Where is Super Rugby Fantasy? CEO explains why game is delayed

By Will Toogood

Super Rugby Pacific kicks off for 2025 on Valentine’s Day, but fans may have already fallen out of love with a highly anticipated new arrival.

The November announcement of Super Rugby Pacific Fantasy, the first official fantasy product in the competition’s history, was welcomed by fans and a January launch date revealed on Super Rugby’s website.

Yet as of February 1, there has been no confirmation of the product’s launch, or further update provided through any Super Rugby communication channels, leaving fans in the fantasy lurch.

Super Rugby Pacific CEO Jack Mesley tells the Herald he understands there may be frustration from fans but made assurances the product was near launch.

“We’re just knocking off the last couple of things, some of the things are just taking us a little a little longer than we expected, we’re just putting the finishing touches on it.”

Mesley says those final touches relate to terms and conditions as well as some jurisdictional issues, but the product itself is “looking unreal”.

“I’d love to say it’s going to go on x date but we’re in the hands of some of the T’s and C’s authorities in a different region, next week we’ll have a lot more information out.”

That information to come will be of crucial interest to fantasy players, with the team budget and player prices of most interest ahead of the season.

“As soon as we know that we have a date, we’ll announce that but it’s coming soon and it’s looking unreal.”

Mesley was able to confirm that each player would have a $100 million budget with which to build their team, but that there would be no draft format for this season’s fantasy game.

“We made the call to get this going that we’re going to make it a pretty simple version, we want to bring people into Super Rugby as well as serve those core fans but the first iteration is going to be pretty simple. We’ll see how it goes and look to build off that in the future years.

“There’s not a draft version, players will have a $100m to select 15 players and then add a captain ... next week you’ll see some of that pricing come through and some of the rules that are associated with the game.”

Genius Sports, creators of the Fantasy Rugby World Cup 2023 game, are behind the Super Rugby iteration and Mesley has confidence their product will be easy to pick up for fans given the short time window before the season begins.

The World Cup game was accessed via the Rugby World Cup app but Mesley says the Super Rugby version will not have an accompanying app, instead being accessed through a browser.

“Just through the website at the moment but it links through all of our different channels.”

With franchises having already begun pre-season matches, fans will be eager to begin scouting potential talent for their teams and with the season beginning on February 14, Mesley is understanding of the fact that two weeks is not an ideal amount of time for players to prepare, but backed the product to be easy to operate.

He also says the November decision to go ahead with the project left just three months before the January launch that had been announced and did put pressure on those behind the scenes to speedily deliver.

“Clearly I would have loved for people to have more time, but we also made the call to do it fairly late. I really wanted to add it to the arsenal, we announced we were doing it in November and I did say it would be ready in mid to late Jan ... that was always going to be a bit of a challenge, I probably overestimated that so the team have been working bloody hard.

“I hear it, I’d love people to have more time with it but we’ve got to get it right.”

Fantasy games are not always taken seriously by the wider sporting audiences but Super Rugby Pacific 2025 will see a very real impact upon the way matchday squads are announced.

Injuries affect both the real and fantasy aspects of rugby and Mesley confirmed changes to the Wednesday team list protocol. Teams will now list injuries along with their matchday 23s to enable both fantasy players to make adjustments and fans of the real thing aware of which players are available each week.

Mesley backs the new official game to take the market by storm and beat out the more established unofficial versions of the game, saying that working directly with franchises gives them the edge in an official capacity.

“It’s really important we’re doing it with the clubs and the players, it makes a real difference so everyone’s on board and everyone’s super engaged with it ... for us it’s just about adding another tool for people to get into Super Rugby, talk about Super Rugby and we’ll continue to add more things to the comp so fans can engage with it more.”

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission