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TJ Perenara leads ‘Kapa o Pango’ prior to the Rugby World Cup 2019 Group B game between New Zealand and South Africa on September 21, 2019 in Yokohama, Japan. Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images
TJ Perenara leads ‘Kapa o Pango’ prior to the Rugby World Cup 2019 Group B game between New Zealand and South Africa on September 21, 2019 in Yokohama, Japan. Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images

MediaOctober 15, 2019

Sky’s huge rugby rights win: everything you need to know

TJ Perenara leads ‘Kapa o Pango’ prior to the Rugby World Cup 2019 Group B game between New Zealand and South Africa on September 21, 2019 in Yokohama, Japan. Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images
TJ Perenara leads ‘Kapa o Pango’ prior to the Rugby World Cup 2019 Group B game between New Zealand and South Africa on September 21, 2019 in Yokohama, Japan. Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images

A unique deal saw Sky buy the rugby rights and sell some of itself to NZ Rugby. Trevor McKewen breaks down what it all means.

The news came thick and fast over a remarkable five-day corporate slugfest, starting last Thursday. First, Spark Sport struck, gobbling up New Zealand Cricket’s domestic broadcasting rights for the next six years. It looked like a king hit to Sky – and a godsend to New Zealand Rugby, who had a tasty Dutch auction looming around its future domestic partner.

But a little over 24 hours later, a sudden twist. News leaked out that Sky might have convinced New Zealand Rugby to not even engage with Spark and instead pledge an extension of its prized Sanzaar rights through to the end of 2025. By Monday, Sky boss Martin Stewart and NZ Rugby chairman Brent Impey had announced exactly that – but with another twist. NZ Rugby would also get a 5% shareholding in Sky as part of the deal.

So many questions. How did this happen so quickly? Who’s in front now in the bitter war for our sporting wallets? And what does it all mean for those who just want their All Blacks and Blacks Caps fix, without complications or having to give up our first born as payment?

Here’s an attempt to answer some of those questions. But first…

A temporary truce is likely

You can gather your breath for a moment. The rugby and cricket rights are gone, divided one apiece between combatants who now have their stake in the ground in terms of core product they will build their future sports business around.

There will be minor rights diversions here and there. For example, expect Spark Sport to bomb the overseas national rugby unions hosting future All Blacks tests for the likes of the end-of-season European and Asian tour rights. Those rights don’t sit with NZ Rugby. But the next significant rights deal of high interest to Kiwi sports fans isn’t until the end of 2022 when the current NRL deal expires.

Spark might be down, but it’s far from out

It might be one-all but Spark is behind in the overall battle. The rugby rights were the more strategically important of the two big prizes. We love our Black Caps. But we love our All Blacks significantly more. And primetime night rugby rates far more highly than daytime cricket.

Spark’s commitment to its sports platform was questioned when Sky CEO Martin Stewart aggressively fought back with a series of strategic moves. And Monday’s news will have hurt.

But speculation Spark might blink was swept away with one swoop of a pen through the cricket deal, making it clear it would do whatever it took to eat Sky’s lunch, including over-paying. Independent sources tell me that Sky had offered a 50% mark-up on its previous cricket deal and that didn’t even get close to what Spark put on the table. That might explain why Cricket NZ didn’t tell its 25-year partner of the deal until the morning it was announced (hurriedly and ahead of time because the NZ Herald was onto it).

Spark’s cricket announcement was also designed to send an overt message to NZ Rugby. The union was still contractually obliged to negotiate solely with Sky for a period of time that hadn’t yet elapsed. But in terms of sending NZ Rugby a message that it would move heaven and earth to secure them, the cricket bombshell surely couldn’t have been more effective.

How Sky rallied to fight back and secure the rugby

When news of Spark’s cricket deal broke, Sky’s Martin Stewart was blindsided, and admitted as much.

But instead of the blow flooring him and his executive team, it clearly galvanised them. By Sunday night, Stewart had persuaded rugby chairman Brent Impey and other decision-makers that Sky was their horse.

