Peter V’landys calls it his relationships room. The Director’s Room at Sydney’s Royal Randwick racecourse might not be the best and most luxurious in the $150 million grandstand but it is the most important for the Racing NSW boss and he knows every inch of it. There are four tiers of dining tables overlooking the turn of the famous Randwick straight, a bar and betting outlet in one corner and banks of screens showing races and odds from around the country. V’landys’ ability to work this room on the big race days is the reason the self-confessed “bogan from Wollongong” and son of Greek migrants has become, in the words of prominent bookmaker Matthew Tripp, “simply one of the most powerful people in the state of NSW, including politicians and broadcasters and whoever else”.
The room of invited guests this spring Saturday is filled with media identities from all the major Sydney newspaper and television networks, corporate bosses, Racing NSW directors and other assorted attendees. It is a quintessential Sydney scene, a mixture of politics, sport and business, and V’landys is one of the city’s quintessential power players. He has spent three decades cultivating relationships and he’s rarely still today, moving easily between guests, taking aside a company director for a quiet word and then cracking a self-deprecating joke with a gossip columnist before moving on to chat with a TAB attendant. A gregarious character, he can shift in an instant between schmoozing and serious business.
Sartorial splendour is not his thing. His suits are ill-fitting, his shirt is occasionally untucked and his shoes are perennially scuffed, a fitting look for this big personality whose relish for a stoush is almost as legendary as his penchant for tearing strips off people, not to mention his propensity to talk a big game — and then back it up. V’landys has taken on the corporate bookmakers and beaten them in the High Court, ensuring hundreds of millions of dollars in fees flow through to racing. He convinced then prime minister John Howard to help save the industry with a $235 million rescue package when equine influenza struck in 2007.
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And then, not content to let Melbourne have its famous Cup, he devised a Sydney rival, The Everest, now the world’s richest turf race with $14 million in prize money. More recently he has further encroached on Victoria’s sacred Spring Racing Carnival — not just the Melbourne Cup but the Cox Plate and Caulfield Cup — by developing rival race days in Sydney and regional NSW. This spring will see $45 million worth of races run in NSW, the boldest bet yet by the state for a piece of the spotlight. V’landys says that Victoria has to get over its “sense of entitlement” to spring racing — a key time when football finals are over and before the cricket season begins.
But it’s what comes next that looms as V’landys’ biggest challenge. Having ruled over racing in NSW for 17 years as chief executive of Racing NSW, he will, after October 30, become chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, the governing body of the National Rugby League competition and overseer of the entire code. He decided to take on this job while still keeping his old one, doubling his power base and extending his already considerable influence.
When it comes to politics mixing with sport, rugby league has few peers. Although wildly popular on TV, its propensity for self-sabotage via controversial off-field behaviour by its players or boardroom infighting seems to have its sponsors on a permanent state of high alert for bad news.
V’landys, in his inimitable style and with a history in rugby league stretching back to his teenage years as a running backrower or lock at Wests Illawarra in Wollongong, says he’s survived enough high-level brawls to be ready for whatever comes his way. “There’s been a lot of friggin’ battles,” he says, speaking loudly and quickly and with a firm confidence. “It makes me ready for it. If there’s anybody with any more battles… well, somebody in Victoria once called me Napoleon. He’s probably right. I’ve had more friggin’ battles than any man. But it makes you stronger and it makes you more experienced… you learn from your mistakes and then don’t want to make them twice.
“I’m not delusional. I think rugby league is going to be hard. And there’s just as many self-interest groups as there are in racing. As long as people don’t get personal and as long as people knock me for my decisions and not my personality, then I’ll be OK.”
V’landys — who is cagey about his age, although ASIC filings confirm that he’s 59 — will replace outgoing chairman and former Queensland premier Peter Beattie. Last month Beattie held a commission meeting that resulted in a unanimous vote for V’landys, helped by quiet support from Sydney Roosters chairman Nick Politis (coincidentally from the same Greek island of Kythira, though they barely know each other), seen as the most powerful operator in the game.
