The 1983 Strategic Reset — Did it Work?

The companion article explained how Panthers changed the way it thought. This article asks the obvious next question: did that change in thinking actually change the club’s fortunes?

One of the earliest outcomes of the strategic reset was the appointment of Tim Sheens as Manager-Coach

The “Coach” part of Sheens’ role delivered quickly, the team performance in the 1984 season was in stark contrast to the seasons before. His impact was roundly recognised and applauded by all, including his peers.

But the “Manager” part of the Manager-Coach role was more strategic, as was the role of the Five by Five Committee.

The stated goal — to have five local juniors named as Kangaroos within 5 years — was really about something far more valuable: to shift the Club’s trajectory.

Was it successful?

Let’s look first at that main goal.

Player	Representative Team	First Chosen	Penrith Junior
Royce Simmons	Australia	1986	No
Greg Alexander	Australia	1986	Yes
John Cartwright	Australia	1990	Yes
Mark Geyer	Australia	1990	Yes
Brad Fittler	Australia	1990	Yes
Brad Izzard*	NSW	1990	Yes
Steve Carter	NSW	1992	No
Graham Mackay	Australia	1992	No

*Brad Izzard had represented NSW in 1982 — before the strategic reset.

The Committee narrowly missed its stated target. More importantly, however, the effort reflected a broader ambition—to create a football club that the district could believe in and one capable of producing representative players consistently rather than occasionally.

Winning Games

The following table shows the results of the regular season games for the 10 seasons before and after the 1983 strategic reset. The Panthers won almost twice as many regular-season games during the decade following the strategic reset as they had during the preceding decade.

	1974-1983	1984-1993
Games Played	228	228
Games Won	66	123
Win Percentage	29%	54%

Attack and Defence (Tries Scored & Tries Against)

The following table shows the tries scored and conceded during the regular season for the 10 seasons before and after the 1983 strategic reset. Note: I’ve used tries rather than points here because the value of the try changed from 3 to 4 in 1983.

The Panthers attack improved by 4% which is inconsequential. More importantly defence improved by 38%.

	1974-1983	1984-1993
Games Played	228	228
Total Tries Scored	614	638
Total Tries Against	872	539
Tries For – Tries Against	-258	+99

The improvement in defence is extremely important – Strong defensive records are widely regarded as one of the defining characteristics of premiership-winning teams. Defence speaks volumes about the character and culture of a club – the change represents a distinct shift in both for the Penrith Panthers.

Overall, the Panthers’ tries-for-and-against differential moved from –258 to +99—a turnaround of 357 tries. In other words, they went from consistently being outscored to consistently outscoring their opponents.

Final Ladder Position

The numbers above suggest a big difference in performance of Penrith team before and after the changes put in place between the 1983 and 1984 seasons.

As to the trajectory. The graph below shows the finishing position of the Panthers for the 10 years before (red) and the 10 years after (blue) the late 1983 changes.

There is a distinct and positive difference between the two decades in being compared.

A further consequence of the change …

The following table shows average home crowd for regular season games, comparing the 10 seasons before and after the 1983 strategic reset. Crowds increased by 20%.

Home Games	1974-1983	1984-1993
Played	114	114
Total Attendance	871,042	1,047,261
Average Crowd	7,641	9,187

Conclusion

No single committee, coach or governance reform can claim sole responsibility for the transformation of Penrith Panthers during the 1980s. However, the evidence strongly suggests that the strategic reset undertaken in late 1983 fundamentally altered the club’s direction. The Five by Five Committee did not achieve its headline target exactly as written, but the broader ambition—to reshape the football club’s future—was overwhelmingly realised.

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The 1983 Strategic Reset

The Low Point

In the 2001 publication Hooked On League: Royce Simmons¹, Royce tells the story of Darryl Brohman asking his advice, at the end of 1983, about an offer he’d received to move to Canterbury-Bankstown. Royce’s advice paints a clear picture of the state of the Penrith Panthers at that time:

… thanks for thinking of us but right now we’ve got five players on contract and you’re a free agent being chased by probably the best club in the world.

