South Africa vs New Zealand is rugby’s ‘money game’. Why is it being played in the U.S?

The fourth and final Test of South Africa’s series against New Zealand has a nickname that will make rugby union traditionalists do a double-take: the “money game”.

Rian Oberholzer, South Africa’s rugby chief executive, does not flinch at the description. The match will be played in Baltimore because it is expected to generate substantially more cash, potentially up to $8million (£5.9m). The two unions will share the profits 50–50, including income from tickets, hospitality, food and drink, sponsorship, broadcasting and merchandise.

“We wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t substantial,” Oberholzer says.

There is no attempt to disguise the transaction as charity, though nobody involved presents it as a simple money grab, either. South Africa and New Zealand, the two most historically successful nations in rugby union, are taking their brands to the United States while World Rugby, the sport’s governing body, tries to build a new audience there.

The series has been christened ‘Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry’, and if that sounds like the sort of thing which could be turned into a Netflix mini-series, that is no coincidence.

It has been presented that way precisely to appeal to the U.S., the world’s richest sports market and the country that will host the World Cup for the first time in 2031. That kind of grandiosity is familiar to American fans, who crown domestic league winners “world champions” and are generally less squeamish about sport’s commercial machinery than their European counterparts, as the recent soccer World Cup — with its historically high ticket prices, TV commercial-friendly ‘hydration breaks’ and half-time final show — proved.

The question is whether the packaging can make an unfamiliar contest feel consequential, and whether a lucrative afternoon in Maryland can leave behind something more durable than a healthy ledger.

South Africa, at least, has a clear target: for Americans to choose the Springboks as their second-favourite team. “We would like to be the team that America recognises,” Oberholzer says.

The idea began to take shape during the 2023 World Cup in France, where South Africa beat New Zealand in the final. The two unions spoke to broadcasters, formed a working group and agreed that the series would be staged every four years. South Africa would host the first edition. New Zealand will host the next, in 2030.

The U.S. became the obvious destination to stage one of the Tests because of 2031, and the fact that it will host the women’s edition two years later. World Rugby had identified it as the sport’s most important growth market, and two of South Africa’s major sponsors, Nike and Coca-Cola, are American companies.

A promoter was appointed and began shopping the match around to U.S. cities, with Baltimore emerging as the favourite partly due to its ambition to host matches at the 2031 World Cup. The city offered a large stadium, a useful location on the eastern seaboard and an engaged venue and franchise owner. The match forms part of World Rugby’s £200m investment in the U.S.

This is not rugby’s first American experiment: New Zealand have already filled Chicago’s Soldier Field for Tests against Ireland in 2016 and 2025. South Africa regularly take the Springboks abroad and have turned London’s Twickenham, the world’s largest purpose-built rugby stadium, into something of a home away from home. But no previous foray onto foreign soil carries the commercial architecture or historical weight of this series.

Alan Gilpin, World Rugby’s chief executive, says it has been studying the NFL’s international series, which has spent more than a decade taking regular-season games to England and elsewhere before returning to the markets that best respond.

“When we think about rugby in the U.S., it’s very easy for those of us in avid rugby territories to think of it as just another country,” he says. “In reality, we’re talking about a continent. We are building over time a significant database of first-party data in the U.S.”

The complication is that the immediate money belongs to South Africa and New Zealand. USA Rugby will not receive a share of this match’s gate receipts. World Rugby’s return is longer term: a larger audience and a more valuable World Cup in five years.

“It’s a reflection of the modern sporting landscape,” says Steve Lancaster, chief executive of New Zealand Rugby. “I don’t shy away for a minute that this is a commercially important fixture for us. But the last six weeks have proven beyond doubt that this is rugby’s greatest rivalry; it’s unparalleled in terms of its depth over the years.”

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South Africa and New Zealand have been sparring on the rugby field for over 100 years, their first encounter taking place in 1921 when 25,000 people watched the All Blacks — as they are called due to their distinctive kit — beat South Africa 13-5 in Dunedin. A century and 113 matches have followed, carrying the rivalry from muddy fields into national mythology, and seeping out from sport and into geopolitics.

In 1981, the Springboks’ tour turned New Zealand against itself. Anti-apartheid protesters filled the streets, police formed riot squads and flour bombs fell from a plane over Eden Park, the All Blacks’ home citadel in Auckland. Five years later, 28 All Blacks returned to South Africa as the unofficial Cavaliers, defying an international boycott which helped sustain apartheid’s sporting legitimacy.

