u/northernirish_kiwi

With Moana Pasifika folding, Super Rugby is expected to stay at 10 teams for now, but the idea of expansion seems with at least the cheetahs pushing to join the competition.

Given the Cheetahs have been persistent in trying to get themselves back into a top-level competition, would you support bringing in South African provincial teams like the Cheetahs, Boland, Griquas, or Pumas if Super Rugby ever expands again?

Or is keeping it at 10 the right move, even if it means the iconic Super 14 format could make a comeback in some form?

With Moana Pasifika folding, Super Rugby has a spots to fill.

Would you support Currie Cup teams like the Cheetahs, Boland, Griquas, and Pumas coming in to replace them?

With the news in the past 24 hours that Moana Pasifika will disband after the 2026 season due to ongoing financial and operational challenges, I’ve been thinking less about culture or identity and more about the market structure they were placed into.

At a fundamental level, the biggest issue was not identity or concept. It was market competition. Moana Pasifika were based in Auckland, which already has an established Super Rugby franchise in the Blues, a mature sponsorship ecosystem, and entrenched media attention. In that environment, Moana were always operating as a secondary rugby product in a saturated market. That matters commercially. Sponsors prioritise incumbents, media coverage flows toward established brands, and even matchday relevance becomes harder when you are not the primary team in the city.

So the question becomes whether the model was ever structurally viable in that location.

One alternative that stands out is a full relocation to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Unlike Auckland, Honolulu is not a shared Super Rugby market. There is no competing franchise, no established hierarchy within the same competition, and no need to fight for rugby-specific attention against an entrenched local team. That alone fundamentally changes the commercial positioning. Instead of being one of multiple rugby products in the same city, Moana Pasifika would immediately become the primary elite rugby brand in that market.

That shift matters more than it sounds. Being the only top tier rugby team in a city means you control the local sponsorship narrative rather than competing for residual spend. Corporate partners who want access to sport in that region have a single clear option. Matchdays become the central rugby event in the city rather than a competing fixture on a crowded calendar. You are no longer trying to carve out space, you are defining the space.

Honolulu also opens a different commercial pathway entirely. It provides access to U.S. based sponsors, streaming platforms, and corporate partners operating in a significantly larger economy than New Zealand or the Pacific Islands. Even if rugby remains a niche sport in the U.S., the value of being a unique “Pacific rugby product in America” is materially different from being a mid-tier team in a saturated Super Rugby city.

From a broadcast perspective, Honolulu is also more stable. The infrastructure is already in place for professional sport production, and evening kickoff times locally translate into afternoon or early evening windows in New Zealand and Australia, which are still viable for Super Rugby Pacific audiences. Rather than fragmenting the broadcast product, it potentially expands it into a trans-Pacific time slot that does not currently exist.

Travel is often raised as the major objection, but in reality it is not outside the existing bounds of the competition. Trips to Honolulu would sit in a similar category to the longest current away fixtures such as Dunedin to Perth. It is long haul travel, but not a new category of burden for Super Rugby teams. With proper scheduling, particularly clustering away fixtures into tours rather than single trips, the logistical impact can be managed.

The more important distinction is not distance, but direction. Teams are already travelling long distances across Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. Honolulu simply becomes another node in that network rather than an outlier.

Of course, there are risks. Rugby is not a mainstream sport in the U.S., and building consistent match attendance would not be guaranteed. However, the current Auckland model also did not guarantee commercial sustainability, and it operated in a far more saturated environment. The difference is that Honolulu offers a clearer pathway to becoming the primary product in a new market rather than a secondary product in an existing one.

So the real question is whether Moana Pasifika’s challenge was ever about execution, or whether placing them in Auckland locked them into a structurally uncompetitive market position from the start. A relocation to Honolulu would not solve every issue, but it would fundamentally change the commercial equation they are operating within.

That may have been the missing variable all along.