The reasoning behind Royce’s that advice is also telling:

I don’t think he wanted to leave us high and dry but we told him that we were high and dry whether he stayed or not.

Simmons’ view was that “things were looking bleak” for Penrith.

In fact, things were so bleak, even the independently run Panthers Supporters Club had dissolved at the end of 1983 and needed its own reset. The supporter’s club had two Panther diehard supporters — Cathy O’Kane and Berryl Moss who took on the task of whipping up wider support for the 1984 Season and beyond.

And Panthers had Roger Cowan who had finally been granted the governance structure he’d so long been advocating.

The Change

One of Cowan’s first steps under the new One Board, One CEO structure was to involve more people in finding solutions to serious problems. Problems like the performance of the rugby league team.

Royce had been weighing up whether to leave Penrith when he was invited to join the effort to find those solutions. He described that first step to a reset of football fortunes.

Prior to the start of the 1984 season Roger Cowan organised a series of seminars at Penrith Leagues Club — a ‘think-tank’ involving prominent Penrith business people, junior rugby league administrators, past and present players, and local community leaders. In one of the groups, Tim Sheens’ name came up as a possible coach.

It was an approach that mirrored what he had done with the licensed club in the early days of his tenure.

This symposium produced a range of strategies and goals, two of the goals had a significant impact on Panthers football performance.

The first, most immediate, goal was to secure Sheens for the coaching position — it was late in 1983, training for the 1984 season needed to begin soon yet Penrith had few players and no coach. This was a pressing need. And it was a challenging task given the fact Sheens had sold his real estate business and was preparing up to move his family to Queensland.

Royce worked in the background to get Sheens to stay, but says:

I’m sure Roger Cowan worked the hardest to convince Tim to take on the job.

[He] really went out of the way to chase hard and talk Tim out of going. The players played a supporting role in letting Tim know that we’d support him.

Tim signed on as the club’s first Manager-Coach.

Appointing a Manager-Coach was unusual in the rugby league world — although it was a pressing short-term need to appoint Sheens as coach, expanding the role was a strategic move.

The second goal was more long-term and strategic — to have 5 Penrith juniors selected for the Kangaroos — the Australian Rugby League team. A Five by Five Committee was established to take responsibility for developing initiatives to achieve this goal.

Don Feltis was a member of this Committee:

We talked about strategies and all the rugby league development issues … like making sure our best juniors were selected into representative squads; to set up development squads — age groups between the representative squads — like 13s, 15s and 17s and give them personalised coaching; panels to interview possible coaches and to have only the best coaches — and to have all our coaching techniques standardised so that all our juniors from 13s to 19s were getting similar tuition … under the guidance of Tim Sheens.

It was a great exercise and made a lot of difference to the future development of our club. … it made us all wake up and realise all the things we had to do to be successful. Roger had always been a dreamer … a visionary. He realised we had to lift our club up from the level we were performing at.

A Different Way of Thinking — from Goals to Outcomes

The stated goal of the Five-by-Five Committee was to have five home-grown players represent Australia within five years.

Looking back, this appears to have been an early example of a planning philosophy Roger Cowan would later apply much more broadly throughout the Panthers organisation. That philosophy centred around “outcomes thinking“.

This goal was an outcome – a description of a future that would be proof of a successful project. During the 90s at Panthers this would have been framed:

In November 1999 (5 Seasons away) the Australian Kangaroos have included five representatives from Panthers who were developed in the Penrith Junior Rugby League District.

Working backwards from that future enabled a more creative approach to uncovering the initiatives, programs and strategies that would have a positive effect on creating that future. Initiatives like those described by Don Feltis above.

The Five-by-Five goal was never intended as a prediction. It was a deliberately ambitious picture of what success would look like if the club fundamentally changed the way it developed players in their huge junior catchment area.

