New Zealand Rugby Commercial CEO Craig Fenton set to depart in January

New Zealand Rugby Commercial Limited (NZRC) has today announced that its Chief Executive Officer, Craig Fenton, will leave the company in January 2025.

Craig’s involvement began during Rugby World Cup 2023, and he formally joined NZRC in January 2024 from his previous role leading strategy and operations for Google’s UK and Ireland business.

NZRC Chair Ian Narev said:

“NZRC has made significant progress over the past year. The NZRC team, under Craig’s leadership, has developed a strategic plan that sets clear commercial ambitions and areas of focus for the remainder of the decade. Whilst that plan, centred around fan engagement, will take some time to realise its full potential, NZRC has already achieved some important early wins.

Just over a year since the launch of NZR+, its content has had 300m views in 2024 alone, reaching 33m fans across the globe across multiple platforms. And the platform itself is fully operational, creating much greater strategic flexibility. A global e-commerce partnership has also been launched with Fanatics, supporting a new lifestyle merchandise range. So there is already a much wider range of assets to engage with fans and add value to relationships with commercial and broadcasting partners.

However, Craig and NZRC have agreed that Craig’s vision of change and approach to driving it are not fully aligned with the organisation. Accordingly, Craig and NZRC have mutually agreed that Craig will leave the Company.”

Craig Fenton said:

“It has been a privilege to play my part in helping NZRC start down this path of deepening relationships with tens of millions of fans here and overseas. NZRC has a strong team, and I am proud of the tangible progress that team has made over the last year. I believe in the opportunity as much as I did when I moved back home from the UK to take this role. But while we have strong shared aspirations within NZRC, we have differing views on the change needed to achieve those aspirations, and so the next phase of progress is best suited to a different leader.”

The NZRC Board will finalise its plans for appointing Craig’s successor in coming months following the appointment of new independent NZR Board which is expected to be in place by the end of the year.