Super Rugby Pacific is openly weighing up a Fijian version of its festival weekend, with competition boss Jack Mesley confirming that talks with Fijian government officials have been ongoing for 18 months as the league looks for life beyond Christchurch's sold-out Super Round.
The relaunched Super Round at One New Zealand Stadium has hardened the case for a travelling festival format. All three days of the Christchurch event have sold out, with the Crusaders kicking off the round by beating the Waratahs 35-20 and the Hurricanes' rout of the Brumbies adding to the box office. The Pacific Islands, the only major rugby market in the competition without a turn at the festival, are now the obvious next stop.
Mesley used the round-eleven build-up to make the strongest public pitch yet for what has been quickly nicknamed Bula Round.
"It'd be such a great, unique experience and I'd love to do it, but it's got a bit of work," Mesley said.
The Super Rugby Pacific chief described the project as a long-term initiative rather than a 2026 quick fix, and said Fiji's government has been an active partner in early conversations.
"We've met with (Fijian) government officials over past 18 months," Mesley said.
"Things need to move quickly."
The practical hurdles are familiar to anyone who has tried to host a multi-game weekend in the Pacific. Lautoka's stadium and Suva's 15,000-seat ground would each need lighting upgrades to support live broadcast windows in New Zealand and Australian primetime, and additional changing rooms would be required to run two matches inside a six-hour Saturday block. Mesley's team has been working with sports tourism advisers in Suva to package the round as part of a wider pitch on Fiji's tourism strategy, with funding the gating issue rather than rugby appetite.
The sport's case has been helped by the Fijian Drua's continued growth on and off the field. The franchise's run to the play-offs in recent seasons, allied to the noise around their home matches in Lautoka and Churchill Park, has shown competition executives that Fijian crowds will travel and that the broadcast product holds up. The Drua's away win over the Brumbies earlier this month, sealed by a Tuidraki try and capped by celebratory scenes in Canberra, was the most-shared Super Rugby Pacific clip of the round.
Former Wallabies halfback Will Genia, now a regular voice on the league's coverage, said a Pacific-hosted festival would put the competition on a different footing in the region.
"An event like that in the Pasifika, it just captures the audience again," Genia said.
Genia's point is one Super Rugby Pacific executives have made privately for some time. With Moana Pasifika's Super Rugby future under question and Pacific players still leaving for European clubs in record numbers, the league has been looking for a tentpole event that signals the Pacific is at the centre of the competition rather than at its edges. A round of fixtures hosted in Suva and Lautoka, with the Drua, Moana Pasifika and rotating Australian and New Zealand sides, is the most visible answer on the table.
The Christchurch event, which moved to One New Zealand Stadium for a one-year deal after three years in Melbourne, has cleared the bar Mesley wanted before pushing the festival further into the Pacific.
"A special piece of Super Rugby history has been written here in Christchurch," Mesley said of the Super Round sell-out.
If Fiji's government can match its enthusiasm with infrastructure spend, the next chapter of that history will be written in Suva.