Quite quickly early indicators drove some optimism — the governance model reduced conflict, Cathy and Berryl re-launched the supporters’ club, Tim Sheens had players wanting to stay, and the team began making its way up the competition ladder.²

Continue: The 1983 Strategic Reset — Did It Work? examines whether the strategic changes introduced in late 1983 produced measurable improvements in the Panthers’ football performance over the following decade.

Hooked On League: Royce Simmons with Alan Whiticker published 2001. Chapter 19.
↩︎
The headline in the SMH clipping is dramatic but not accurate – Penrith had been in the top 5 before, a few times but only once before had they been there after at least 5 rounds of a season. ↩︎

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The Article That Changed Panthers’ Thinking

In 1990, while preparing for Panthers’ first ever rugby league Grand Final appearance, Roger Cowan read a management article that changed the way he thought about organisations.

The article was Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow, written by American management academic Larry E. Greiner and first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1972. It would become one of the most influential pieces of management writing Cowan ever encountered and the catalyst for a complete reassessment of how Panthers should be managed.

A Different Way of Looking at Growth

Greiner challenged one of the most common assumptions about successful organisations—that growth is simply a matter of becoming bigger.

Instead, he argued that growing organisations pass through a series of distinct developmental stages. Each period of relatively stable growth, which he called an evolutionary phase, eventually reaches a point where the existing structure, management style and systems can no longer cope with the organisation’s increasing size and complexity.

At that point, growth stalls.

Frustrations build.

Old methods begin to fail.

The organisation enters what Greiner described as a revolutionary phase—a period of crisis requiring significant organisational change before growth can continue.

His central message was both simple and powerful:

The practices that create one period of successful growth eventually become the obstacles to the next.

Successful organisations recognise these moments and adapt. Those that fail to change often stagnate or decline.

The Five Stages

Greiner identified five broad stages through which many organisations pass:

Growth through Creativity – entrepreneurial energy establishes the organisation until stronger leadership becomes necessary.
Growth through Direction – clearer structures and management systems bring stability but eventually create demands for greater autonomy.
Growth through Delegation – authority is pushed down through the organisation, creating faster decision-making before coordination problems begin to emerge.
Growth through Coordination – increasingly formal systems and procedures restore control but, over time, can create excessive bureaucracy or what Greiner called a “red tape” crisis.
Growth through Collaboration – organisations move beyond rigid structures, relying more on teamwork, flexibility, shared responsibility and cooperation across traditional departmental boundaries.

Greiner stressed that these stages were not rigid rules applying to every organisation. Rather, they described a recurring pattern observed in many growing businesses.

Why This Resonated with Roger Cowan

As Cowan read the article, he came to a stark realisation.

Panthers had already experienced several of the evolutionary and revolutionary cycles Greiner described.

Looking back over twenty-five years, he remembered periods when growth appeared to stall, followed by difficult struggles to overcome new problems. Once solutions had been found, the organisation would enter another period of rapid growth before eventually confronting the next set of challenges.

What had previously seemed like isolated management problems suddenly appeared as part of a much larger pattern.

Most importantly, the conclusion he’d arrived at in 1990 was profound:

The Panthers employing 850 people was not simply a larger version of the Panthers employing 300 people. It had become a fundamentally different organisation.

The management systems that had delivered outstanding results during one phase of growth could not be assumed to work indefinitely. Panthers needed new ways of thinking if it was to continue developing.

A Beginning, Not an Answer

The Greiner article did not provide a blueprint for Panthers’ future.

Rather, it provided a framework for asking better questions.

For him, the issue was ultimately one of organisational unity.

It convinced Cowan that the club needed to rethink almost every aspect of its management philosophy and organisational structure. That realisation triggered an intensive period of reading, research and experimentation as Panthers searched for new ideas capable of supporting its next stage of growth.

