NRL boss Peter V’landys reveals his ‘kamikaze’ leadership is all to land record broadcast deal
Peter V’landys embraces comparisons to Donald Trump while transforming rugby league from financial disaster to a $800 million powerhouse through sheer bulldozer tactics.
Andrew Webster
For the past three years, Peter V’landys has hounded US President Donald Trump about attending the NRL’s season-opening matches at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas as his special guest.
It’s a signature V’landys play: conjure an outlandish idea that looks beyond his reach, wear the ridicule from the public and pundits, but be aware how much exposure it will garner for the sport he is selling if it comes off.
“We’re closer than a lot of people think because I’ve tried every everything to get Trump there,” V’landys says. “It’s not about his politics. It’s not about what Trump does, or even him. It’s that you can’t buy that sort of publicity. I’m an opportunist. If the President was able to generate publicity for rugby league, and we had all the media interest of the USA, why wouldn’t I want him there?”
In the high-stakes world of Australian sports, Peter V’landys has never been one to shy away from a more than a few people in rugby league – especially those from the clubs, players association, and media who deal with him daily – privately draw comparisons between the combative leader of the game and the combative leader of the free world.
V’landys’ cult of personality, his skilful manipulation of the media, and the populist lens he applies to most situations are all very Trumpian.
Like Trump, he’s impossible to escape and ignore; front and centre of every major episode in either rugby league (for which he is the ARL Commission chairman) or horse racing (for which he is Racing NSW chief executive). Like Trump, he keeps his sport and himself in the daily news cycle by generating endless headlines.
Unlike Trump, the madness seems to justify the means. V’landys has brought a strange sense of chaotic stability to rugby league with record revenues, profits and therefore distributions to clubs and players.
“I take that as a compliment because that’s what I am,” V’landys says of the Trump comparison.
“I mean, you can’t avoid who you are. It’s in my DNA to be a can-do person, and I try to get my staff to be can-do people. I always say to my staff, ‘Don’t give me five reasons why you can’t do it – give me five reasons why you can do it’. People misinterpret that as being a bulldozer. Well, that’s fair enough. But, by being a bulldozer we’ve had some great successes for rugby league and racing. And without that style, we might not have got here.”
He then spits out a line even Trump wouldn’t utter: “I’m a kamikaze pilot, so one day I’m going to crash, and I’ve got to expect that I’m going to crash. I never expected to be chairman of this game for seven years.”
From the moment V’landys replaced former Queensland premier Peter Beattie as chairman in October 2019, he has ruled rugby league with an iron fist. He rescued the code during the Covid-19 shutdown, rushed in rule changes to speed up play to appease broadcasters, and went to war with the RLPA during intense collective bargaining agreement negotiations that edged the players towards a possible strike.
The players’ union has been placated by a dramatic reversal in the game’s finances on his watch; from near-insolvent when the pandemic struck, with long-time free-to-air broadcaster Channel 9 threatening to break its contract, to the strongest financial position in the game’s existence.
At Monday’s AGM, the commission announced record revenues of $845.6m and a fifth consecutive surplus of $64.8m.
Record increases in TV viewership and attendances have the game up on its toes, declaring itself the “biggest sport in Australia and the Pacific”.
The line that stood out in the annual report was the one least reported: the game has net assets worth $387.3m from four hotels. That’s a financial position the game has never enjoyed.
“When Covid hit, the commission had little cash in the bank and was raiding the Player Retirement Fund for working capital,” South Sydney chief executive Blake Solly says. “Now, there’s almost $400m in net assets. That is just a remarkable turnaround. The sport will benefit from this for years to come.”
Whether you accept V’landys’ imperious style – and many do not – even his harshest critics can’t dismiss the job he’s done. Few club bosses stand up to him like Solly, who V’landys infamously called a “flea f..ker” in a club funding meeting in 2021.
“Peter’s style is unique and sometimes the lack of process or consultation can create some challenges,” Solly says. “But he’s dynamic, ambitious for the sport and there’s always calculation in any of the risks he takes. The sport has never been in better health on or off the field, and Peter – and (NRL chief executive) Andrew Abdo – should take a lot of credit for that.”
