PETER V’LANDYS: MASTER SHOWMAN.
With the expected resignation of PVL as head of Racing New Wales after 22 years in the job to become Executive Chairman of the Australian NRL being headline news in Australia, no one can say that Peter V’Landys didn’t read the tea leaves about a decade earlier and saw an industry kept alive on history with time slipping into a future where not all will survive.
Leading and running with the NRL ball takes Peter V’Landys to a different zenith in a major part of the global sports arena and where he has already laid the groundwork for what lies ahead with a record breaking multi billion dollar media rights deal in Las Vegas.
Those of you who understand Intellectual Property Rights, concert promotion and half time shows and merchandise will understand where all this could be leading…
Say what you will about Peter V’Landys, but in Australia’s racing world, he was a constantly tough negotiator. He was a scrapper and seen as a bully, because he knew that he was dealing with 98 pound weaklings with no leadership skills. Winning against them was a cakewalk with a cherry on top.
Thinking back about all the goings on during the TVN Years and how the John Messara-PVL duopoly worked so brilliantly together, it
was old school and new bamboozling negotiation skills coming together and getting what each needed.
This was until the Covid and lockdown years, and being someone who knew what wasn’t coming down the pike and saw new challenges and greener pastures in a different game full of new opportunities, it wasn’t exactly a move made full of great mental torment. Take the money and run…
Horse racing- and not only horse racing in Australia, is going to miss PVL. His seal of approval meant much and it gave a couple of half baked ideas, the credibility they didn’t deserve.
Without him going to be around that cookie jar is already looking empty and going to crumble quicker than some might think.
Like Zohran Mamdani is proving overnight in global politics as the handsome 34 year old Muslim Mayor of New York City, leadership today is not about flinching and his quiet savvy and style and making his points clear has made a world of difference to the mood created by a Trumpian grifter’s paradise.
Mayor Mamdani- a Libran like me- has also opened the eyes ot EVERY industry looking at new leadership and what needs to have been done yesterday for the future world.
Something like the horse racing industry cannot plod along with the blinkers on and tolerate the kinda surreal goofy logic of a racing executive like Tanya Fullarton.
Hopefully, the horse racing industry might have a Eureka moment and understand how important the breeding industry is along with the elite equestrian world- and today’s consumer who is NOT in horse racing.
It’s been said for years, but those running horse racing need to understand how today’s mainstream consumers are thinking- and why- about the world around them and how they have zero interest in widgets and hastily decided “solutions” without understanding which way the wind blows.
Those racing jurisdictions without a breeding industry must surely be in a huddle talking Next Steps and feeling the ground underneath them shaking and shifting.
Smoke and mirrors is an expensive game to play for only the Lilliputians when the natives are getting restless and the troops in charge are Dad’s Army.
Horse racing in Australia has lost its Willy Wonka with the news some of us knew all along that Peter V’Landys will be leaving horse racing to join that big old and multi faceted world out there of showbiz and leave whatever crumbs are left to the Oompah Loompahs.
The question is whether they have the talent, experience, moxie and style to know what the to do to change the game and make it something more than the usual niche gauche?
Far more important, at least to me, are the building blocks for the multi billion dollar evolution for the cricketing world and where it’s heading- and who with. Sponsors and business partners are no problem.
Add to this, an online multi media sports community driven by excellent hires from the tech world and which isn’t weighed down by the gambling gambit.
It’s no secret that many countries don’t want this gambling gambit hovering around those who might fall prey to promises of quick profits.
Watch this space.
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