He did it several ways. He lifted the previous fee Sky was paying by around 30% – a significant hike. The new deal is rumoured to be $400m over five years.

Beyond cash, Stewart had already played another hand with the $60m acquisition of international rugby streaming business RugbyPass (read here about the strategic opportunity this presented Sky and NZ Rugby). That appears to have not gone unnoticed at rugby HQ.

But then came the big play which, ironically, didn’t come from Stewart and which nobody saw coming. NZ Rugby asked for a shareholding in Sky. A broadcaster giving free shares to a sports body is virtually unheard of. But it was a masterstroke by NZ Rugby and has a massive upside for the union (while also raising some legitimate concerns for other sports and around objective coverage).

NZ Rugby chairman Brent Impey explained that it was acutely aware of the business impact gaining the rugby rights would have on either Sky or Spark’s business, so wanted in on the action. Fair enough. It made perfect business sense and Sky bought it on the condition NZ Rugby inked the deal without going to Spark.

The shareholding gave NZ Rugby an immediate windfall with Sky’s shares climbing on the news. Sky’s market capitalisation is now close to $450m, making NZ Rugby’s 5% worth around $23m which is a nice sweetener on top of the rights cheque – and a shareholding that will persist beyond the current rights deal.

Working directly with Sky makes sense for NZ Rugby, which has skilfully built up an international money-spinning machine in the All Blacks, but lacks the infrastructure and platforms to build content brands beyond New Zealand.

RugbyPass gives NZ Rugby and its All Black-centric brand a marketing entrée into 64 countries, including Japan, and a chance to develop and distribute its non-match content with a committed partner and also use it on its own platforms.

There remain some concerning questions over the shareholding deal for both parties, including how it influences Sky’s relationships with rival sports. Spark will also be worried about NZ Rugby’s influence on other sports deals it chases. But for now, it seems an inspired move that has made Spark’s task tougher than ever.

So who’s made the better decision – rugby or cricket?

NZ Rugby. Not that NZ Cricket has necessarily lost – how can you when you bank a truckload of money? It has a tougher PR battle to front than its rugby counterparts though.

Rugby appears to be willing to play the long game in developing opportunities via Sky. For example, future broadcasting initiatives such as this Canon-inspired recreation of key World Cup tries, including the George Bridge strike against the Springboks, could become a coaching aid for NZ Rugby and an edge for the All Blacks, as well as a broadcasting innovation for viewers.

Impey has said that Spark’s World Cup streaming problems did not influence their decision but the outcry from rural New Zealand, a conveyor belt of future All Blacks, over the cricket announcement will surely have influenced it. Sky’s satellite delivery, moves into streaming and having a free-to-air channel in Prime was clearly more alluring than Spark’s singular streaming platform.

Spark or Sky: Who’s in front?

Sky at this stage. It has a superior long-term sporting menu now bolstered by the rugby deal, and after a sorry history, is improving its streaming offering (although not without hiccups, similar to Spark). It has the next two Olympic Games, netball, rugby sevens, Australian cricket (including when the Black Caps tour) and the next Cricket World Cup on its books.

Yet Spark’s huge chequebook remains poised. It will delve into local content production next year, and keep sniping away around whatever rights it believes can drive an audience.

What can we expect next?

The next race will be around innovation and partnership. Both companies know streaming is the sports future despite the current hiccups. That is because, as outlined here, streaming allows interactivity and engagement one-way delivery systems like cable and satellite can’t provide.

Spark needs content services to drive its coming 5G rollout. By providing new and cut-through coverage of domestic cricket, including potential second screen services via mobile devices, it can make a statement on the future of sports broadcasting in this country.

Sky will be thinking similarly. It will want to exploit its relationship with rugby, Olympians and other leading athletes in the technology space to show it is transitioning successfully into a digital multimedia platform.

Selecting strategic partners will be vital. Spark and TVNZ have sashayed alongside each other. But what of NZME, Stuff and MediaWorks? There are potential deals still to be done by both parties.

Where does this all leave viewers?