Racing might be his day job, but rugby league is V’landys’ passion. His aggressiveness mirrors that of the game; a ruthless, cold-blooded, working-class code in which self-interest rules. While the AFL is run like an ASX-100 company, often strangled by its legal and media departments, the NRL can feel like an amateurish pub comp.
Strong leadership at the top has always been required to muster the factions, but it’s never had someone take control like V’landys.
He doesn’t flinch when I suggest he’s a dictator – a description ascribed to him with greater frequency – but insists the label is not right and he’s part of a team that includes Abdo and his commissioners.
But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s The PVL Show with almost every decision, no matter how big or small, crossing his desk.
“I’m not criticising past administrations, but they were always frightened to make the hard decisions because they didn’t want, you know, the criticism,” he says.
“My style is a little bit different. I always go with what I think’s right. And if I don’t have the courage to do it, I shouldn’t be there. I shouldn’t hold that position.
“We don’t care about the criticism and ramifications from some self-interested parties that we may affect.”
Despite the game’s towering financial position, the chaotic stability of recent years feels less certain on the eve of the 2026 season. Many stakeholders fear V’landys has bitten off too much with the incoming Perth Bears and Papua New Guinea Chiefs franchises.
In the past few months, a stream of announcements and storylines have left clubs, coaches, players, media and even fans fatigued. Normally, off-field player indiscretions keep journos busy in summer. V’landys’ burning desire to keep Zac Lomax in the game, make revolutionary changes to the kick-off, flip State of Origin eligibility rules on their head, and take an Origin match to Auckland’s Eden Park next year have kept rugby league in the spotlight for months.
Since becoming chairman, V’landys has developed a cult following among fans because he’s the ultimate champion for his sport. When he ridicules AFL and rugby union, he speaks for the masses whose lives revolve around the team they support. But his more recent decisions and public statements have outraged even his most loyal followers.
V’landys has been wearing the bruises all summer for good reason: he’s under significant pressure to land a record broadcast deal after the AFL dwarfed the NRL’s in 2022 with the biggest in Australian television history. The suspicion from clubs for months is the chaos has been engineered to whip up interest as negotiations intensify, and even more so in the past few days here in Las Vegas where network executives have converged for the triple-header at Allegiant Stadium.
When I ask him how much these recent manoeuvrings and announcements have been about the TV deal, V’landys doesn’t hesitate in response.
“All of it,” he says. “We’ll live or die by this deal.”
The Politis influence
Since the first year of the Vegas experiment in 2024, Sydney Roosters chairman Nick Politis has held an intimate dinner at the Greek restaurant estiatorio Milos inside the opulent Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip two days before the season-opening matches.
The Roosters played the first year, but Politis has kept returning in support of V’landys and his vision for the US, where Politis owns large slabs of property and regularly does business. No club has backed the initiative more.
In the past two years, Vegas has been the place where Politis has patched up longstanding feuds with former Roosters director James Packer and former Roosters coach and current Bulldogs football general manager Phil Gould. Channelling his inner Kofi Annan, Mark Bouris has been the peacemaker on both occasions.
Politis treats his club like family and, every Thursday before the main games at Allegiant Stadium, the 84-year-old billionaire will stand in the scorching sun at a nondescript park on the outskirts of the city watching the LA Roosters men’s and women’s teams play in the NRL Nines tournament. Later that evening, he’ll host his lavish dinner for a select handful of politicians, media execs, and Roosters directors. It’s gone from being an intimate dinner among friends to the talk of the game, with all sorts of powerbrokers wanting to attend. Politis carefully crafts the guest list.
V’landys and Abdo are always the last to arrive, rushing from a heaving fanfest at Fremont Street in what the locals call “Old Vegas”.
As the longest-serving chairman in the game, Politis represents Old Rugby League. Speculation bounces around each season about this being his last in charge of his beloved club. Most will believe it when they see it. They also believe he still wields significant sway ove the game because of his perceived influence over V’landys.
“He’s brought an awakening to rugby league,” Politis says. “He walks through brick walls for our sport. He’ll go down in history as one of our greatest administrators. The game will be talking about him for years to come.”
Greek heritage drew Politis and V’landys to each other long before rugby league. Remarkably, two of the game’s most powerful figures were both born on the small island of Kythera, which is 200km south of Athens.