Many of the management changes introduced during the early 1990s can be traced back to that moment of discovery.

Looking back years later, Cowan often described reading Greiner’s article as one of the defining moments of his management career—not because it supplied all the answers, but because it fundamentally changed the questions he was asking.

Source Material

For those readers who wish to read the Larry Greiner article (PDF) in full:

Larry Greiner — Evolution and Revolutions as Organizations Grow

Related Themes

Governance

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Why One Board, One CEO?

Readers of Parts 19–21 may wonder why Roger Cowan spent more than sixteen years arguing for what appeared to be a relatively simple administrative reform. Why did the issue matter so much to him? Why did he keep returning to it despite repeated setbacks, opposition and criticism?

The answer lies in a question that had troubled Panthers almost from the beginning:

How could the Club pursue a unified direction when rugby league and the licensed club were governed separately?

The issue was not new.

Readers familiar with the events of 1971 may recognise some familiar themes. The removal of football club secretary Merv Cartwright and treasurer Ron Partridge arose from concerns about the administration of rugby league affairs and accountability for financial decisions. Although the circumstances were different, the disputes that emerged again in the late 1970s centred on many of the same questions. Who should make decisions? Who should be accountable for those decisions? And what happened when agreements were not honoured?

From the time Penrith entered first grade rugby league in 1967, the football club and licensed club operated under separate governance structures. The arrangement was common in rugby league, but Roger increasingly came to believe it created problems that could never be fully resolved.

It would be easy to assume the conflict was simply about money. Certainly finances played a part. Rugby league required increasing investment, while the licensed club was trying to strengthen its financial position and pursue long-term development projects. Yet Roger’s frustration was not that football sought resources. In his view, the licensed club had repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to support rugby league and invest heavily in its future.

The real problem arose after decisions had been made.

Budgets would be negotiated. Agreements would be reached. Plans would be approved. Yet time and again, football expenditure exceeded agreed limits or new commitments were entered into without the knowledge or approval of those responsible for managing the Club’s overall finances.

From Roger’s perspective, this was not simply a financial problem. It made long-term planning almost impossible.

A licensed club board could approve a football budget, commit to major development projects and make decisions based upon expected cash flows. If those assumptions later proved incorrect because spending commitments had changed, the consequences extended well beyond rugby league. The entire organisation could be affected.

By the late 1970s, these tensions had become increasingly public. In December 1979, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on financial difficulties and disagreements between the football and licensed club administrations. Around the same time, Panthers was preparing for the enormous financial challenge of constructing its new Mulgoa Road complex.

SMH 1979 Dec 9 – click image for full article.

Reports to members in 1980 revealed the extent of the concern. Directors reported that the football club had exceeded an agreed annual budget of $485,000 by more than $100,000 during 1979, while additional commitments had already been entered into for the following season. To the licensed club board, the issue was not simply the amount involved. It was that decisions affecting the future of the entire organisation had been made outside the framework that had previously been agreed.

These events helped bring the governance debate to a head, but they do not fully explain Roger’s determination.

For him, the issue was ultimately one of organisational unity.

He believed Panthers would never achieve its potential while parts of the organisation operated according to different priorities, different assumptions and different lines of accountability. A football club and licensed club could share the same colours, the same members and the same ambitions, yet still find themselves working against each other.

His solution was straightforward.

One board would determine policy and direction for the entire organisation. Management would then be responsible for implementing those decisions. Everyone would work towards the same agreed objectives and everyone would be accountable to the same governing body.

Not everyone agreed.

Some viewed Roger’s campaign as an attempt to centralise power. The perception is understandable. After all, he was advocating a structure that would eventually place responsibility for football and licensed club operations under a single administration. His persistence over sixteen years inevitably raised questions about motive.

Yet there is another interpretation.

Roger was not arguing that football should receive less support. Nor was he arguing that rugby league was less important than the licensed club. Rather, he believed the entire organisation should operate according to a common plan and that all parts of Panthers should be accountable to that plan.

