Tesla chair and Blackbird companion Robyn Denholm, has one-upped Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes, half proprietor of US NBA group the Utah Jazz, by shopping for a whole basketball league, the WNBL.
The deal between the Wollemi Capital Group Syndicate (WCGS) and Larry Kestelman’s Nationwide Basketball League (NBL) consortium to amass a majority stake within the Girls’s Nationwide Basketball League was signed final week.
From April subsequent yr, Denholm’s household workplace, Wollemi, will personal 49% and the NBL, 29%. Basketball Australia retains the stability of the shareholding.
Denholm additionally has a 30% stake within the Sydney Kings males’s group and Sydney Flames within the WNBL. Her daughter Victoria, CEO of Wollemi, is the Flames president.
Whereas no worth was disclosed, the Australian ladies’s competitors had been valued at as much as $35 million.
The 15-week ladies’s season bought underway just lately, with the Flames presently seventh out of the eight groups.
Larry Kestelman owns 94% of the lads’s competitors, having initially purchased in to the comp in 2015 and subsequently turning across the financially-troubled league.
The WNBL’s new co-owner, Robyn Denholm. Photograph: Anna Kucera
The takeover was described as a transformative second for Australian ladies’s sports activities.
“Girls’s basketball in Australia boasts a outstanding legacy and an much more promising future,” Robyn Denholm mentioned.
“We’re thrilled to play a number one position in shaping its subsequent chapter, offering the assist and funding wanted to raise the game for many years to come back.”
Victoria Denholm mentioned they need the WNBL to be a sporting powerhouse that displays the recognition of the sport for the numerous Australians enjoying it.
“Our League is dwelling to among the most gifted athletes with inspiring tales,” she mentioned.
“We’re dedicated to amplifying these tales and elevating ladies’s skilled basketball, making certain it reaches new heights each on and off the court docket.”
Basketball Australia CEO Matt Scriven mentioned it was an thrilling stage of the long-term imaginative and prescient of the WNBL.
“The WNBL continues to draw world class expertise and the extent of economic, attendance and viewers engagement to this point in season 24/25 demonstrates the chance forward. We’ll proceed to work intently with the consortium in making certain that the momentum of the WNBL continues past the switch in April subsequent yr.”
Larry Kestelman, mentioned the WNBL is Australia’s oldest skilled ladies’s sporting league.
“It deserves to be showcased on the identical degree as different elite competitions,” he mentioned.
“This acquisition unlocks an thrilling new period of progress, visibility, and alternative for gamers, followers, and the game as a complete.”
Alongside a love of sport, Wollemi Capital has invested in a spread of Australian startups – most just lately visa utility platform Matilda Migration in addition to plant-based supplies startup Alt.Leather-based
The sector additionally has basketball followers from the game, with basketball legend Andrew Bogut an everyday angel investor.
Or perhaps simply purchase the ladies’s league.