
That he ended up being frustrated and in turn, others became frustrated with him, was no surprise given the flawed nature of the set-up he entered in January this year when he started work.
A bust-up was inevitable for the simple reason that the structure of having a chief executive of NZRC and a chief executive of NZR never made sense, and from day one it was never exactly clear who was responsible for what.
The capacity for Fenton and NZR chief executive Mark Robinson to get in each other’s way was enormous, as was the probability that they would, inadvertently, undermine each other by not knowing precisely where their respective boundaries and jurisdictions lay.
As an example, it always seemed curious that Robinson was part of the Quay Park Stadium bid team, endorsing that project on the basis it had potential licensing rights attached.
But licensing rights would clearly be a commercial matter and hence under the remit of Fenton, who had no association with the bid, or perhaps even knowledge that NZR was supporting it until the news was broken by Michael Burgess in the Herald.
Now that Fenton is leaving, NZRC is expected to sit tight on finding a replacement until the new NZR board is appointed later this year.
Once the new board is in, NZR will begin a project to determine how best it can create a more viable rugby ecosystem, and it’s probable NZRC will be restructured to some extent as part of that process, and that it may not necessarily operate with a chief executive.
The big lesson to come out of Fenton’s short-lived tenure is that the current set-up needs reduced duplication and increased clarity and potentially, there will end up being a commercial manager (Fenton’s old role) and a high-performance/rugby manager (Robinson’s current role) reporting to a chief executive who straddles both NZRC and NZR.
After a year of endless and pointless bickering between the provincial unions and all other stakeholders in the game about how to restructure NZR’s governance, hopes of a fresh start being made with the appointment of a new, independent board have already taken a hit following the leaking of two people who have applied.
One of the big failings of the existing system is that good candidates don’t trust it. They don’t trust that they will end up on a board with good people around them and they don’t trust their application will be taken seriously in a world of political agendas and big egos.
The process to appoint the independent board is now under way and it seems the new worry for applicants is that their names may be leaked to the media, with the Herald revealing this week that former International Cricket Council chairman Greg Barclay and former All Blacks captain Taine Randell have both applied.
This is an inauspicious start for the new regime as the process is meant to be confidential and, if high-quality candidates have applied, they may already be regretting it.
All Blacks vs France, Sunday 9.10am.Live commentary on Newstalk ZB, Gold Sport and iHeartRadio. Live match blog at nzherald.co.nz
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