Tesla chair and Blackbird companion Robyn Denholm is the newest tech titan bitten by the sports activities bug, shopping for into Australian basketball workforce The Sydney Kings.
Denholm’s 30% share within the Kings, through her household funding workplace, Wollemi Capital Group (WGC), additionally contains Girls’s NBL membership Sydney Flames.
Majority proprietor and Kings chairman Paul Smith is promoting a stake of the membership’s holding firm Hoops Capital, with outspoken former basketballer Andrew Bogut remaining as a co-owner.
Denholm launched Wollemi Capital final 12 months to spend money on companies and ventures that ship constructive impacts for the communities. Whereas proudly owning a sports activities workforce is usually see as a trophy for billionaires, WCG sees the constructive impacts of sport as a key focus. Her grownup youngsters, Matthew and Victoria, grew up as basketball followers watching the Kings play earlier than the household moved to the US, might be concerned within the membership whereas Denholm brings her governance abilities to the enterprise.
Smith stated the settlement marked a serious milestone for the expansion of the Kings and basketball in Australia.
“We’re delighted to have Robyn be part of us in her capability as founding father of the Wollemi Capital Group. Along with her company acumen and expertise, she might be an asset to our board,” he stated.
“She joins us alongside Matthew and Victoria who convey a transparent ardour for each males’s and ladies’s basketball in our possession. I feel this variety will guarantee we’re in an incredible place to attain one thing very significant over the following 20 years.”
Denholm stated she was “blown” away by the imaginative and prescient and work of Smith and Hoops Capital.
“We’re notably impressed with the dedication to variety proven by being the one organisation in Australia with each feminine and male basketball groups on the highest degree. Wollemi Capital Group is happy to be making a long-term partnership,” she stated.
Matthew Denholm stated they big potential for the expansion of basketball in NSW and nationally.
“It is a entire of household ardour, and we hope by changing into a part of the Hoops Capital household we will advance basketball and develop the game so that everybody can expertise the distinctive pleasure of basketball throughout our group” he stated.
Basketball is a fast-growing sport in Australia, with the 2022 FIBA Girls’s World Cup, that includes nationwide groups from 12 nations taking part in 38 video games to throughout 10 days from September 22 in Sydney.
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes can also be a basketball workforce proprietor, having nabbed a stake US NBA team Utah Jazz in late 2020, in a A$2.2 billion alongside fellow tech billionaire Ryan Smith, co-founder of Qualtrics, and Accel VC investor Ryan Sweeney.
In November final 12 months, Cannon-Brookes signed on with actor Russell Crowe and fellow billionaire James Packer to seize a 25% share of the South Sydney NRL membership.
