SPORT
Western Force to launch Greenbay Packers-style prospectus
by Wayne Smith
The Western Force today will launch their Green Bay Packers-style prospectus to the public as the Perth club attempts one of the most ambitious money-raising ventures ever in Australian sport in a bid to avoid being jettisoned from Super Rugby.
The Force are one of three Australian clubs that could be culled from the southern hemisphere competition as part of SANZAAR’s strategic review — the others being the Melbourne Rebels and the Brumbies. But the franchise has boldly gone onto the front foot to save itself by attempting to raise $5m-$10m in shares.
“A rugby side doesn’t wait to see what the other side is going to do when the whistle blows ... we’ve got to go out and play our own game,” said Tony Howarth, chairman both of Rugby WA and the company specially set up to buy the Force, the Western Force Owners Ltd.
The idea of going to the market with an ownership structure based on the Green Bay Packers — the only community-owned franchise in US professional sport — has been a dream of Force CEO Mark Sinderberry since 2015 but by doing it now, when the club’s future is in peril, the club are sending a clear and unmistakable message to the ARU and SANZAAR.
“Effectively, we’re actually asking people to become an owner,” Howarth said. “To that extent, we have to issue a prospectus, we have to have ASIC (the Australian Securities & Investments Commission) have a look at it. So it will sit for a week for ASIC to have a look at it, for the market to have a look at it, and then we can go on and then start to raise the money.”
The intention is to raise a minimum of $5m, which Rugby WA sees as a baseline of public support for the embattled club. If the club cannot raise that amount within four months, it will abandon the attempt. But when the Force first tested the marketplace in a sample poll, just under 5000 supporters indicated they were prepared to literally put their money behind the team.
On average, each supporter indicated they were prepared to purchase 1.7 shares, with each share priced at $1000. That would equate to $8.5m, more if the offer of being a part-owner in a professional rugby team captures the imagination of the Perth public.
Certainly the Force have one of the most fanatical supporter bases, nicknamed the Sea of Blue, of any team in Super Rugby. When the club was launched in 2006, they stunned east coast clubs with the size and passion of the crowds they were attracting.
“Those 20,000 that were originally members, we start to get some of them back and really build that Sea of Blue again,” Howarth said.
It is not known how the ownership structure will impact on the Force if and when it is confirmed as a going concern. Would “owners”, for instance, have a vote on who should be the CEO?
“We’ve got to work that out,” Howarth said. “What we are going to do is create a council, an advisory council, and we would certainly take those key decisions to get input from that council. We want to make it local, We want to engage with the rugby community.”
How this changes the situation regarding the ARU’s decision on whether or not to cull the club is still impossible to say. Although the national body owns the Force, having purchased the intellectual property just over 12 months ago, and even though it was working with them to develop their privatisation model, the ARU was caught completely on the hop yesterday when the club decided to launch its perspective today. Accordingly, it made no statement.
The Rebels are Australia’s only privately owned club at present, after the ARU sold them to the Imperium Sports Management group in June 2015.
No one knows what criteria the ARU is using to evaluate the relative strengths of the three endangered clubs but it may be that the Force, if they are able to realise their targets, will have removed “financial sustainability” from the list of factors weighing them down.
Indeed, it may be that their case for retention is becoming more airtight given that 43 per cent of their matchday 23 used for the club’s last game, against the Brumbies, were home-grown in Western Australia. “We’ve always said that about the west … part of our strategic driver has been the determination to create Wallabies,” said Howarth.