Then, when South Africa hosted the 1995 World Cup after their reintroduction to international sport, the All Blacks were the opposition for the final in Johannesburg. President Nelson Mandela presented the trophy to the home captain, Francois Pienaar, the crowning moment of a story that Clint Eastwood made into a Hollywood film, Invictus, in 2009.

The rivalry burns as strong as ever, but so does the mutual respect, which survives the collisions, politics and long silences. All of which makes the economics of the series more revealing.

South Africa and New Zealand have won seven of the 10 men’s World Cups, yet they are not its wealthiest nations. Club teams in England, France and Japan can offer salaries that pull players overseas, while richer European media markets generate more money for their national unions. This is an attempt to monetise the value these countries create before somebody else does.

Cricket — played by many of the same countries internationally — provides both a model and a warning. Oberholzer likens the series to the Ashes, the Australia–England contest that turned a bilateral rivalry into one of sport’s most valuable commercial properties. But cricket’s finances and influence have increasingly concentrated around India, England and Australia, creating an unequal playing field.

This is not a case of trying to create a “big two in rugby”, Oberholzer insists, but an attempt to restore the traditional tours that professionalism removed. “We’re bringing some of that old traditional rugby heritage back into the sport in a professional way,” he says.

The British & Irish Lions — a squad made up of players drawn from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland — are rugby’s surviving reminder of that tradition, but only visit each of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia once every 12 years. This series offers two national teams a chance to build something similar.

It also arrives as the calendar is being reshaped by the Nations Championship — a new biennial international tournament comprising the 12 biggest rugby nations — alongside the Six Nations in Europe, The Rugby Championship in the southern hemisphere, and quadrennial World Cups and Lions tours. Another premium property could raise international rugby’s value or squeeze out emerging nations while placing further strain on player welfare.

The commercial argument depends, however, on the rivalry remaining compelling on the field. So far, the rugby has delivered. New Zealand, under Dave Rennie, have restored pride through movement and imagination. South Africa, with their feisty but ingenious coach Rassie Erasmus, in charge since 2018, have continued their dynasty through set-piece power and zealous defensive pressure.

After brushing aside three domestic teams in warm-up matches, the All Blacks won the first Test in Johannesburg 33-16, scoring three second-half tries in a display of attacking potency. A week later in Cape Town, South Africa hit back to win 33-26, although the biggest story came when an Airlink Embraer E195 swept dangerously low over the stadium as part of a pre-match flyover (“If it got people talking about the series then that’s a positive,” is Oberholzer’s verdict.)

The final match of the South African leg was staged in Soweto, where the 1976 student uprising became one of the defining ruptures in the country’s apartheid history. Bringing the Springboks, once a powerful symbol of white minority rule, into that landscape carried a significance no marketing campaign could manufacture.

Before the men took the field, the Springbok Women played the Black Ferns in South Africa for the first time. It was an important occasion for a team still trying to close the vast gender gap in the country, but the Black Ferns’ greater depth eventually told as they won 52-20.

The men’s match was closer and more volatile. New Zealand stormed to an early lead, but the Springboks’ heft swung momentum as they dominated the tight exchanges. As the home team took control, gwijo — traditional call-and-response singing rooted in Black South African communities — reverberated around the ground.

By the time the final whistle sounded on South Africa’s 29-24 triumph, some supporters and pundits were already saying that this was the real series done and dusted. Baltimore, they suggested, was for the accountants.

“I don’t subscribe to that view at all,” Lancaster shoots back. “Our team is categorical; we want to square the series. I don’t think there is a serious argument to be made that this isn’t a serious Test. We don’t look at Baltimore in isolation. We see this as part of the series and it adds a different dynamic.”

The Springboks appear to agree. Erasmus has named a full-strength team to make sure that the series trophy, which can be split in two in case of a draw, remains in one piece.

The selection makes the point plainly: Baltimore is not an exhibition. The fourth Test has to retain the competitive force that made the rivalry valuable in the first place.

South Africa and New Zealand get the immediate money. World Rugby is betting on a longer-term shift: that rugby’s biggest rivalries can become portable properties, taking elite matches into new markets and giving unions outside the wealthiest leagues more control over the value they generate.

Success would give other unions a template for turning history into revenue without surrendering sporting stakes. Failure would leave Baltimore as a one-off payday: proof that rugby can move a match across an ocean without necessarily moving the culture with it.