Anthony De Ceglie has many obstacles to overcome to build a rugby league franchise from scratch.
Putting a Perth Bears NRL team on the field in 2027 must be one of the biggest challenges in Australian sport.
The man taking that on, Anthony De Ceglie, knows he has a big task before him, even if he prefers to only talk about the opportunities as opposed to the threats.
The former media executive’s job is made even harder by the personal baggage he brings with him, including the hostility of influential people he upset when editor of The West Australian or, more recently, by quitting the AFL-aligned media organisation.
“I learned a long time ago to ignore the noise and I never let external voices influence internal markers of success,” Mr De Ceglie told Business News.
The scale of the challenge was known well before Mr De Ceglie’s recent appointment.
Historically, rugby league has been a minor sport in Western Australia.
Previous attempts by WA-based teams to join the national league have ended in failure.
The new franchise also faces a void when it comes to media coverage, which is unprecedented for a professional sporting code.
The state’s biggest media outlet, Seven West Media, owns Channel Seven and The West Australian and has the national broadcast rights to the AFL, the most popular competition in the state (at least in terms of eyeballs).
It has largely ignored the Perth Bears launch.
On top of that there is Mr De Ceglie’s own background.
After years of shining a spotlight on politicians, business leaders and sporting figures as editor of The West, Mr De Ceglie must now court many of those people for sponsorship and influence.
Quitting Seven West to join the NRL’s push into the media company’s heartland state was seen by some as treacherous. There is every chance Kerry Stokes, Seven West’s influential, AFL-loving stakeholder, feels the same.
Underneath all that, Mr De Ceglie has no background in running a business, let alone a startup or a sports franchise.
Even his time living in a rugby league state is minimal.
However, the scoreboard is not all negative.
The former newspaperman is friendly with rugby league supporter and premier, Roger Cook, whose government has committed $60 million in direct financial support to the club over seven years.
In addition, there is $5.6 million for match-day promotion over that period, as well as building a new high-performance centre in Malaga to be shared by rugby league and rugby union.
And while Mr De Ceglie may have upset the powerful Stokes camp by defecting to NRL, he does have NRL chair Peter V’landys in his corner, a corporate titan in his own right.
Driver
Mr De Ceglie’s move was unexpected when announced two months ago.
He had left Perth for Sydney barely a year earlier to run Channel 7’s news and current affairs; a big job for a someone without television experience.
Mr De Ceglie dismissed speculation that uncertainty about his future at the network was the key driver for his decision to run the Bears: that he jumped before he was pushed.
“I’m very confident that there is no truth to that at all,” Mr De Ceglie told Business News.
“This opportunity came along that was simply too exciting to pass up.
“There’s criticism of my time at Seven, and that’s understandable, because I’ve never been the sort of person to sit still.
“If I was going to do that job, I was going to try things, I was going to take some big swings for home runs and really sort of push the boundaries for what we had been doing.
“Satire was an example of that, horoscopes was an example of that.
“I think you’ve got to be willing to try things, even at the risk of them failing.
“Because at the end of the day, the answer for legacy media is not sitting still.”
The criticism directed at Mr De Ceglie over his performance in television is viewed by some in Perth as reaping what he sowed, reflecting ongoing hostility from some quarters.
Corporate hostility
Business News spoke to various people who perceived they had been targeted by The West during Mr De Ceglie’s time. The responses were mixed.
“Good luck to him. It was a brave move to leave that place,” said one of the more forgiving voices.
“Look at how they have treated him.”
But not everyone feels Stockholm syndrome is an excuse.
“It is a lesson in life,” said another.
“You can be forthright and tough, but there is a line.
“You see it with politicians. Life after politics depends on what they were like when they were in the job.”
Mr De Ceglie appears as thickskinned about this kind of criticism now as he was when he was editing the paper.
He said everyone had a right to their own opinion, but claimed to have received plenty of encouragement, including from those who want to support the Bears.
“My phone has been ringing off the hook with people wanting to be commercial partners,” Mr De Ceglie said.
“So if you want to break into the Sydney market and you’re a Perth company, the Perth Bears offer the greatest sponsorship opportunity you’ve ever had, but it does go vice versa.
“I’ve been really surprised, like, by the number of companies that are saying they see this as a chance to break into Perth.”
Media void
Such corporate aspirations are aided by having Nine Entertainment’s Channel 9 as a broadcast partner of NRL, albeit without a mass media publisher as a stablemate in WA as it does in key markets in the east.
Aside from a front page damning the ‘Bad News Bears’ when the new franchise was announced, The West has largely been silent on the subsequent announcements by the team, even when the NRL named its coach as Mal Meninga and then a new board with key WA leaders such as ex-politician Ben Morton, Cash Converters deputy chair Peter Cumins and ex-WACA chief executive Christina Matthews.
Mr De Ceglie said he would not comment on others’ editorial decisions, believing onfield success should be rewarded by coverage.
“And if that’s happening [success] and we’re not there, then the only people missing out will be the readers of The West Australian, but I do think it’s a fallacy to say that WA is AFL country,” he said.
“Clearly, the Eagles and the Dockers are very, very big, but it’s also a Wildcats town, it’s also a Perth Glory town, it’s also a Fever town. You know, it’s a town that loves its hockey.”
The North Sydney Bears were a long-time fixture in rugby league. Photo: NRL
But achieving onfield success will be major challenge.
The appointment of Mr Meninga as inaugural coach has been viewed as astute. Time will tell if he can coax key players to shift to the WA capital where homegrown talent is thin.
Despite the 2024 NRL annual report’s figures seeming to compare WA’s 33,950 “participants across NRL School Programs, competitions and gala days” in a favourable light with Queensland’s 70,636 and NSW’s 117,580 registered club participants, there is plenty of evidence that rugby league has a small WA base.
ARLC WA, the corporate entity behind rugby league’s existing WA operations, had just over $1 million in turnover for the year ending October 31 2023, according to its latest annual report.
That would put it out of the top 30 sports in the state by revenue, according to Data & Insights.
Mr De Ceglie suggests the link with former NRL team, the North Sydney Bears, is a key benefit for the new franchise, as the NSW club still operates at a lower level as a feeder to the first-grade competition.
He also believes league players will welcome the opportunity to come to WA, which is more family friendly and where reduced media scrutiny might be a benefit in terms of lifestyle.
And Mr De Ceglie points to the success of the recent State of Origin match between NSW and Queensland played at a packed Optus Stadium.
“There’s 60,000 fans we know of, at least, in Perth,” Mr De Ceglie said.
“If we can get those NRL fans to come to the games, I’m really confident of that.
“So I’m confident we’re going to get the fans.
“Probably the challenge is we need to keep the fans … it’s about making sure each step we take in the process is the right step.
“We’ve got the right coach. Mal Meninga is not just an immortal of the NRL. He’s an immortal of the national sporting landscape.
“And he’s a real leader. He’s big on culture, big on developing young boys and turning them into men.”
In the end, though, Mr De Ceglie understands he is the one who needs to make it work, despite having the backing of the NRL and Mr V’landys.
“The pressure will be on me, because it’ll really be down to whether or not I can be a successful CEO,” he said.
