Queensland Reds sought merger with Brisbane Broncos
Queensland Rugby Union chair Brett Clark approached rugby league powerbrokers about a potential merger with NRL powerhouse club the Brisbane Broncos.
Clark held discussions with Broncos chair Karl Morris, a fellow Brisbane powerbroker, and floated the idea of creating a joint venture. Rugby league sources confirmed informal discussions had taken place but had not yet progressed to a more formal deal.
Clark, a savvy multi-millionaire businessman, philanthropist, and 2032 Olympics committee member, confirmed the conversation with Morris and told The Weekend Australian he was always open to exploring any avenue for making the Queensland Reds as strong as they could be.
“The QRU board will explore any opportunities to make QRU and the Reds more viable and sustainable,” Clark said. “We would talk to anyone.”
Clark, an ePharmacy co-founder who surfed the 1990s dot.com boom before selling in 2005 for a stake in retail giant Chemist Warehouse, said he was open-minded and would explore other ways to strengthen Queensland rugby.
“I try to look at it from how I work in business,” he said. “If you look at what we’ve achieved as a group in Chemist Warehouse, we broke the mould of what community pharmacy looked like … we’re now in four countries. We’ve got 650 stores with 25,000 staff.
“The point I’m making is, if you start looking at things in a different way, amazing things can happen.
“If there is synergistic value for the Reds, the ballet or the Olympics, by talking to people, either within our industry or outside our industry, I will have the conversation.” One thing Clark won’t change is handing “the keys” commercially to Rugby Australia.
Clark has had a fraught relationship with the rugby hierarchy in the past and has wielded great power, recently overseeing a letter which called for the resignation of then RA chair Hamish McLennan – who was pushing for the game to wholly centralise – both commercially and high performance as Ireland has done with great success.
Late last year, Clark has said that they’d “burn an effigy” of him at the Reds’ headquarters, Ballymore, before the QRU’s commercial assets were handed over to RA.
Ballymore is now known as the National Rugby Training Centre, a $31.5m world-class sporting facility and is the national headquarters for the Wallaroos. It is also a training base for the Reds and Super W squads, the Reds 7s and Buildcorp Reds Academy.
Clark reiterated his stance on not handing over its assets to RA. “We’ve never shifted our position irrespective of what my counterparts down south in the past have said … we didn’t agree to centralisation, we agreed to alignment but purely on high performance,” he said.
“What we wouldn’t agree to, and we still don’t, and we never will, is handing back the keys, and I’ve said that in the past. And I can honestly say Herbie (Dan Herbert), Phil (Waugh), they don’t want the keys, they’ve got enough keys in their bowl at the moment.” Queensland is considered the most financially stable of the rugby federations, though that is only because it is at best a break-even proposition each year.
In comparison, the ACT Brumbies are struggling financially and are still yet to lodge a 2023 financial year report with the corporate regulator, and the Melbourne Rebels collapsed into administration and then liquidation earlier this year.
NSW has been effectively taken over by Rugby Australia and the Western Force is propped up by billionaire Andrew Forrest and his family.
The QRU’s operating profit last year was $75,365, down from the $722,459 result it recorded in 2022. Revenue for 2023 was about $22.5m, not counting the $14m the QRU received for its Ballymore funding during the year.Meanwhile, despite a poor year on the field in 2024, the Broncos are the financial powerhouse of the NRL, making regular profits and paying dividends.
Majority owned by News Corp (publisher of The Weekend Australian), the Broncos are listed on the ASX and have a market capitalisation of about $85m. Its most recent financial results, for the six months to June 30, showed a $4.3m net profit from about $42.3m revenue.
The Broncos dominate the Brisbane sporting scene from a sponsorship and crowd-pulling perspective, and its management have been approached by parties from several sports in recent years – including soccer, netball and rugby union – for potential commercial tie-ups or mergers and takeovers.
It comes as rugby continues to struggle financially. RA late last year secured an $80m credit facility with private equity group Pacific Equity Partners, funds it said would be earmarked for the development of the game, with a particular focus on the women’s game, pathways and community.
The governing body then revealed two months ago that it had a $9.2m deficit in 2023 but it is hoping its financial situation will improve with the British and Irish Lions touring Australia next year and the hosting of the men’s World Cup in 2027 and the women’s event two years later.
