I was going to write this column about the Commerce Commission’s recent report on competition in our banking system – and I will do that in my next column. But there is something I experienced in Wellington two weeks ago that has been bugging me and if I don’t write about it know it will be too late.
Peter Nicholl
On August 10 my two children who live in Wellington gave me a late 80th birthday present – we went to see the All Blacks play Argentina at Sky Stadum. It was a lovely thought, and as they say with presents it is the thought that counts.
But the actual event was a disappointment – for three reasons. The first two reasons any of you who watched the game will already know. The All Blacks lost, and they made many basic mistakes that not even the Hautapu club side would make.
The third reason was the whole atmosphere of the event. A high-level sports event is like the theatre – the atmosphere has to be appropriate for the type of performance we are watching: musical, comedy and drama for example.
A rugby test match featuring the All Blacks should be a drama – and this match developed all the elements of a nail-biting drama: a close score, the lead changing, an outcome in doubt. But the atmosphere that the rugby union created in Sky Stadum had no sense of drama at all – it was that of a musical comedy. Every time there was the slightest break in the game, loud pop music was blared over the speakers and people in the crowd would sing and get up and dance. The music and the dancers didn’t always stop as soon as the game restarted.
Sky Stadium
The rugby union would probably say they are getting the crowd involved. The recent Paris Olympics showed what getting the crowd involved really means. The crowds there were ‘involved’ totally in the actions that were happening before them in the stadiums. You could see this when an athlete signalled the crowd in the athletics stadium for silence – 70,000 people were instantly silent.
The musical interventions at Sky Stadium did not get the crowd involved in what was happening on the field. They were a total distraction from that. They were a different event entirely.
For some people at Sky Stadium, the music seemed to be the most important event. They sang and danced happily as the All Blacks were being beaten. I am not sure if some of them realised what was actually happening in the ‘drama’ unfolding on the field.
I have in the last 15 years watched test rugby matches in England, France and Italy. I also watched a test rugby match in Sarajevo between Bosnia and Luxemburg but that doesn’t really count as there were only about 200 spectators and Hautapu would have comfortably beaten both sides.
Nothing like what happened at Wellington recently happened at these test matches in London, Paris and Milan. They were put on as ‘dramas’ not as ‘musicals’.
The NZ Rugby Union seems to totally lose sight of the product they are supposed to be marketing. I don’t know what it is like for the players to play in such a distracting atmosphere.
The weather was fine, but the stadium was far from full. As a marketing strategy it can’t be judged a success either.
