All Blacks v Wallabies – Eden Park, 7.05pm, Saturday
A slow-to-sell-out Bledisloe Cup test at Eden Park two weeks after the New Zealand Warriors filled the stadium in the proverbial blink of an eye will likely encourage the most unlikely ambition in sport to again be given the credibility it can’t rationally be afforded.
The ambitious goal in question is the one held by Warriors chief executive Cameron George who told the Herald last year that he’s determined to grow his club into the country’s most lucrative and highest value sports brand in New Zealand.
This would see the Warriors surpass the All Blacks as the biggest sporting brand in the country – something George, and others feel is not beyond the realms of possibility.
But there is a halo effect around the Warriors that has seemingly won the club a goodwill, high-trust licence within wide tracts of the Auckland media and the sporting community that enables nebulous dreaming to be misread as strategic planning.
The Warriors are certainly growing their commercial footprint and George appears to be doing an outstanding job of running the club.
This year, they enjoyed record home attendances with 356,000 tickets sold. And that comes after a record year in 2025, and if the Warriors have shown one outstanding attribute that every other brand in New Zealand would kill for – including the All Blacks – it is how to remain popular and commercially dynamic, irrespective of results.
However, a dispassionate, critical analysis of the Warriors and All Blacks as sporting brands leads overwhelmingly to the conclusion that George was a little Trumpian in the scale of his vision, in that he made an outrageous claim and simply hoped, or knew, that no one would properly challenge what he said.
Fair play, this is the entertainment business and for any chief executive who knows certain elements of the public and the media are in thrall to him, why not lay out the pipe dream and sit back as it’s written up almost as fact, or at least an inevitability.
But when the situation is fact-checked – or at least reality-checked – the two brands don’t look remotely comparable.
Comparing some of the available metrics paints the gulf between them. The Warriors, it is understood, sell the naming rights on the back of their shorts for about $100,000 a season. The front-of-jersey deal they have done with One NZ is thought to be worth about $1.5 million a year and their apparel partner, Dynasty, is likely to be paying around $1m a year for the merchandise rights.
In comparison, the All Blacks sold the back of their shorts naming rights to Gallagher Insurance for an estimated US$6m ($10.5m), the front-of-jersey space to Altrad for €24m ($48m), their training gear to Toyota for $10.5m, and their apparel deal with Adidas is believed to be worth $20m.
In total, the All Blacks have about $125m of sponsorship invested in them. Figures that shed light on the Warriors accounts are not in the public domain, but estimates suggest the club’s total turnover in any given year is around $20m-$25m.
The Herald reported that Autex Industries bought the Warriors outright in 2019 when it purchased a 67% stake from the Carlaw Trust for $8m, having paid $10.5m for the other 33% in 2018.
In published brand evaluations, the Warriors are not ranked as one of the top 10 most valuable clubs in the NRL.
In 2022, New Zealand Rugby’s commercial assets – effectively the All Blacks – were valued at $3.5 billion and Silver Lake paid $262m to buy a 7.5% equity stake.
There is a definitive sense living in Auckland that the Warriors hold the nation transfixed when they play and that everyone not crammed into Go Media Stadium – from the blue-collar hardcore fans, to the middle-class mums who have long held an anti-rugby bias but love the idea of a family day out at the “football”, to media royalty such as Mike Hosking – is sprawled on the couch watching.
Again, that’s not quite what the numbers say. A typical Warriors game last year would have, it is believed, an audience of between 300,000-350,000 on Sky, with bigger fixtures jumping to 470,000.
This year, 2.1 million Kiwis watched the All Blacks play South Africa in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry, while – just for the sake of context – 745,000 people watched the Blues lose to the Crusaders in this year’s first Super Rugby Pacific semi-final.
There are two other areas, however, that highlight most demonstrably the gulf in brand power between the two.
The first is the comparative overseas grip of the two brands. The Warriors say they sold $100,000 worth of merchandise at the 2025 Super Round – and in the same year, they played in Las Vegas in front of 45,000 fans.
This year, 68,000 people watched the All Blacks play in Baltimore, while two years ago in San Diego, they sold more All Blacks jerseys before their game against Fiji than Manchester United did when they played at the same ground the year before.
The All Blacks have also sold out neutral venue games in Chicago (twice), Tokyo, London and Hong Kong.
Secondly, the on-field legacy of the two teams is so different as to suggest it is almost ridiculous to even compare them.
The Warriors have only ever won the NRL’s minor premiership in 2002. The All Blacks have won the World Cup three times, countless Tri-Nations and Rugby Championships and their win record of 76%, achieved over more than 120 years, is recognised as the best of any sporting team in any code anywhere in the world.
These are not numbers that suggest the Warriors are likely to surpass the brand value of the All Blacks in George’s lifetime – and the more realistic ambition would be for them to set their sights on becoming the NRL’s biggest sporting brand.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
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