Politis and his family had fled to Australia before V’landys was born, but the pair share similar traits. As Greeks from nearby islands say of Kytherians: “They’ll jump the gate to save the hinge.” Politis doesn’t own a yacht or private plane, while V’landys has saved millions in paring back expenditure on NRL operations.
In 2018, Politis invited V’landys for coffee at his favourite cafe in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney’s east. Sitting at a table at the back that carries a permanent brass sign that reads “RESERVED FOR NICK”, Politis explained how he and other club bosses wanted to endorse his candidature for the commission.
Then chairman Beattie agreed to bring V’landys on but only so if a female director soon followed, and one did: Foxtel executive Amanda Laing, who has since left the commission, joined Channel 9, and is a critical figure in looming broadcast negotiations.
Long before V’landys became chairman, rugby league bosses had always tried to garner Politis’s support, aware of his power and influence. But with V’landys it’s different because he manoeuvred him onto the commission.
“Rugby league is all about tribalism, and when some of the greatest businessmen in the game put their tribal hat on, they’re irrational,” V’landys says.
Is he calling Politis irrational?
“Oh no, no, no,” he quickly clarifies. “Nick’s very tribal, and I love him for being tribal, because that’s what rugby league’s about.”
When V’landys sacked PNG chairman Ray Dib last month, he described it as one of the worst days of his chairmanship. Not because he supported Dib – but because he had let Politis down.
Politis convinced V’landys to make the appointment in the first place, arguing the fledgling franchise needed a hard-headed operator with a history of wrestling with player managers and rival clubs. Dib had great success in the early years of his tenure at the Bulldogs, but it went south very quickly, with members voting him off the board in 2018.
Dib has been desperate to get back into the game and V’landys gave him the PNG role out of loyalty to Politis until it became apparent that he wasn’t the right man for the job. Why he left remains a mystery, although a fallout with new chief executive Lorna McPherson seems most likely. V’landys gave him the option to resign. Dib dug in and he was eventually sacked. If anyone thought it was a sign that Politis’s grip on the NRL was slipping, they were misguided. Weeks later, he stepped in to have a controversial change to the kick-off aborted.
Souths coach Wayne Bennett – who V’landys compares to horseracing great Bart Cummings – had been telling V’landys for months about changing the rule so the team that scores points must kick-off. With the TV deal in mind, V’landys loved the idea because it would, in theory, help eliminate one-sided blowouts.
Bennett was one of six coaches who attended a meeting in December, along with the Storm’s Craig Bellamy, Canberra’s Ricky Stuart, Brisbane’s Michael Maguire, Penrith’s Ivan Cleary, and Cronulla’s Craig Fitzgibbon.
As reported by The Australian last month, some of the coaches felt like the decision had already been made. The most vocal critic was Fitzgibbon, who argued it was against the spirit of the game. He was angered when reports surfaced that the decision from the coaches was unanimous.
While most NRL clubs were against the change, V’landys was adamant it would be in place for round one. That was certainly the feeling at the NRL and even the clubs who opposed it.
Then Politis stepped in.
Just a week before teams started playing their first pre-season match, he called V’landys and voiced his concerns, facilitating a call to Roosters coach Trent Robinson. The kick-off changes were put on the shelf – for now.
“Nick doesn’t always get his own way,” V’landys says. “Trust me on that. There have been many times, and it’s even on the record, where Nick has lost on some of them. I look at things through what’s best for the game. Yes, Nick’s certainly a person I admire and look up to and seek advice from. A good administrator seeks advice from a lot of people. It’s not just Nick that I seek advice from. I seek advice from (Souths chair) Nick Pappas. I seek advice from (Gold Coast Titans chair) Rebecca Frizelle. It depends on the issue at the time as to who you seek advice from. But Nick is certainly one that I respect highly.”
It was Politis’s advice that led the rugby league circus to Las Vegas. Soon after V’landys was appointed chairman, they met at the same table at the same Rushcutters Bay cafe, and Politis made a suggestion: “Peter, you need to grow the game internationally.”
Politis has been banging this drum with NRL suits for years, and while past administrations have investigated the idea of playing matches on the US west coast, nothing eventuated. The stumbling block was getting the support of the broadcasters.
V’landys, in full kamikaze mode, pushed through, getting Foxtel and Nine on board.
