New exclusive travel contract for NBL causes a meltdown over company’s part ownership

Melbourne United’s Chris Goulding, whose team is one of league owner Larry Kestelman’s assets.

The National Basketball League, riven with discord, held a fiery phone hook-up on Tuesday night between its team owners and the game’s CEO, David Stevenson, to discuss a freshly-minted contract with a new travel provider.

It didn’t go so well.

One of Stevenson’s offsiders led the briefing. He explained that a company named Performance Travel had been appointed the exclusive partner of the NBL – that it alone would be used to book flights for players and their teams to travel the country during the on-­season.

None of which was especially remarkable until Stevenson read the quiet part out loud, revealing in the interests of transparency that Performance Travel was actually half-owned by the NBL’s chairman, Larry Kestelman.

Perth Wildcats owner Mark Arena went ballistic and then hung up the phone in disgust, causing much giggling from the other owners. If he’d stayed on the line, he might have heard Stevenson’s financial reasoning for the arrangement: he said the Performance Travel contract would ultimately save the league much money in fees.

We think it’s likely that Arena got off the phone and straight away dialled the number of Jared Novelly, the American owner of the Illawarra Hawks and an enemy of Kestelman; or so went the joke once he was off the line.

Novelly is suing the NBL owner over a belief that Kestelman is withholding vital information relevant to the league’s financial accounts and their transparency. His unproven gripe is that Kestelman keeps enriching himself by cutting deals with third-party outfits that he already owns through his group of companies. Some of which is true. The NBL’s exclusive merchandiser, First Ever, was founded by Kestelman’s son, Justin. Separately, Reebok and Champion, official partners of the NBL, are both owned by Kestelman’s Brand Collective entity.

So obviously Kestelman’s documented ownership of Performance Travel plays directly into this swirling paranoia, although the NBL says it’s a partnership that will ultimately save the teams money because of the exorbitant fees that were charged by the former provider.

“The NBL has engaged a single travel provider for the last 10 years for efficiency and savings purposes,” a spokesman said.

“The process of transitioning to Performance Travel guarantees to deliver additional savings to the League and Clubs.” Sounds good, no?

And yet there are a couple of wrinkles still worthy of magnification. It’s an inconvenient truth that Kestelman purchased his share in Performance Travel in November while the basketball season was still moving through its opening rounds.

It’s another truth that the founder of Performance Travel is Jack Taylor, a veteran NBL referee who appears to have been negotiating with Kestelman while reffing games for the very team that he owns, Melbourne United.

The league’s website tells us that Taylor was actually on court for a match between Melbourne United and the Cairns Taipans on October 6, while corporate filings tells us that half the company was sold to Kestelman just a few weeks later.