Many years later, Panthers would use concepts such as “twin citizenship” to describe the idea that people belonged not only to their immediate team but also to the wider organisation. While that language did not exist in the 1970s, the philosophy behind it helps explain Roger’s thinking. He wanted rugby league, club management, directors and staff to see themselves as contributors to a single enterprise rather than separate interests competing for influence.

The first major breakthrough came in 1980 when a single board was finally established. Yet even then, the model remained incomplete. Rugby league and the licensed club continued under separate chief executives. As described in Parts 20 and 21, the compromise produced its own difficulties and did not resolve the underlying tensions.

It was not until the end of 1983 that the structure Roger had advocated for so long was fully implemented. One board and one chief executive became responsible for the entire organisation.

Whether that decision alone explains the improvements that followed is impossible to know. Organisations are rarely transformed by a single reform. Nevertheless, the years that followed saw a stronger emphasis on cooperation, planning and shared ownership. The workshops that led to the Five by Five program, closer relationships throughout the rugby league district and a more integrated approach to football and club operations all emerged during this period.

Reasonable people may still disagree about whether Roger was right. They may also disagree about the extent to which later successes flowed from the governance reforms he championed.

What is difficult to dispute is that he regarded the issue as fundamental. For more than sixteen years he returned to the same argument, often in the face of resistance and disappointment.

Ironically, that persistence contributed to one of the enduring myths about Roger Cowan — that he was somehow anti-rugby league.

The evidence suggests a more complex reality.

His long campaign for “One Board, One CEO” was not driven by a desire to diminish rugby league, but by a belief that Panthers could only achieve lasting success when every part of the organisation was working towards the same goals and operating under the same commitments.

Whether one agrees with that belief or not, it became one of the defining ideas in the history of Panthers.

Source Material*

The following documents are extracts of the relevant sections of larger reports:

* Resource material courtesy of The Ausburn Collection

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Feeney Electronics – Ahead of its Time

The following material draws upon club publications from the early and mid-1970s, later interviews and recollections from former Panthers staff and executives.

By the mid-1970s, Penrith Rugby League Club was doing something few licensed clubs in Australia would even have contemplated — experimenting with computerised gaming and security systems.

The project emerged from a practical problem. As poker machine revenue increased across the club industry, so too did concerns about theft, scams, inefficient cash handling and poor operational oversight. Panthers had already experienced some of these issues directly. Roger Cowan believed tighter systems and better information could reduce losses and improve efficiency.

What followed was an ambitious venture into electronics and computer technology through a company known as F.C. Electronics Pty Ltd.

Contemporary club material described F.C. Electronics as producing “probably the world’s most sophisticated poker machine security system”. While that language reflected the promotional enthusiasm of the period, there is little doubt the system was unusually advanced for an Australian club environment of the 1970s.

The system attempted to electronically monitor poker machine activity from a central control point.

According to material published by the club, poker machine events were coded and transmitted to television monitors around the club, allowing supervisors to immediately identify jackpots and machine activity. The system also attempted to monitor irregularities including abnormal wheel movement, door openings and jackpot inconsistencies.

The operation relied on technology that, at the time, would have appeared extraordinary to most club employees and patrons. The club’s own promotional material featured computer consoles, printers, monitoring screens and electronic reporting systems — all at a time when many organisations still relied entirely on manual record keeping.

Former Panthers executive Bryn Miller later recalled that the system was “so far ahead of its time” that most clubs did not even possess a computer when Panthers was experimenting with electronic monitoring and reporting.

The project extended beyond poker machine security. F.C. Electronics also produced industrial control equipment and commercial products including lighting dimmers and environmental control systems. Club publications noted that the company’s capabilities had expanded sufficiently for it to seek work beyond the club industry itself.

Yet the venture also carried substantial cost and risk.