“We have three times the amount of people watching the game since Peter took over,” Politis says. (The cumulative TV audience has doubled from 134 million to 224 million, but the total audience has almost tripled if you consider an increase in attendances).
“But we need more eyeballs on it and the only way to do that is to go global. Peter’s on that path and he’s going a hundred miles an hour. Nobody else could have done it.”
The Vegas success
When the Canterbury Bulldogs have their house in order, their fans find their feet, voices, and hotted-up WRX cars. They’re a multicultural club, infused with Lebanese passion, and when their team starts winning football games, they take to the streets, taking over Belmore Road with drums beating and cars doing burnouts. It’s a thing of rugby league heartland beauty.
When Phil Gould played then coached the famous club in the 1980s, could he ever have envisioned the sight of the Doggies masses taking over the Las Vegas Strip as they have the past few days? Could the great Gus have imagined a day when they marched towards Allegiant Stadium, as they will do on Saturday?
In the days leading up to the match, the throng of supporters wearing Bulldogs, Dragons, Knights, and Cowboys jumpers has swelled, just as it has each year. Australian accents can be heard everywhere. You can be talking to a Mt Isa horse trainer in the sports bar at The Cosmopolitan one night, chatting to a truck driver from Corryong at breakfast at Resorts World the next morning.
Just as V’landys suits rugby league, rugby league suits Vegas.
Of all V’landys’ achievements, starting the season here has been among his most successful – although not in the way he intended. As he admitted to The Australian earlier this week, cracking the US market and partnering with a wagering operator has been harder than he thought. The NRL has the view that it’s playing a long game but, if we’re being honest, neither are likely to occur.
But the way the Vegas matches have turbocharged the rest of the NRL season is something that can’t be ignored. It’s sucked up so much attention in Australia that it’s forced the AFL to respond by playing four standalone opening-round matches in NSW and Queensland next weekend.
Critics will point to the empty top tiers of Allegiant Stadium and claim the concept is a failure. The NRL initially spruiked it would sell out the 65,000-seat stadium, but 40,000 appears to be its limit. The NRL has been loath to predict a crowd this year, mostly because tourism to the US has flattened.
But the TV numbers back home are impressive. Last year, it was the most streamed day in the history of Fox Sports. A week later, round one was the most watched in NRL history – regular season or finals – with seven million viewers across eight matches. At the end of the season, viewership was up 10 per cent.
The matches, fan experiences, and exclusive afterparties are only part of the experience. A two-day trade show was held for the first time this year, along with a Business of Sport conference headlined by Sarah B Rogers, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
Other speakers included Las Vegas Raiders president Sandra Morgan, Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games president Andrew Liveris, Goldman Sachs’ head of global sports and finance, Stacy Sonnenberg, and Peter Hutton, a Saudi Pro League board member. Perhaps the most interesting attendees are those with whom V’landys and Abdo will do business in coming months to secure the next broadcast deal once the current one ends in 2027.
They will be in V’landys’ chairman’s room – a large, ground-level bar at Allegiant Stadium – on Saturday: Laing and Nine boss Matt Stanton, Seven sports boss Chris Jones, Paramount’s new president of international and global content distribution, Kevin MacLellan, as well as representatives from Amazon and DAZN.
Just how much the NRL will get is anyone’s guess. Some have speculated as much a $5bn over five years. Privately, the NRL is talking up a good game, but that might be beyond its reach.
When bumper broadcast deals are struck in rugby league, those who have secured them usually ride off into the sunset. V’landys says he’s going nowhere for now.
“I thought the plane would have crashed by now, but I’m still here, so who knows?” he says of his departure. “For me, it’s important to see PNG and Perth be successful. And I’d really like the competition to go to 20 teams. Once it does that, it’s reached its potential.
“Expanding the game globally is important, but there will be people after me who can take that forward. There’s a cemetery full of people who thought they couldn’t be replaced. I’m there while people want me there, but I’m a realist as well. At some time, at some stage, they could turn against you.”
Asked if there’s any chance Trump might be bouncing around the chairman’s room on Saturday, V’landys grins.
“Our chances are lengthening out at the moment,” he says. “We’re aware of his commitments so it might be hard. But we’ll never give up.”