V’landys claims he will be a different sort of chairman to the camera-friendly Beattie, and will only front the public if the sport gets embroiled in a crisis. “Well, hopefully some pre-emptive work means they don’t happen as often. But I want to be quieter and let the executive manage the business,” he says. That remains to be seen for a person who is famous for having every decision go past his desk at Racing NSW, though he insists he will be more of a behind-the-scenes operator while dealing with the government to win more funding for the sport — and also, within the next couple of years, negotiating the league’s next billion-dollar media broadcast rights deal.
He can’t resist firing a warning shot to rivals in Victoria who protect the AFL franchise. “I can open doors that have previously been closed to rugby league. I can bring relationships that I have built up over time. But rugby league can’t be complacent. We’ve had champagne tastes with champagne revenue. We have to make sure we maintain that champagne revenue.
“One of the journos from Victoria has been telling all the AFL people, ‘You’ll be in for a ride when V’landys gets to the NRL because you’ve finally got a threat’. I find that a compliment. I’m going to do my best for rugby league as I’ve done for racing. If it means taking someone on, I’ll take them on.”
V’landys’ critics run for cover when asked for an interview but will, in off-the-record comments, say he is a bully and aggressive user of defamation lawyers. They wonder how he can hold down two jobs at the top of two different sports, and say he is ignoring conflict-of-interest concerns given he will be in charge of one sport in NSW, the chair of another one nationally, and will have to deal with media companies regarding broadcasting deals and bookmakers in both roles.
Beattie says V’landys “faced up” to questions about conflict of interest in the commission meeting. “And he said if there are direct conflicts then he will stand aside when a decision is made, which is what happens on boards,” Beattie says. “Look, there are detractors of Peter, but they are duplicitous sort of people who don’t like straightforward and honest people, necessarily. What Peter says to your face is what he will say behind your back too, and some people don’t like that.”
V’landys also brushes away concerns, confirming he will stand aside when necessary. He says the two bodies don’t directly compete and that what he learns in one role can be used in the other. But he is aware of the pitfalls. “I am a kamikaze. One day I’m going to crash and I’m aware of that. I’m ready for it,” he says frankly. “So I never think about if I have a job tomorrow. I think about what’s best and how to get there. If I get there and I upset somebody and I make an enemy and it hurts me personally, well, I’m ready for it.
“But I see other CEOs and other people who basically look at themselves and all they try to do is ensure job security. Well, I don’t think they are doing themselves or their organisations a favour because eventually they’ll fail. So I’m a kamikaze, I go in there expecting to get blown up, basically.”
Peter McGauran, a one-time agriculture minister in the Howard government, says those traits are even apparent to friends of V’landys, of which he is one. “People who suffer self-doubt or have insecurities should not hang out with Peter V’landys,” McGauran says with a laugh. “But there is a soft side to him, he is loyal to a fault and he is capable of the most incredible acts of generosity that people don’t know about. But he is volatile and is a ferocious fighter, and even as friends we have our fights where he would tear strips off you and there would be raised voices and not-so-choice language. And he is like that with anyone.”
When asked if he is a bully, V’landys says: “Bullying is when you’re afraid. I never make anyone afraid because I’ve suffered [bullying] myself when I was a kid. I go hard as a business person and commercially. I take pride that I go hard on an issue [but] I don’t go hard on a person or personality.”
V’landys says he still has plenty left to achieve in racing but is relishing the challenge of rugby league. If he has to get up earlier in the morning to read more board material, he will. Like the nuggety forward he once was on the playing field, he says he is capable of getting through a mountain of hard work to deal with both jobs. And he’s prepared to take the hits. “If you’re doing a good job for your organisation, you’ve lost blood along the way,” he says. “You’ve got to bleed for them, and I’ve bled many times. I’m the number one customer at the blood bank.”
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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/we...s/news-story/621e9c8ce19c1f43348b8996ced3d124
