Jack Mesley: Super Rugby Chief Executive on finals format changes in 2025 season

Changes are coming to Super Rugby Pacific. 

The competition has gone from 12 teams to 11 with the collapse of the Melbourne Rebels and in 2025, will move to a six-team playoff format. 

All six teams who qualify for the post-season will feature in the quarterfinals, with the three winners and the highest-seeded loser making up the four teams in the semifinals. 

That lucky loser will drop one seeding for the semifinals, which means the top seed after round-robin play is guaranteed a home semifinal. 

New Super Rugby chief executive Jack Mesley tells Heather du Plessis-Allan the new format will bring a lot of interest. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather Duplessy Ellen. So changes are coming to Super Rugby.
The playoffs have been reduced from eight to six teams.
Once three of those teams are knocked out, there will
be a lucky loser from the losers who makes it
through to the final four. And for families this is
good news. There will also be three Sunday afternoon games.
Jack Mesley is the chief executive of Super Rugby.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey Jack, Hi, Heather, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm very well, thank you. Do you reckon that what
you're doing with the finals and the playoffs is enough
to get us interested again?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I certainly hope so, Heather. I think we're really excited
about the new finals format. We think it's going to
bring a lot of interest at the back end of
our regular season and certainly provide lots of compelling content
throughout the final series.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
With the new format, did you think about going further?
Did you think about doing things like allowing New Zealand
based players to go and play in Australia and be
traded and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well, I'm new in the role, as you know, Heather,
and as is the board. We're certainly looking for all
opportunities to grow Super rugby specific So at the moment,
certainly nothing's on the nothing's off the table. But right now,
you know, our key focus has been to reinvigorate the
Final series with this new six team format and we're

(01:14):
super excited by that.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
So you sound like you've got an Australian accent?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Do you? I do? Do?

Speaker 1 (01:19):
I mean you would admit that the Australian teams suck
and basically need New Zealand players to make them competitive.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, are you sure about that the Australian teams. Some
of the Australian teams had a great season and we
saw some great rugby content throughout last season and I
think with some of the announcement the Aussie teams are
making at the moment, the squads are shaping up really well.
And you know, I think what this six team finals
format actually does is make sure rather than eight teams

(01:49):
as we've previously had, and as fans have sort of
told us that they're not that in love with the
eight team format, it's going to make sure that the
best teams play the best teams and that's going to Yeah,
that's going to provide some great content and we hope
that the six teams are made up of teams from
all around the Pacific, be that Fiji with the Drewer,

(02:10):
and be that the Australian teams or indeed Minor PACIFICA
and the New Zealand club. So you know, we want
the best teams to get into the top six and
we want them to go absolutely hammer and tongs to
provide some unbelievable rugby content come the back end of
the season.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Jack, I've been told that the Sunday afternoon games use it,
will lose it. If we don't attend them, you'll just
scrap them and go back to Saturday evening games. Is
that right.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I'm a huge fan of Sunday format. We've got to
make sure that they work both for crowd build but
also for our great broadcast partners. So yeah, we want
people there for daytime rugby. We want families to get
out and see our amazing athletes juke it out, but
we want to make sure that our broadcast partners are
happy with it as well. So you know, I think

(02:56):
we've all worked together to get some Sunday fixtures in there,
and we wanted to work for all of it, all
of all of the ecosystem the broadcasters, the clubs and fans.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
How will you know if it's a success.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, I mean, these days we have lots of data
to be able to measure success across those different elements.
So we'll be watching that really carefully and hopefully be
able to tell it a great story.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Jack, it's good to talk to you. Best of luck
with it. That's Jack Measley, Super Rugby's chief executive tool.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
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