The New Zealand All Blacks are arguably the most famous rugby team in the entire world. They are a huge brand and so someone has got to make money from the All Blacks. So who owns the All Blacks team?
Who owns the All Blacks team? New Zealand Rugby own the All Blacks. They are the governing body of New Zealand Rugby and own the majority of the team. A small share is owned by private equity firm Silver Lake.
Exactly who owns the New Zealand Rugby team can sound a little bit complicated. That is because the All Blacks are owned by New Zealand Rugby which is the governing body of the sport. New Zealand Rugby do not only cover the All Blacks, but also the All Blacks XV, the Sevens team and the Black Ferns.
New Zealand Rugby therefore owns the All Blacks team, but they do not own the entire team. That is because in 2022, New Zealand Rugby made a historic deal with US private equity firm Silver Lake. Silver Lake agreed to buy a stake in the All Blacks team of 8.58% in exchange for around $200m NZD.
The deal was struck so that the All Blacks and New Zealand rugby in general could get a huge amount of immediate investment as they struggled through the pandemic financially. It was a record breaking deal and it could be the sort of deal that we saw happening more often in the next few years.
The deal still means that New Zealand Rugby owns the majority of the All Blacks team, with Silver Lake owning a very small part of the All Blacks team.
Who is in charge of the All Blacks?
The All Blacks are one of the most popular rugby teams in the world, so being in charge of that team cannot be easy for any player.
Ian Foster is the man currently in charge of the All Blacks. He is the head coach of the New Zealand Rugby team. Foster is one of those coaches who had a very successful rugby career. As a fly-half, Foster played almost 150 times for his region Waikato, as well as making 26 appearances for the Chiefs in Super Rugby.
Having started coaching with his province in 2002, he became the head coach of the Chiefs in 2004. In his seven year stint with the Chiefs, Foster was able to get them to the Super Rugby final in 2009, but could not quite get over the line and claim the title. After leaving the Chiefs in 2011, he became an assistant with the All Blacks team.
Foster was part of the coaching staff for the All Blacks Rugby World winning team of 2015. After Steve Hansen left the team following the 2019 Rugby World Cup, Foster was announced as the team’s new head coach. It has not been the easiest of times with the All Blacks for Foster.
Foster was in charge of the All Blacks for their first loss to Argentina, as well as their first loss to Argentina on home soil. After the All Blacks lost the series to Ireland in 2022, there were some calls for Foster to be sacked. But he will remain as the team’s head coach until the end of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, with Crusader’s head coach Scott Robertson taking over after that.
Who is in charge of New Zealand Rugby?
While head coach Ian Foster is in charge of the All Blacks, there is a different man who is in charge of the entirety of New Zealand Rugby. Bill Osborne is the current President of New Zealand Rugby, therefore he is the man currently in charge of New Zealand Rugby.
Not a lot of people will have heard of Bill Osborne in the past, but he started playing rugby for Wanganui in 1973. The centre was very talented and he made his All Blacks debut in 1975. Osborne would end up playing 16 times for the All Blacks, making his last appearance for his country in 1982, before retiring from rugby four years later.
Osborne is one of those guys whose skills on the field translated to off the field business success. After retiring he had senior roles at New Zealand Post and Quotable Value New Zealand. He became the NZRU vice president in 2017 and has since been promoted to the President of the union.
How much is NZ rugby worth?
New Zealand Rugby is one of the biggest names in the sport. The All Blacks have such an iconic brand that there must be quite a lot of money made from the New Zealand team. Well we can make an estimate on exactly how much New Zealand Rugby is worth.
New Zealand Rugby is believed to be worth around $3.5B NZD. This number does have some reason behind it. In 2022, New Zealand Rugby agreed a deal with US private equity firm Silver Lake. This deal saw Silver Lake invest $200 million NZD for an 8.58% stake in New Zealand Rugby.
Based on this deal, you can estimate that the entirety of New Zealand Rugby is worth around $3.5 billion NZD. It is hard to tell whether this is the sort of figure that New Zealand Rugby would actually sell for in its entirety.
Who sponsors the All Blacks now?
The current All Black sponsors are Altrad. After previous main sponsors AIG decided against renewing their contract with the All Blacks, French building materials company Altrad replaced AIG as the main shirt sponsors for the All Blacks. Their six year deal with the All Blacks began at the start of 2022.
They are not just the shirt sponsor, with Altrad being the Major Global Partner to New Zealand Rugby. It is also not just for the All Blacks, as Altrad will also sponsor the Black Ferns, the All Blacks Sevens and the Maori All Blacks.
ALtrad aim to support rugby around the world and their investment into the New Zealand Rugby team certainly will have helped that.