When you invested in the Sharks in 2021, what was the vision and how has that evolved over the past five years?
The club was in a little bit of trouble, like a lot of rugby clubs. It needed to be supported and stabilised. We were in the middle of Covid, the brand was a little stale and it was losing players.
The initial investment was really about stabilising and rescuing the club. Then the vision was to bring in sports owners from other sports who could perhaps look at the club and rugby in a different way.
The Sharks have always been a franchise of entertainment and creativity, so we wanted to push the envelope there. Diversity is important to me, as is expanding the game more deeply into South Africa and ultimately sub-Saharan Africa.
Being in Europe was also a massive opportunity. North America and Europe are the two biggest sports, media and entertainment markets in the world, so that presented an opportunity for rugby and for the Sharks.
At the time, South African rugby players were looking for a home. They had the option of Japan or one of the French clubs, but players wanted a reason to be in South Africa. I think we helped lead the way in trying to create a franchise that could keep players in South Africa and be competitive with some of the European brands.
Rugby clubs around the world are struggling financially. Do modern teams have to become much more than rugby clubs?
It is all sport. It is a media and entertainment business, and the primary product is the game of rugby, but you have to look beyond that.
At the start of every season, when I’m speaking to the team on the ground, I say: come up with three revenue ideas.
Rugby is losing money in South Africa and the number is getting bigger, notwithstanding how successful the Springboks are. I’m bearing the tab along with the other owners of the major franchises because that loss is increasingly being shifted to the clubs.
We don’t want to make money along the way. Anything the club produces, we want to put back into the business. We just want to break even, and we’re not doing that. There are structural issues with the sport, but I think we can do much better in terms of getting to break even.
There has been some criticism of the Sharks’ recent rebrand. What was the thinking behind it?
You can’t wait 30 years to do a rebrand. We had a brand that I actually love and continue to wear. It is part of the identity of the Sharks, but we have to take the brand forward into the future.
People were not buying the apparel. Some diehard fans were, but if you really want to take the brand throughout South Africa and into Europe, you have to keep pushing the envelope.
We have a wonderful new sponsor in Reebok who have come up with a lot of great apparel that kids really want to wear. I took my direction from the players. They were not excited about wearing our old brand; they are extremely excited about the apparel they are wearing now. That said it all to me.
In every rebrand there is fan backlash, and I listen to all of it. Maybe we don’t have it totally right. I like our new Sharks logo and the SRC is really growing on me. I would probably like to see the shark on the jersey as well, and maybe we will have to do that.
But apparel sales are going well and our social-media following is substantially up.
We are still very much a rugby club, but we want to do more.
The team is based in one of the most fascinating places in the world, with the greatest people. I want to do more around people, culture, food and entertainment.
I want us to be the Anthony Bourdain of rugby clubs.
There is regular debate about whether South African teams should return to Super Rugby. Commercially, is that even realistic?
No, it’s not. I wouldn’t do this if we were playing Super Rugby. We have to be in Europe. That is the opportunity for us. We are a talent pool and we are selling the product into a massive media market. We have to be able to get that right.
The goal is the Champions Cup. It is very hard for a franchise because you have a limited number of contracted players and you need international-quality players. Those international players come back fatigued and sometimes injured.
But that is where we have to be. That is what helps South African rugby and what helps the clubs.
I think the URC has been a massive success. It is well run. We’re not there yet commercially, but it is an opportunity.
Where would you like the Sharks to be in another five years?
It is a sports club and it starts with rugby. I want us to be more successful on the rugby front, and by that I mean institutionalising success.
If you look at the last five years, it has actually been one of the more successful periods in Sharks history. We won an international trophy, we won the Currie Cup, we won the SA Shield and we were the only South African team to reach the Champions Cup quarterfinals. We beat Bordeaux away.
But with our squad we were inconsistent, and the narrative changed a little because it didn’t feel right to the fans and it didn’t feel right to me.
In five years’ time, I want to make our fans proud. I want the team to win a few more trophies and play a brand of rugby that is entertaining and exciting.
I also want us to win off the field. I want it to be a place where people can visit on a Friday or Saturday night and be entertained. When I walk around Sharks Park and see kids everywhere, I’m the happiest person in the world.
How important could the 2031 Rugby World Cup in the United States be for the sport?
It is a massive opportunity for rugby. It is an opportunity for people to see the sport. The same thing happened with soccer in 1994. Before the World Cup came to the United States, I had to go down to the mailroom and speak to guys from Ghana to find out what the scores were. Now soccer is everywhere.
There is a lot of rugby here. There are something like 35 million fans, but they are dispersed and the game is not particularly well organised.
The 2031 World Cup is a massive opportunity to have games in lots of different places around the country. But we have to get it right.
There has been scepticism around rugby in America for a long time, but we have to keep pushing.