BMX action at Melbourne facility Rampfest.
Trails WA, Kalamunda (top) and the Northern Beaches Bare Creek Bike Park (below).
Inside Australia’s
biggest sporting merger Three years in the making, the AusCycling mega-merger - of 18 boards with 130 directors and 11 chief executives - involved a dramatic overhaul of structure, strategy and governance. Zilla Efrat explains
O
n 1st November 2020, Cycling Australia, the national administrative body for the sport, completed a strategic reimaging that led to the merger of 18 out of 19 local and state cycling organisations into a single, member-controlled, national body. The dramatic overhaul of structure, strategy and governance of an organisation that has been around for a century was three years in the making. The new AusCycling had one executive and non-executive team, a single balance sheet and a strategy - the ‘holy triumvirate’ of federated governance reform. Multiple boards with more than a hundred directors had been reduced to one board with 12 directors while 11 chief executives were replaced with a single one. For John Wylie (pictured), former Chair of the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and a keen cyclist, this was the biggest and most important merger of sporting organisations in Australian history. Two days before Christmas 2020, a 17th cycling organisation voted to join the new entity. Then, in recent 54 Australasian Leisure Management Issue 144
weeks, BMX Sports Western Australia also voted in favour - taking the number supporting the merger to 18. At time of writing, only one organisation, WestCycle, had opted not to participate. Wylie explained “in so many ways, cycling has been a sleeping giant in Australian sport. “It’s got a huge community - a great demographic participates in the sport and takes a strong interest in it. Cycling should be one of Australia’s power sports, but it was almost impossible for it to reach its potential because it was being run through 19 separate organisations with about 130 directors. “The merger is a game changer for cycling and also a great example for other sports.” Wylie, the founder and Chief Executive of investment firm Tanarra, says the ASC, through Sport Australia, has been driving an agenda of reform and modernisation for many years, noting “all sports, these days, are competing in a ruthlessly competitive commercial market for participation and sponsorship dollars. “It’s very hard for them to be competitive if they are fragmented, regional organisations working with a national organisation.”
