DJI is now the official technology partner of the New Zealand Rugby League, the national body announced on July 13. The deal covers the 2026 season and puts DJI drones, stabilized handheld cameras, and professional filmmaking gear into NZRL’s content production, from grassroots tournaments all the way to the World Cup campaigns of the Kiwis, the Kiwi Ferns, and the Wheel Kiwis.
The timing is not subtle. The Rugby League World Cup runs October 15 through November 15 across Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea, and the Kiwis open the men’s tournament against Australia’s Kangaroos in Sydney on day one.
The Deal Runs From Grassroots Fields to Three World Cup Squads
The partnership spans every level of rugby league in New Zealand, from club fields to the marquee national teams. NZRL plans to use DJI equipment across its grassroots tournaments and domestic competitions, then carry the same production toolkit into the international window at the end of the year.
“DJI’s products will help enhance our content capture across our grassroots tournaments and competitions, through to the Kiwis, Kiwi Ferns, and Wheel Kiwis World Cup campaigns,” said Amy Thomason, NZRL general manager of communications and marketing.
The hardware flows through Dicker Data New Zealand, DJI’s distributor in the country. “We’re excited to support the Kiwis, Kiwi Ferns, and Wheel Kiwis throughout their World Cup campaigns by providing industry-leading imaging technology,” said Deon Holgate, field sales manager at Dicker Data New Zealand.
Note the roster. The Kiwi Ferns qualified for an eight-team women’s World Cup, and the Wheel Kiwis play the entire wheelchair tournament at Wollongong’s WIN Entertainment Centre. All three squads get the same imaging support, which says something about how NZRL thinks about its content, and about which fans it wants closer to the field.
Rugby League Is the Harshest Test Bed an Action Camera Can Ask For
A rugby league season will punish camera equipment in ways a studio never will, and that is exactly what makes this partnership interesting beyond the press release. This sport is collisions by design. Bodies, mud, rain, and impacts, week after week, at every level from club fields to Test matches.
I keep thinking about the Osmo Action 6 in that environment. DroneXL’s long-term review of that camera singled out HorizonSteady, which holds a level horizon even when the camera spins on its own axis. Strap that to a sport where bodies rotate mid-air on contact and you get watchable footage from angles broadcasters cannot reach. Training sessions, tackle drills, sideline rigs, player-worn angles where the sport’s governing rules allow them. Footage from inside that world is the kind of thing fans have never really had, because most cameras were never built to live there.
And rugby league players do not stay down waiting for a replay to prove they were touched. Anyone watching the little princesses of the FIFA World Cup this month has seen the routine: a breeze grazes a shin, the player collapses in three dramatic rolls, and the physio sprints out for a tragedy that heals in forty seconds. League is the other end of that spectrum. The hits are real, so the abuse the gear takes will be real too.
That contrast writes DJI’s marketing copy by itself. “Tested in the games of the roughest rugby federation on the planet” is a better line than anything an agency would invent, and after this season DJI could say it with a straight face.
DJI Keeps Converting Hardware Into Sports Credibility
The NZRL deal fits a pattern DroneXL has tracked for a while: DJI pushing its camera line into arenas where the drone brand alone would never take it. The Osmo Action 6 launched in November 2025 with a 1/1.1-inch sensor and variable aperture, and DroneXL’s own comparison against GoPro’s Mission 1 Pro in June showed DJI winning categories GoPro used to own.
What GoPro built its empire on, DJI is now chasing deal by deal: association with athletes whose lives look nothing like a tech spec sheet. A national rugby league body, with a men’s, a women’s, and a wheelchair World Cup squad in the same calendar year, is a dense package of exactly that credibility.
For NZRL, the math is simpler. A national body outside the NRL’s Australian money machine gets professional-grade production tools across its whole pyramid in a World Cup year. Grassroots clubs that could never budget for cinema gear may end up with footage that looks like a broadcast.
DroneXL’s Take
Strip away the press release language, and this is DJI buying its cameras a seat in one of the most physical sports on Earth during its biggest possible year. Official technology partner of a national rugby league federation is a title. Surviving a full season of that federation’s rugby is a resume.
I’ll admit the fan in me is louder than the analyst on this one. Rugby league is as honest as team sport gets, and the idea of DJI action cameras and drones living inside that world excites me more than most product launches this year. Gear earns credibility in mud, not in keynotes.
The part worth watching is October 15. Three New Zealand squads walk into a World Cup with DJI hardware embedded in their content operation, and every frame that comes out of those campaigns doubles as a field test in front of a global rugby league audience. Whether DJI turns that footage into the “tested by the toughest” campaign it deserves is an open question. The raw material will be there.
Sources: Ministry of Sport, NZRL, RLWC2026
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
