Super Rugby Pacific gladly made itself a guinea pig for the global game back in 2022 when it decided to introduce innovations designed to kill the volume of dead time and generate a higher volume of ball-in-play content.
It was a move that had two distinct goals. The first was to regenerate fan interest in a competition that had lost its way since 2016 due to ill-conceived expansion plans.
Super Rugby had been the most vibrant and engaging club competition when it launched in 1996, but by 2016, when it encompassed four continents, 16 time zones and had 18 teams, it collapsed under its own weight.
When Covid then hit in 2020 and led to New Zealand closing its borders for two years, the competition had to endure more restructuring and geographical repositioning, and yet more fans walked away from it.
As much as anything else, the introduction of an empowerment plan for officials to speed up how long it takes to set scrums and take goal-kicks, as well as lessening the influence of the TMO, was about giving the competition a story to sell to fans.
It was a way of sending a message that Super Rugby was going to put fans back at the core of its thinking and do all it could to produce the sort of high-impact, aerobic rugby that connects so well with the Southern Hemisphere psyche.
It was also an opportunity to show the rest of the world, but particularly administrators in the Northern Hemisphere, what rugby could look like with a few minor tweaks that didn’t mess with its foundations.
Dead time has decreased by more than six minutes per game since 2022. It’s come through making micro savings in various facets of the game that have historically been enabled to drag on for too long.
The plan was to produce faster, more dynamic contests that brought the fans back and then use the evidence to persuade the North that there needed to be universal adoption of some of the behaviours and innovations that were being trialled.
And after 10 rounds of Super Rugby in 2024, the evidence is mounting to support the logic of the plan.
Data has been released to show that dead time has decreased by more than six minutes per game since 2022.
It’s come through making micro savings in various facets of the game that have historically been enabled to drag on for too long.
The arrival of a 60-second shot clock on goal-kicks has been instrumental in speeding things up.
In 2022 it was taking an average of 80 seconds between a penalty being awarded and a kick at goal being taken.
That figure dropped to 71 seconds in 2023 and is now at 68 seconds in 2024.
The time lapse between a try being scored and the game being restarted has also been cut in the last three years – from 113 seconds in 2022, to 100 in 2023 and now it sits at 99 seconds.
This stacks up when the average number of tries scored per game sits at 7.5 as it currently does (up from 6.4 in 2022).
Super Rugby has given the Southern Hemisphere the evidential case it needed to present to the rest of the world that playing around in the margins can deliver huge benefits without compromising the gladiatorial nature of the sport or depowering the set-piece.
Critically, given the number of penalties that are kicked to touch, the figures show how much better Super Rugby is managing the dead time involved in this process.
In 2022 it was taking 33 seconds between the referee awarding the penalty and the kicker striking the ball into touch. Now it takes 26 seconds.
These seconds add up, and so too does the time taken by TMOs to adjudicate on tries and foul play, which is another area where Super Rugby has made a critical reduction.
The average number of TMO interventions in 2024 has dropped to 1.3 from 1.6 last year, and on average that translates as 34 seconds less per game being spent checking tries and 38 seconds less per game checking foul play.
The savings have led to the total time per game dropping from 93 minutes and 51 seconds in 2022 to 91 minutes and seven seconds in 2024.
There is also an evidential basis that these changes are helping Super Rugby regenerate its audiences – albeit not as quickly or as dramatically as it was hoped – with Sky TV in New Zealand saying it has seen an 11 per cent lift in overall viewership this year.
Much of this increase is due to making more content available on a free to air channel, and so an 11 per cent rise is not as sensational as it may appear.
But still, Super Rugby has given the Southern Hemisphere – or New Zealand and Australia at least – the evidential case it needed to present to the rest of the world that playing around in the margins can deliver huge benefits without compromising the gladiatorial nature of the sport or depowering the set-piece.
Arguably, Super Rugby has produced an undeniable blueprint that the game should universally empower referees to better manage the dead spots, retain shot clocks for goal-kicks and consider where else they could be introduced to speed things up.
But one other aspect of Super Rugby Pacific that New Zealand and Australia want the rest of the world to embrace remains contentious – and that is the 20-minute red card.
The evidence suggests that teams can stay competitive with a numeric disadvantage for, about, 20 minutes. If a team is shown a red card with more than 20 minutes of a game to go, rarely do they win it.
