But it is only fair to point out he will be equally pleased if Moana Pasifika or one of the clubs from his native Australia are holding up the trophy at the end of the season.
Mesley, appointed the inaugural Super Rugby Pacific chief executive last year, was in Dunedin for a Highlanders game recently.
After raving about Forsyth Barr Stadium and the southern hospitality and weather, he was asked if the competition needed an Australian team to win to really ignite its commercial potential.
"Yeah, I guess, but the way we need to think is more ... I’d love Moana Pasifika to win it, I’d love the Drua to win it, and I’d love the Highlanders to win it," Mesley told the Otago Daily Times.
"There’s a little bit of recency bias. If you look at the years before the Crusaders went on their dominant run, we had the Brumbies, the Reds, the Tahs, even the Highlanders doing really well.
"We want to see different winners. We think it’s harder to make the finals now, and there will be huge pressure on teams at the crunch stage."
A neutral Super Rugby fan might observe it will be harder for the smaller teams to get to the top without any form of talent equalisation.
Whether a draft or a hard — and transparent — salary cap can work is the question.
Mesley said his organisation was focused on three "pillars": competition excellence, fan engagement and value creation (commercial).
"Competition excellence is all about making sure our competition is as interesting as it can be.
"So we talk about things like how many matches matter, how many have an outcome on the finals, and making sure the game is as good as it can be.
"You can’t have a competition excellence pillar and not be looking at the levers you can pull to try to make it as even as possible.
"The Crusaders won seven titles in row. OK. But personally, I’d like the Crusaders to win one title every 11 years, and the other 10 teams to also win one.
"The difficulty is that we’re not a closed ecosystem. We’re not the pinnacle of our sport. We have international rugby that is really important.
"So, unlike the NRL, which is really the highest level of rugby league, or the AFL or the NFL, we have more difficulty when it comes to equalisation.
"It’s not easy, but it’s certainly something we’re thinking about."
Mesley acknowledges the NRL is a big beast in Australia.
But he also thinks rugby is tracking nicely across the Ditch.
"You look at what Joe Schmidt has done with the Wallabies, we’ve got a World Cup coming, we’ve got a Lions tour coming.
"Super Rugby needs to run off that momentum, and we need our teams to be great, and we need to be getting more of a commercial hold in big cities like Sydney and Brisbane."
The collapse of the Melbourne Rebels has led to the strengthening of the other four Australian clubs, all of whom sit in the top six after seven rounds of Super Rugby.
It has been assumed the competition will look for a Japanese club or perhaps a team from Argentina to get back to 12 teams, but Mesley said it was not as simple as that.
"Yes, in some ways, a 12th team would make things easier. But there is no obvious 12th team. And it would come with huge cost.
"Establishing a new team in a competition is a 20-year project, you know, and we’ve got two quite new teams in the Drua and Moana Pasifika.
"So, we’re not thinking, quick, let’s find a 12th team. We will look at expansion when it’s right for us."
Super Rugby ratings are up and there is a fair bit of buzz surrounding the competition again.
Mesley said that reflected well on teams playing with real intent and on match officials doing everything possible to speed up the game and make it a better spectacle.
As for the Highlanders, well, Mesley has picked up that they are a second-favourite team for lots of fans outside the region.
"I’m not sure what the sort of genesis of that is. But some of it is probably to do with the fact it’s been 10 years since they last won the trophy, and everyone loves a bit of an underdog story.
"How can you not like Otago as a place to respect and a place you want to visit?"
