Exclusive: Perth Bears NRL CEO on taking games to Singapore
The newest NRL side the Perth Bears have demonstrated their league’s ambition to dominate global rugby league ahead of their debut, saying they want to play in Singapore.
Perth Bears will join the NRL in 2027, becoming the first rugby league team to join the Australian top flight since the Dolphins in 2023.
And chief executive, former editor-and-chief of West Australian Newspapers Anthony De Ceglie, says he’s jumping on board with NRL commissioner Peter V’landys’s plan to dominate rugby league.
V’landys has touted the NRL buying a stake in the English Super League, albeit talks have softened, while he has spearheaded a season weekend in Las Vegas in a move that is edging the Australian league to the AUS$1bn per season revenue mark.
“We are in a very different time zone to Sydney and Melbourne,” De Ceglie tells Morning Wire. “We are in the economic Asian powerhouse time zone and that’s really handy for us.
“I’d love to take the NRL to Singapore; it could be the Perth version of Las Vegas. There’s so many opportunities because of the time zone of Perth, not just into the east coast market, because it means we can play that late game, but also taking the game into Asia could be huge.”
Perth Bears to Singapore?
Perth will join the NRL in 2027 while a team from Papua New Guinea will follow them in the following season as a federal Australia looks to curb China’s influence in the Pacific.
It means the NRL will expand to 19 teams, while last year’s Ashes series between Australia and England — the first in 20 years — demonstrated how both the Super League and its southern hemisphere equivalent could work together.
Last year Brisbane Broncos legend Darren Lockyer and his Australian consortium purchased English Championship side London Broncos with the view of seeing them in the Super League next year, showing a sign of growing cross-league interest.
While De Ceglie, who says Perth will play home games on the west coast and in Sydney, wouldn’t be drawn on whether the two leagues should be financially entwined, he says that V’landys is “very adamant that he does what is good for the game”.
“They [V’landys and the NRL] are very impressive,” he adds.“They always think about what’s good for the game and what’s good for the viewer. I can’t imagine them doing anything that isn’t going to, at its heart, maintain those two goals.
“We’re the most watched sporting code in Australia and we have a monopoly on it in Western Australia. It’s a pretty easy selling point, but we’re capitalising on the growth of the game. We’re very lucky to be doing that.”