In limbo – although it’s not as bad as it seems. What used to cost $100 plus a month for Sky (if you were only interested in sport) now can cost as little as $50. Spark’s $20 a month for its subscription app is hardly a budget-buster either, although we don’t know their pricing for the cricket yet.

If you’re a rabid Black Caps fan, you’re just going to have to live with having two subscriptions. However, you can limit that to our summer instead of all year. Spark’s challenge is finding content other than the English Premier League and Formula 1 to lure New Zealanders away from Sky, or to remain with them during a barren winter during which Sky has all the big prizes.

There may still be the chance of Sky and Spark Sport getting together in a similar fashion to the BSkyB and British Telecom alliance of this year, which ended six years of bruising rights battle over English and European football.

It remains a sensible outcome – because the only real winners at the moment seem to be the sports bodies.

Keep going!
Jennifer Lopez gives the performance of her career as Ramona in Hustlers – and she deserves an oscar for it.
Jennifer Lopez gives the performance of her career as Ramona in Hustlers – and she deserves an oscar for it.

MediaOctober 12, 2019

Why Jennifer Lopez deserves an Oscar for Hustlers

Jennifer Lopez gives the performance of her career as Ramona in Hustlers – and she deserves an oscar for it.
Jennifer Lopez gives the performance of her career as Ramona in Hustlers – and she deserves an oscar for it.

Jennifer Lopez gives the performance of her career in Hustlers, and mark Sam Brooks’ words, she’s going to get an Oscar for it. And it’s long overdue, he writes.

My worst trait, at least according to me, is my tendency to side-eye people who are lumbering on up to bandwagons that I’ve been on for years. Lizzo? Been here since 2014, mate! Carly Rae Jepsen? Where were you when Kiss tanked! BoJack Horseman? I even liked the first six episodes.

One bandwagon I’m staunchly at the helm of – assuming that bandwagons have helms – is the ‘get Jennifer Lopez an Oscar’ campaign. I’ve been here for years, and I’m not ceding it for anybody. Jennifer Lopez is getting an Oscar in 2020. Half of it is because the Academy really likes giving Oscars to famous people once they do work they think is worthy of it (as Sandra Bullock’s mantlepiece can attest) and half of it is because she absolutely deserves it.

Here’s the scalding hot tea that I’ve been keeping my hands wrapped around for years now: Jennifer Lopez is one of our most enduring, committed and talented entertainers. She’s one of the few people to make the jump from acting to singing successfully and continue to do both for a long time, and maybe the only person to make the jump from dancer to actor to singer to worldwide superstar.

Jennifer Lopez in the On the Floor music video circa 2009.

Let’s leave her musical career to the side for a moment, but it’s worth noting that having the biggest hit of your career ten years in, well into your forties, as a woman, is nearly unheard of, Madonna excepted. Seriously. At one point, ‘On the Floor’ was the third most-watched video on YouTube ever. And while we’re not talking about her musical career, let’s also not talk about her voice. A great singing voice has never been a guarantee of a long lasting singing career, especially in pop music, and Lopez’s could be at best described as … competent.

Let’s also leave her fame to the side for a bit. J Lo has been one of the most famous people in the world for nearly 25 years now. It doesn’t play into her talent at all, but it weirdly is one of the reasons that makes her great in Hustlers.

What we are talking about is her acting. She gets a lot of shit for not being a very good actress, which I think is absolute bullshit. 

The sad fact is that Lopez just… hasn’t been in very many good films, and especially not the kind of films that get critics raving about the performances in them. Her performances are in horror films (The Cell, a genuinely visionary and underrated movie), romantic comedies (Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner), thrillers (The Boy Next Door, Enough) and procedurals (Shades of Blue, the two season show that nobody except me watched). She does well in pretty much all of them, even though none really make use of her wild charisma. But when she is in a role that makes use of it? She’s magic, and people take notice.

