The Business of Sport

As CEO of the Caloundra RSL Sea Eagles, I’m often asked when the region will have its own NRL team. My response is, “if you’ve got $15 million, I’d be happy to get one up and running for you!” That’s the hard fact.

It takes money and lots of it to operate a national sporting team but I have no doubt the region at some stage in the future will be home to national sporting teams. It’s a massive growth area and ticks a lot of the boxes for someone like the NRL.

The latest talk is that Ipswich is gathering momentum in a bid to push for any new licence that may come up as the NRL begin talks on a new TV deal. When you make comparisons to that region and ours there are a couple of things that differentiate us.  Ipswich is league heartland. There’s no doubt it would get support from the locals. We are a more transient lot and while I think league has a big following here, it would be silly to think that we are the only game in town. The other big difference for me between the two regions is they have political leaders at all levels of government passionately supporting the move.

Our time will come. We are not ready yet but within five years we will have the base to build a solid bid off. In my opinion, the fans will come. That means the one thing that will remain will be powerful political support to help drive the project. I think it’s time we begin to have some meaningful conversations.

From Justin Veivers

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