TV dealmaker Bruce McWilliam faces umpire in tennis trial

Bruce McWilliam has denied Harold Mitchell colluded with him and Seven to deliver Australian Open broadcast rights to the network.

Seven’s Bruce McWilliam outside the Federal Court in Melbourne on Thursday. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

He is the dealmaker par excellence, a friend to former prime ministers, the owner of a $40m mansion and confidant to a string of billionaires.

Bruce McWilliam, commercial director at Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media, appeared in the Federal Court in Melbourne on Thursday as the star witness in a case where the corporate regul­ator seems to be trying to just about end the corporate career of another business heavy-hitter, Harold Mitchell.

Mitchell and McWilliam go way back as power­brokers in Australia’s media industry for several decades, but the pair kept it low-key, exchanging a nod, a wink and a small smile before and after Mr McWilliam’s witness box appearance.

Once Mr McWilliam was in the box, his penchant for a one-liner shone through. Mr Mitchell was like the grumpy blackboard in the old ABC children’s show Mr Squiggle, he said. “Hurry up, hurry up, Miss Jane,” was how he portrayed Mr Mitchell wanting to keep negotiations moving when asked whether he interpreted one 2012 email as Mr Mitchell promising to deliver the rights to Seven that week, without rival bids from other networks being considered.

He angrily denied Mr Mitchell and Seven had colluded to deliver Australian Open broadcast rights to the network in 2013, though the rights never went to open tender and other networks were keen.

“He (Mr Mitchell) should get the order of negotiation (award) ­because, seriously, they got everything they wanted and it was a great deal for them,” Mr McWilliam said, reminding the court that Seven had lifted its price and agreed to let tennis produce its own broadcast, a concession he had personally disagreed with as it would “be like a minibar” and Seven would be charged for every TV cable it used.

“It implies a degree of dishonesty, which is not the person I have dealt with for a long time.”

Mr McWilliam was more testy late in the day when asked by counsel for the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Mich­ael Pearce SC, whether he had any recent discussions with Mr Mitchell’s lawyers on the case.

“I have, yeah, on two occasions — Saturday two weeks ago and a video conference call,” he said.

He also admitted to getting in touch with Mr Mitchell when the court proceedings were initiated.

“I was thinking of him, it was disappointing and unfair — (it was) only to wish him well.”

When asked if he was friends with Mr Mitchell, he said: “No.”

ASIC had been reluctant to see Mr McWilliam, a long-time friend of Malcolm Turnbull, in court, but he is central to the case in which Mr Mitchell is accused of assisting Seven obtain tennis broadcast rights at the expense of its TV rivals when he was a Tennis Australia director.

Mr McWilliam is Seven’s chief negotiator for sports rights, is known as a persistent dealmaker, and was an intimate part of the network’s tennis deal.

One email discussed in evidence had Mr McWilliam saying Mr Mitchell was “a man of action who doesn’t like the grass growing up under his feet” when he was asked whether he felt Mr Mitchell had provided an ­assurance that Seven would get the rights. “Harold is a salesman and he … obviously wanted to keep us bidding,” he said.

“He wanted to tell us what we wanted to hear. It was a long-drawn-out process … and he wanted to keep us going.”

The evidence was heard during ASIC’s civil lawsuit against Mr Mitchell and former Tennis Australia president Steve Healy, with Mr Mitchell accused of using his position as director of the sporting body to advantage Seven by passing on confidential information regarding competing bids.

In more than two hours in the witness box, Mr McWilliam deflecte­d concerns raised by ASIC that emails to him from Mr Mitchell implied favouritism.

When Mr Mitchell said they should wrap a deal up “this week” in 2012, Mr McWilliam said Mr Mitchell was merely “trying to project urgency — come on, let’s do something”.

Seven won the rights in 2013, but Tennis Australia was critic­ised for not putting them out to an open market tender.

The case continues.