Mike's Minute: The critical meeting for NZ Rugby today

So we've got rugby getting together for what they are calling a "critical summit". 

They don’t make money, they haven't made money for years, and they're forecast to lose even more money in the future. 

Three starters for ten are lined up: 

1) Expand Super Rugby with two new teams. 

2) Continue Super Rugby and NPC but merge Super Rugby into the unions. 

3) Replace both with a new 8-10 team competition. 

The glass half-full part of this is the fact that revenue in the past decade has doubled. The problem is the costs. 

So the revenue versus expenditure aspect of this seems fairly easy to address. 

Can you make more money? Most likely not, so you trim your cloth to meet your income. 

That of course comes with sacrifice and some wailing and gnashing, but in general terms business that has seen income increase but still isn't making money tends to be a bit loose at the checkout. 

This all goes in part of course to what they see as their core reason for being. 

Are they in fact a business? Are they more a collective designed to grow and see the game prosper? Is their guiding force to make money, or simply kind of break even and spread what they have about the place? 

It is indisputably a sad state of affairs that our national game can't make money. But they are hardly the first to face the fiscal test. 

Private money is an obvious answer. Some brutal decision making around what is nice to have versus what pays the way are obvious starting points. 

The collective nature of the place strikes me as a problem. There are too many unions, too much provincialism, too much old boy nonsense and, dare I suggest, a bit much wokery. 

What I know is the world is full of very successful sports and sports teams. I see a sea of clubs with growing fortunes, I see crowds, I see ticket prices, I see betting and I see so many aspects of sport actually not just growing but booming. 

We have to produce one sport that actually does well. 

Not all our sports can be on their knees. 

And if rugby can't turn a dollar, what can?