Firstly, take Out of Sight. Not only is it one of Steven Soderbergh’s best films with a remarkably tolerable turn from George Clooney, it features Lopez giving one of the best performances of the 1990s, as Karen Sisco, a cop who falls for a con artist. Lopez rises to the screwball-noir timbre of the script: She’s defensive, she’s sexy, she’s funny, she’s hard-nosed. She’s playing the archetype of the detective, while also playing a real life, breathing human being who finds George Clooney very attractive, and isn’t afraid of that. There’s not a false note in the performance, which is even more remarkable given the multiple levels of deceit that Sisco is operating on, including self-deceit.

Secondly, take Selena. A boilerplate biopic, but one that Lopez acquits herself well in. She’s not a great imitator – movie stars tend not to be especially gifted mimics – but she carries the same kind of radiance that Selena herself had. Even more importantly, she convinces as someone who could capture the attention of an entire nation, which Lopez herself would later do on a worldwide level.

Jennifer Lopez as Ramona Vegas in Hustlers.

And thirdly, triumphantly: Hustlers. As Ramona, the experienced stripper based on a real-life woman from this New York story, Lopez delivers the performance of her career. On one level, it’s just a showcase of great acting. Lopez knows Ramona inside and out – she’s the kind of person who’s looking only to their next pay cheque, and that knowledge rests in every gesture, every line reading, every reaction to someone else’s success.

But on another level, it’s the kind of performance that you can only really get from a star. A huge part of the joy in watching a star onscreen is seeing them just do things. This is Jennifer Lopez smoking in a fur coat on a rooftop. This is Jennifer Lopez doing a dance to Fiona Apple’s ‘Criminal’. This is Jennifer Lopez giving a speech on how America is exactly like a strip club (which is honestly one of those gift monologues that exists to win awards, a la Mo’Nique in Precious). As a viewer, there’s a subconscious charge to watching someone this famous doing that. This woman who has been in your brain for the past few decades is in front of you just being

Hustlers doesn’t just allow her to give the performance of her career, it’s one of those perfect roles that draws on everything a performer has in their arsenal – all the things that only they can do – and showcases them. Hustlers lets Lopez hold court, it lets her dance, it lets her be absolutely goddamned terrifying.

Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu in Hustlers.

The one thing that Hustlers draws on that no other role Lopez has ever had has asked of her is, for lack of a better word, her hustle.

The greatness of J Lo, as performer and personality, is that she lets you know how hard she’s working, but she makes it look easy. In her most memorable live performances, that’s what shines the most. Take this performance of ‘Let’s Get Loud’ (an absolute stormer) from a few years ago. It’s performance as sport – she changes outfits, she slides through people’s legs, she has more than a few dance breaks, she sings live, and she entertains. When you look at her generation of pop star, nobody is doing what she’s doing except maybe Beyonce – and even then, Beyonce is not doing precisely this. Beyonce covers the work with art, with Lopez the work is the art.

Jennifer Lopez does a dance as Ramona Vega in Hustlers.

Which is why she’s perfect for, and perfect as, Hustlers‘ Ramona. Ramona’s life is the hustle. Everything she does is in service of that, because it’s the only way she knows how to live. Jennifer Lopez has been working it, in one way or another, her entire life. Whether it’s as a Fly Girl, an actress, an American Idol judge, or walking an iconic Versace dress on a runway two decades after she made it famous, thus unwittingly inspiring the invention of Google Images, she’s always working. And she doesn’t just make it look easy, she makes it look great.

There’s a format meme that’s been going around recently, largely making fun of all the kudos that dudes get for playing dark and gritty roles, while women go largely unpraised for doing great work in lighter work that’s regarded as being easier. It goes like this ‘A actress could do B film but C actor couldn’t do D film.’

Kirsten Dunst could do Joker but Joaquin Phoenix couldn’t do Bring It On. Julia Louis-Dreyfus could do There Will Be Blood but Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t do Veep. Cate Blanchett could do The Revenant, but Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t do, well, any of Cate Blanchett’s roles.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, could do Hustlers like Jennifer Lopez does. It’s the kind of role that would make her a star right from the jump, if she wasn’t already one of the most famous women in the world. But right now, I think she’ll be happy just settling for an Oscar.

You can watch Hustlers in theatres now, and you really should.

But wait there's more!