Sir Rod Eddington's sports career may be relatively modest - a handful of first-class cricket games for Oxford University – but in business he plays in the global Premier League.
He’s the former head of Cathay Pacific and British Airways who has sat on the board of News Corporation and, now in his 60s, continues to work as a non-executive director for a bunch of blue chip international companies including investment bank JP Morgan.
He is also the passionate chairman of the Victoria Major Events Company (VMEC), the body set up to bring events to the southern state and the city of Melbourne, the latter having become the de facto sporting capital of Australia.
Sir Rod - who received a knighthood but is somewhat bizarrely prevented from being a ‘Lord’ simply on account of being an Aussie - sees the world through the eyes of a truly international businessman and that global, commercially-focused approach gives him a fascinating perspective on sport, both as a business in its own right and as a driver of commerce more generally.
Sport has always been a part of his life and Sir Rod shares the same background of a generation of Australians.
“I grew up in Western Australia in the Bush and we played sport all the time – after all there was no television,” he says.
Brought up on a diet of cricket and Australian Rules football, Eddington developed the passion for sport which has become part of Brand Australia and which has ensured that a nation of only 25 million or so has punched above its weight on the global stage for what seems like forever.
Having graduated from the University of Western Australia he moved to the UK as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he was introduced to rugby union and continued to develop as a useful cricketer. And although Eddington made his name in the boardroom rather than the cricket field, he is certain that the culture of sport in his youth played a role in shaping his career success.
“Sport is a well-established metaphor for business and vice-versa,” he says. “There is something very frank about the assessment of performance on the sports field that translates precisely to business. Sport is all about preparation, clarity of thought, having an effective game plan and demonstrating the ability to cope with adversity. These are all important qualities in business.
“Of course in my lifetime sport has also become a big business in its own right, rather than simply the recreation it was when I was growing up. But in the last 20 years business has looked more and more towards sport for lessons.”
Given that, and the role of sport in the Australian psyche, it perhaps becomes easier to understand why so many Australians succeed in the higher echelons of business. These guys like winning and they know how to go about it.
It’s an appreciation of Australia’s obsession with sport, together with a deep understanding of the mechanics of commerce, which has shaped the strategies of the VMEC, a body that Eddington and his fellow directors serve without fees.
Today Melbourne is often listed as one of the world’s most liveable cities. Its thriving, high rise central business district is complemented by superb modern developments along the south bank of the Yarra River, world-class hotels, restaurants, theatres and arts centres. It’s an energetic cosmopolitan place and a genuinely world-class city.
But it hasn’t always been that way. Rewind to the back-end of the 1980s and the city was more or less bust. Its docklands stood idle and properties empty. The population of Victoria began to fall as the search for jobs moved to other states or beyond Australia.
VMEC, then known as the Melbourne Major Events Corporation, was one of the initiatives taken by the state government in an attempt to turn the local economy around. It was founded on the basic tenant that events attract visitors from beyond the state’s borders, creating income and jobs and providing a catalyst for investment. Now that’s not rocket science of course, but the way they went about it in Melbourne has become a case study for other cities and regions around the world which have more recently awoken to the opportunities in hosting high-level sport.
For the full interview see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published July 1.
