The Imperium Group, headed by Andrew Cox and Peter Sidwell, will announce the purchase today of the Melbourne Rebels Super Rugby team on a 20-year deal for an undisclosed sum, starting July 1.
The Australian Rugby Union, which has been in control of the franchise since the original owner Harold Mitchell passed over the reins to it in 2013, will hand the franchise to Imperium with no little delight, with its annual report revealing the Rebels cost $3.3 million in an overall deficit of $6.3m.
Still, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Cox and Sidwell — who is a former chairman and majority owner of the A-League Melbourne Heart soccer club and has been Mick Malthouse’s manager for 30 years — haven’t picked themselves up a bargain.
“The on-field facilities are in good shape but the off-field needs a lot of work,” said Cox, who nominally will be chief executive officer, representing the club at regular Super Rugby executives meetings. Current CEO Peter Leahy is not continuing with the organisation, having done the work to set the club up for sale.
“We’re in the single most competitive sporting market in the world, bar none,” Cox said. “Melbourne has 18 professional sporting teams. New York has something like 16. So we’re very much a niche operator and we have to do what we do well.
“This is a long-term play, not a short-term.
“(Head coach) Tony McGahan and (rugby operations general manager) Baden Stephenson have done a really good job.
“We’ve got a good opportunity to be really competitive next year. It’s not my job to coach the team or tell the coach what to do. That’s his job. My job is to fix the financial performance of the business of the club.
“This is not going to be a stand-alone operation with the exception of the rugby side of things. We aren’t going to be a traditional rugby club. We have to be more agile, a bit more commercial, for want of a better word, than all the others.”
Original owner Mitchell spent an estimated $8 million on setting up the player group in the first two years but Cox, a New Zealander with strong — if now past — affiliations with the Crusaders, indicated he intends to stay within guidelines.
Asked what budget the football department would have to play with, Cox replied: “It’s their decision who they hire but they’ll stay within the salary cap.”
If the Rebels are to keep the team at least as strong as this year’s, when they picked up a record six wins, they will need to find quality replacements for captain and backrower Scott Higginbotham and tighthead prop Paul Alo-Emile.
Cox is a long-time rugby follower who was a foundation member of the Weary Dunlop Club and all indications are that he and Sidwell are in for the long haul.
Certainly that is what Rob Clarke, the Australian Rugby Union’s general manager for professional rugby, market and operations, is hoping, describing the Rebels transfer as “virtually in perpetuity”.
“I’ve known both men a long time,” Clarke said. “Andrew is putting his whole company behind this. He has bought 18 companies since he started it and only sold one so he has a reputation as a stayer.”