A vote on whether to universally adopt this will be held on 9 May, but it’s not clear whether it will win the requisite 75 per cent to be passed into law.
Again, New Zealand and Australia, as well as their Sanzaar partners South Africa and Argentina, believe the 20-minute red card – whereby the sent off player can be replaced – is a means of ensuring fans can get to see the contest they paid to watch.
In the South, 20-minute red cards have been used in Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship since 2021 because they believe it’s a better way to preserve the sanctity of the contest, while they would also like to see tougher post-match sanctions imposed on the individual perpetrators to not trivialise the offences.
They don’t believe that lessening the punitive nature of a red card will endanger player safety, and the prevailing view is that rugby can’t sustain meaningful contests when it ends up being 14 versus 15.
The evidence suggests that teams can stay competitive with a numeric disadvantage for, about, 20 minutes.
If a team is shown a red card with more than 20 minutes of a game to go, rarely do they win it.
There are exceptions – England beating Argentina at last year’s World Cup after Tom Curry was sent off after 11 minutes – but mostly a red card in the first half or early in the second, removes any uncertainty of outcome for the fans.
When it’s realised that 30 red cards have been shown in the 160 Tests played between the leading nations since 2021, it’s a significant decision for rugby to ponder.
The current stats show that almost one-in-five Tests are impacted by a red card, but against that, the need to reinforce good tackle technique and preserve player safety is paramount.
Which is why NZR chief executive Mark Robinson is not sure what the outcome of the vote will be.
“There’s always contrasting views on major matters but, by and large, there’s an acknowledgement that what we’re seeing through three years of work through the Rugby Championship and Super Rugby could be a really positive development for the game and a nod to acknowledging we’re listening to fans,” he said recently.
“We want to make sure red card scenarios we’ve seen in recent times don’t limit the nature of the competition.”
What Robinson does know, however, is that if the vote doesn’t pass, Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship will continue with the 20-minute red card ruling regardless because they believe it is the best way for the game to keep fans hooked.
It’s easy for these kiwi “journalists” to throw around meaningless numbers to make it seem that things are improving, but if you look at the stats behind this 11 percent it says that after 10 rounds of rugby there is only a paltry 160k cumulative viewers in total.. That is on average 16k viewers watching a single round of Super Rugby.I very much doubt any of the other numbers that Gregor so proudly “reports” on.
Here’s hoping the emphasis on how the tmo interfaces on game infractions is taken into account more seriously than what was adjudicated during the 23 wc. That was a shambles, plus Barnes the abs ref never contested some of the calls, something he’s known for. And then we're left with wr opologizing after the game that smith’s try was legit. I was even more pizzed.
And as for the red card if the infringement is clearly intentional foul then the individual is out of the game and after 20mins the bench replacement comes on. So, there’s then the degree of seriousness taken into account within the 20min stand down.
Not sure why the article doesn’t hit on TMOs this year, that’s were they were putting focus right. The fact the other areas haven’t improved shows just how poor the comp is at focusing on its direction. There should still have been further gains in both those areas this year even it if didn’t have the same focus as others.
The whistle to restart time, like touch finders of 26 seconds, surely has to be a key focus area next year. Why should a side be given so much time to kick for touch? Cut that down to 5 or 10 seconds, penalties both become less of key stalling/defensive strategy, and become more ‘live’ with tap kicks becoming much more favourable quick actions. Theres absolutely no reason we have to wait over 10 secs for the preferred kicker to walk up and try and take maximum advantage, especially when half the time its just a delay tactic to give the forwards time to plan, as the kicker hardly even trys to find the corner with his kick, anyone could have kicked it straight out for the lineout.
Speeding the game up is great, but I think we will find that the increase in viewership this year mostly comes down to the competition being more competitive…the fall of the Crusaders has been a boon for viewership.
This should be at the heart of super rugby changes - how to make the comp more even
Super Rugby Pacific has been better as a spectacle due to the emphasis on speeding the game up and I’d look at taking things a step further. Instead of giving teams 90 seconds to take a conversion, let’s bring that down 60 seconds. You could also look at allowing 45 seconds for a penalty goal. Maybe teams could get 20 seconds instead of 30 to form a scrum before the ref then starts the engagement process.
