EQT enters sports with majority stake in Australia's Melbourne Storm

The deal is a rare one for Australian sport. Most National Rugby League clubs are controlled by their members or by the league’s administration, making the Storm, previously owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, an unusual target.

The investment comes after a record A$5.3bn ($3.7bn) seven-year broadcast deal struck last month between the NRL and media companies including Dazn’s Foxtel, itself following a similar A$4.5bn ($3.2bn) agreement by the rival Australian Football League.

For EQT, the deal extends a growing push into sport as an asset class. The firm acquired sports education brand IMG Academy in 2023 in a transaction worth $1.25bn including debt, and has led a $25m investment in the six-a-side football competition the Baller League. The Storm investment adds to a run of activity that has kept EQT among the sector’s most active large sponsors. In June the firm agreed to buy FTSE 100 testing company Intertek in a deal worth about £10.7bn ($14.5bn), one of the year’s biggest UK takeovers.

Private equity has invested heavily in US and European franchises as the sector has matured into an asset class attracting larger pools of growth capital, with Silver Lake’s 2022 investment in the commercial arm behind New Zealand’s All Blacks among the notable precedents in the southern hemisphere.

The deal lands as the NRL expands, with new clubs in Papua New Guinea and Perth set to join, broadening the commercial footprint of a league whose economics are drawing fresh investor attention. EQT’s infrastructure arm is separately active in Australia, having been linked this month with a near-A$10bn ($7.1bn) offer for waste-disposal company Cleanaway.