DRIVER’S SEAT
Titans to stay on the Gold Coast with local heroes Rebecca Frizelle and Darryl Kelly poised to win ownership battle
THE Titans will remain here and eventually be owned by the community following a guarantee by Rebecca Frizelle and Darryl Kelly to ensure NRL survives on the Gold Coast.
The NRL is poised to hand over the club to its new owners within days, ending the governing body’s near three-year stint in control.
Ms Frizelle, who helps run leading automotive business the Frizelle Group, and self-made millionaire Mr Kelly are in the final stages of negotiations with the NRL, who have elected to grant them the licence pending an agreement on terms. NRL chiefs ultimately decided to back a team that has already shown a deep commitment to the club rather than enter the unknown with fund manager Stuart McAuliffe’s $25 million bid.
THE NRL is set to opt for long-term stability over the sugar-hit of a cash injection by awarding the Gold Coast Titans licence to Darryl Kelly and Rebecca Frizelle.
While the deal has not yet been finalised, with lawyers understood to be negotiating the details of the contract, fund manager Stuart McAuliffe is out of the running, leaving the Frizelle-Kelly consortium as the last one standing.
The NRL originally wanted the club off its books by October 31, the end of its financial year.
But protracted negotiations over the sale price and contract details, as well as a decision to make consortiums present to the ARL Commission, blew the timeline out, with the league desperate to wrap the deal up in the coming days.
Swashbuckling investor McAuliffe, a man with a penchant for pirates, made a substantial up-front offer for the club and promised to pour millions more into the organisation.
The injection would have been a windfall for the NRL, which was forced to apply for a bank loan earlier this season for club funding agreements.
The promise of McAuliffe’s riches is understood to have made his bid a frontrunner at stages, even as the field narrowed to the final two consortiums.
Kelly and Frizelle were not in the same ball park in terms of cash offered. But the stability they offered ultimately won the support of an organisation still scarred by singleownership models, most recently, Nathan Tinkler’s disastrous time at the helm of the Newcastle Knights.
The NRL has said several times it is not in the business of owning clubs and will no longer bail out those that get into financial trouble.
Given that, it is set to opt for the model it believes will present the best chance of survival going forward, something that is not only important for the Gold Coast, but for the NRL’s $1.8 billion broadcast deal.
Like the Titans, the Knights had to be taken over by the NRL to ensure they stayed afloat.
The league eventually off- loaded the club to the Wests Group earlier this year. That bid won favour in large part because of its community focus and Kelly and Frizelle have the same vision for the Gold Coast, another factor in their favour.
That investment in the grassroots will be in addition to funds the Kelly and Frizelle families pump into the club to ensure its survival.
Despite NRL handouts to clubs increasing significantly next year, it will not be enough for the Titans to break even in the short-term, something Kelly and Frizelle both understand and embrace.
Having saved the club from the brink of extinction once already – Kelly financially and both he and Frizelle with their business and leadership skills