However, this year the most pleasing change is the added competitiveness in the Trans Tasman matches. What does frustrate me is how the rugby media in Australasia allow the the whole ‘‘rugby is boring’’/’’rugby yawnion’’ narrative to take hold from from vindictive league types, the chairman of the ARL commission and News Limited Australia. Stick up for the game and shift the narrative!
Free to air is the key to fan expansion. I attended last weeks game at Suncorp (Reds v Blues) and the total cost is prohibitive to most people that wish to attend. Two tickets $130, parking (event day gouging) $75, road tolls $20, dinner beforehand $130, plus some petrol and a beer inside the stadium and a single game starts to cost $300-400. Who can afford that week in week out, I’d love to go more but could only afford this one game to see the Blues, I’d have loved to have seen more NZ teams here but I’d need to stop eating or sell a kidney.
Dead time reductions are important as is ball in play time increases. Premiership leads the way in terms of ball in play and Northern refereeing standards around the breakdown has sped up the game significantly. Super Rugby is trying new things but its not leading the way in terms of making gains in reducing dead time and ball in play time. Northern administrators are also not against speeding up the game, on the contrary they want a faster game and have been trying things and are embracing increasing the speed of rugby. Super Rugby isnt providing a blueprint for anything, its just part the agreed upon blueprint that administrators across the world are moving to.
Some interesting stats that just proved what my first impression of NZ’s drive to speed up Rugby Union would amount to - fine margins here and there to cut a few seconds off the game and nothing else.
To do more there would have to be wholesale changes to the game like doing away with scrums, lineouts and bringing back the ELV’s to have free kicks instead of penalties.
Very little chance of it happening but, in the end, Ruby Union would be a 15-man version of Rugby League. There are reasons why Rugby Union is globally more popular that Rugby League and what NZ are also not considering is the unintended consequences of what they want to achieve. This will end up turning Rugby Union into a low value product that will not be acceptable to the paying public.
If people really wanted a sped-up version of rugby, then why is Rugby Union globally way more popular than Rugby League?
Rugby lovers all over the world are also not stupid and have seen through what NZ are trying to achieve here, selfishly to bring back their glory days of dominance over every other nation and compete with Rugby League that is dominant in Australasia.
NH countries just don’t have the cattle, or the fantastic weather needed to play like NZ SR franchises do so good luck to whoever has to try and convince the NH to accept going back to the days of NZ dominance and agreeing to wreck the game in the process.
I have serious doubts on the validity of the TV stats presented by GP. All they did was expand the broadcasting base by putting it on free to air, not even any indication of arresting the continued drop in viewership.
Match day attendance goes hand in hand with broadcast ratings so if there was an increase in the one you should expect to see it with the other. However, the drop in match day attendance is very evident to the casual highlights package viewer. The only club who looks to be getting solid attendance is the Drua.
I am calling it now that NZ’s quest to speed up the game will fail and so will the vote on the 20-minute red card.
All of these media pundits always miss the obvious whenever they analyse what is ailing or assisting the game.
Rugby always has contentious points for debate when picking apart individual games and finding fault with itself.
All this focus and scrutiny on “speeding up the game”, “high ball in play” etc is all contextual to the fan.
As a tv viewer, if you’re absorbed into a game, regardless if your team is playing or not, more ball in play time and action are all byproducts of the contest.
A good contest subliminally affects your memory in selectively remembering all the good aspects.
A poor contest and your brain has switched off because its a blowout and the result is never in doubt or it’s a real chore to watch and remain engaged throughout.
The URC, Top 14 and English premiership are all competitions that feel like there’s real jeopardy each week.
The dominance of Super rugby by NZ teams was unhealthy from a sustainable interest perspective. You can’t fault those teams or the players, but the lack of competitions won by SA and Australian teams long term was always going to test the faith and patience of die-hard and casual fans from those regions.
SANZAR took their eye off the fans and fans voted with their feet and subscriptions. They were so concerned about expanding their product they forgot the golden rule about broadcasting live sport.
Viewers tune in more when there’s an atmosphere and a true contest. You need to fill stadiums to create one, host unions need to do more to service ticket buyers, and this year proves the other, there’s more interest in Super rugby this year only because more games are competitive with less foregone conclusions.
All these micro statistics bandied about, only interest the bean counters and trainspotters.
The match experience still sucks at SR games, irrespective of the game being a little quicker.
Rugby has to compete with so much in the modern world, if you’re going to get people to leave their houses and pay to watch a game in winter then the experience has to be worthwhile.