The world of rugby doesn’t like the Boks – and that needs to change

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South Africans love the Springboks, but let’s face it, nobody else does. Out there, from Buenos Aires to Dublin to Brisbane, people see the Boks as brutal, boring and boorish. To some extent, this is only to be expected – as a rule in sport, supporters exaggerate the sins of their team’s rivals, especially if those rivals happen to be the reigning champions. 

There are exceptions – phenomenal teams who have won millions of  “neutral” fans beyond their borders and their domestic fan bases. Think of supra-nationally sexy institutions like the rugby All Blacks, the Brazilian national football side, the Ferrari F1 team, the cricket Windies in their 1980s heyday, Pep-era Barcelona, Klopp-era Liverpool, peak Wenger-era Arsenal.  These are teams who play the game with a variable mix of brilliance, glamour and collective charm.

The Boks are never going to have that mix. Yes, they bring inspiring stories: the personal journeys of Siya Kolisi and Makazole Mapimpi, the difficult and passionate forging of a post-apartheid Bok rugby identity. And on the field itself, Cheslin Kolbe is arguably the most exciting runner in the game. 

But if your project is led by Rassie Erasmus, a man who seems to derive genuine pleasure from being hated by his sporting adversaries, and if your team cherishes a long and noble tradition of moering opponents into submission (by fair means or foul), then projecting charisma beyond the fortress walls is off-brand. A game plan built on box kicks and rolling mauls is designed to win Tests, not hearts or minds. 

And given that the Boks remain the champions of the world, who really gives a hoot about neutrals whining about their allegedly primitive tactics? 

Well, the money men at SA Rugby headquarters do give a hoot – or at least, they should do. Because world rugby is now a content war, like any other kind of streamable or sponsorable entertainment – and win-at-all-costs, percentage-driven rugby is not “compelling content”, whether Rassie or Jacques Nienaber like it or not. 

And if content is king, then money is emperor. Private equity firms have been piling into rugby union in the last couple of years, spending huge sums on stakes in joint ventures with major club and international leagues – the Six Nations sold a stake to CVC Capital Partners for close to £400-million, while the Pro14 club competition struck a similar deal with CVC for £120-million. 

Down south, New Zealand Rugby recently sold equity in the All Blacks to another private equity firm, Silver Lake, for $134-million, while SA Rugby is reportedly on the verge of a deal with CVC. 

A lot of that new money will go into stuff that makes the actual rugby better: infrastructure, player wages, data expertise, fitness advances. Maybe it’s already working – the steadily growing financial advantage held by European rugby over Antipodean rugby seemed visible on the pitch during the victories of the French and Irish over the All Blacks. 

At one level, the private equity suits don’t care whether the ball gets air in the backline or stays with the pack. What they see in rugby –  especially in the UK, Ireland, the US and France – is a steadily growing audience of affluent and loyal fans who will keep paying to watch the game – in the form of hard cash and adbreak attention – for decades to come. 

That means the private equity investors are all but guaranteed a solid return. Sports media rights are going to stay lucrative for the foreseeable future – first because live sport is what keeps the big TV networks afloat, and second, because pro sport is also an unusually safe bet in the streaming arena, compared to treacherously hit-and-miss programming such as TV drama. Because Barcelona will always be Barcelona. The All Blacks will always be the All Blacks. They will never lose the plot in their third season and get cancelled.  Even a pandemic couldn’t break professional sport’s media-rights money tap – if anything, it opened the tap a bit more. 

But there will be winners and losers. New Zealand Rugby has been pilloried by strategy experts for their failure to maximise the earning power of the All Blacks. With Silver Lake’s money and expertise, that failure will end soon. 

The Boks need to compete. The South African side’s great start in the Pro14 arena suggests they made the right call in abandoning Super Rugby. But the green and gold is where the deepest potential lies. South Africa has more teenagers than New Zealand has people. We have a deep and sophisticated rugby culture. A genetic wealth of pace and power and guts and flair. 

But to fully express all that human wealth, you need academies and scholarships and groundsmen and buses. To pay for all that, you need to be big in Japan and New York and Dubai and Toronto. And to be big all over the world, you do need to pass the ball.