BUZZ: You’re a busy man running Racing NSW and the NRL. How long can you keep doing two such high pressure jobs.
PVL: It could never be any worse than it was during Covid. The hours I put in … I don’t know how I did it myself. It was a lot of work and a lot of stress. It’s nowhere near as work intensive now. I’ve got a very good CEO at the NRL. I can monitor things rather than be hands-on.
BUZZ:I want to ask you about Andrew Abdo. He’s got his critics. He’s been kicked a bit over the last six months. The RLPA dispute. You had to come in and fix it. Last week, you had to step in and sort out the clubs and their problem with Vegas. Is he doing a good job?
PVL: Andrew Abdo is one of the best CEOs I’ve ever worked with. Andrew is trying to do his best for rugby league at all times. His intention is right, but he gets into arguments with people. It’s easy for me to come in at the end after all the arguments. The emotion has taken over the common sense. You take the emotion away, compromise a little bit, and get a deal done. By the time I get there, they’re fatigued. That’s what chairs are for – to come in and assist with the process. We all have weaknesses. I certainly do. Andrew needs to work on those areas he’s not strong on. But the game is very fortunate to have him.
BUZZ: NRL finances. You’re building a nice asset base. A resort on the Sunshine Coast, a hotel in Cronulla and a restaurant/hotel in Brisbane. This is impressive, especially as other sports like the A-League and rugby union are on their knees.
PVL: When Covid hit we had no assets. We were months off not being able to pay our bills. With no assets you can’t borrow any money. Lending institutions want security. If we get another emergency we don’t want to go through the stress and drama to survive. The RLPA and the clubs have been great partners in both agreeing in this cycle to have $300m worth of assets. We’re united. In 10 years, I hope it’s well in excess of a $1 billion. That’s what we’re aiming for. We’ve got a hotel strategy and we’re looking at another big one. We’ve got some brilliant business minds involved in the game.
BUZZ: It’s great to have all this money, but I worry about bush footy. Wagga was once a great rugby league town. Laurie Daley’s team in Junee has fallen over. Can we pump some of this investment money into the bush.
PVL: I grew up in country rugby league. There was a real buzz about it. We want to get back to that. People tell me it’s not necessarily money, but people migrating out of country towns. I don’t buy that. I’m looking at it now. We’ve developed a new organisation call Participation Australia to look after the entire country. I’m also looking at some direct funding for some of the country clubs. The NSWRL and QRL run the competitions, but they don’t fund the clubs. I want to change that. Even money for registrations, insurance, footballs and jumpers.
One of the things we’ve previously dropped the ball on is schools. We’ve put on a lot of new development officers to get the relationship back with schools. To their credit, the AFL had a strategy where they did a major investment in schools well.
BUZZ: You’ve achieved so much as an administrator but there’s one thing you haven’t got over the line – funding for Sydney’s suburban grounds. Shark Park holds 13,000. Can you please do something about it.
PVL: We’ve done better than what we get credit for. The previous government reneged on $800m but gave us $500m – $300m for Penrith and the rest for centres of excellence.
I think the new premier (Chris Minns) is as good a person as I’ve met in politics. He’s a very impressive guy. And a can-do man. He’s got a budget repair job at the moment, which he’s trying to fix. But I’ve told him point-blank we need money for Shark Park, at the very minimum for a centre of excellence. He’s got other priorities, but we’ll get there.
BUZZ: This time every year we run the story that we’re going to move the grand final out of Sydney.
PVL: The grand final is our greatest asset. Every state in Australia wants it. So you’ve got to look at selling it. You’ve known me for a long time … I don’t bluff. My job is to make sure the game gets as much revenue and profit as we can.
BUZZ: What about the next TV deal. It’s not up until 2027, but I’m sure you’re already thinking about it. I saw last year Channel 7 wants Origin.
PVL: Free to air is not where we get our main source of revenue. It comes from subscription television.
The way people are watching sport is changing quickly and they are moving away from traditional TVs to other devices and subscribe to the content they want to watch.
The product fee sport we receive will depend on the subscriptions and the advertising from those platforms.
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