Harvey Norman, who loves splashing the brand’s money on sports sponsorship, has pulled the plug on Rugby Australia after the dumping of chairman Hamish McLennan.
The struggling code is already cash-strapped, and the Harvey Norman blow is just another kick in the guts that has been brought about because of poor management in the past.
Harvey Norman is a major sponsor of Rugby League in Australia, and it’s not known whether this code has had any influence on Harvey Norman management after Rugby Australia snared Roosters superstar Joseph Sua’alii, who has agreed to switch codes at the end of the 2024 season.
Last month, Angus Crichton was reportedly offered a two-year contract to join rugby union worth a whopping $1.6 million, but he rejected the offer.
In releasing a statement Gerry Harvey said the company was pursuing other sponsorship opportunities in other sports.
He told News Corp “What we do is, we do whatever sport for a while; we don’t necessarily hang on to it forever,” Harvey said.
“So, we move around on different sports so we’re very heavy into sport advertising that we don’t necessarily stay with the one sport forever.
“You know we think ‘oh we’ve given that a good go, then we’ll go on to the next one’. In all cases we stop at some stage.”
When asked was the dropping of the sponsorship anything to do with McLennan’s axing, Harvey said that was not the case.
“No, no, no, no,” Harvey said. “It’s just the sport itself. So, we do that for a while then move on to the next one.
And you know, at some stage like we’re doing basketball at the moment, we’ve never done that before. At some stage we’ll drop off that and go back and do something else.”
More to follow.