Club material acknowledged that F.C. Electronics operated at a financial loss during part of this period, while Roger Cowan later conceded that Panthers may have persisted with the project longer than it should have. Had the technology evolved commercially the way he hoped, the rewards may have been significant. Instead, the project became one of several ambitious experiments that pushed the club into areas rarely explored by licensed clubs of the era.

Even so, many who observed the system believed its core ideas eventually became standard throughout the gaming industry. Automated monitoring, centralised reporting, electronic jackpot recording and machine data analysis are now routine parts of modern club gaming operations.

In that sense, the Feeney Electronics project reflected something larger about the Panthers administration during the Cowan years. The club was rarely content simply to follow established practice. Whether the experiments succeeded or failed, there was often a willingness to try ideas that others considered unrealistic, premature or unnecessarily ambitious.

Feeney Electronics was one of the clearest examples of that philosophy in action.

Image Credits: All images in this post — including the feature image — are from Panthers Annual Reports. These were kindly provided by The Ausburn Collection.

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The Panthers Magazine Arrangement

In February 1966, the Penrith Rugby League Football Club published the first edition of its official members’ journal.

The publication, issued monthly, was introduced at a critical point in the club’s development — as it sought admission to the New South Wales Rugby League First Division.

A central feature of the journal was a column titled From the Secretary’s Desk, written by Roger Cowan in his role as Secretary-Manager. In the opening issue, Cowan outlined club activities, membership growth and upcoming events, and referred to the club’s ambition of securing promotion to First Division.

The magazine was largely written and produced by Cowan and served as a means of communicating with members during the club’s First Division campaign.

In June 1968, Phyro Holdings Pty Ltd was registered, with Roger and Phyllis Cowan as directors. The name itself was derived from their first names — Phy from Phyllis and Ro from Roger.

In the years that followed, responsibility for publishing the club’s magazine — The Panthers Magazine — was transferred to Phyro Holdings under an arrangement approved by the club committee. The structure included conditions relating to profit limits, auditing of accounts and the remuneration deetails of Cowan’s role.

The arrangement formalised the transfer of publication responsibilities from the club to Phyro Holdings, under agreed financial and audit conditions.

The magazine arrangement — and the broader financial relationship between the club and Phyro Holdings — was later subject to scrutiny. Questions raised in subsequent decades focused on governance, transparency and the management of related-party transactions.

The Panthers Magazine became much more than a publication for PRLC members – it was a powerful community voice and was distributed to over 200,000 households in the Penrith Junior Rugby League District – Katoomba to Blacktown.

Those issues are examined in more detail in later sections of this project.

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From Tin Shed to Taj Mahal — Scale and Contrast in 1963

In 1963, Penrith and St George Rugby League Clubs each opened new premises. The contrast between them — in scale, cost, and ambition — highlights the gap between an emerging club and one already established as a powerhouse of the game.

To describe Penrith Rugby League Club as a minnow compared to St George Rugby League Club in the early 1960s is no exaggeration.

In 1963, the St George Dragons had already secured seven consecutive premierships, a run that would extend to eleven.

In 1963, both clubs opened new premises.

In March, Penrith Leagues Club opened a new building adjacent to the old Boys Club, at a cost of approximately £150,000.

In July, St George Leagues Club opened its new premises at Kogarah, with construction costs approaching £1,000,000.

William “Bill” Buckley (1906–1973), Chairman of the Australian Rugby League, officially opened both clubs. During a tour of the new St George premises, struck by its scale and extensive use of marble, he is said to have remarked: “This reminds me very much of the Taj Mahal.”

The nickname endured.

St George Leagues Club — Photo: Joan Hatton

Both developments marked a move beyond earlier, more modest beginnings — the kinds of facilities often remembered, and sometimes simplified, as the “tin shed” era.

For St George, that transition had already occurred.

For Penrith, it was only just beginning.

The scale of the St George club did more than impress. It set a benchmark — one that emerging clubs like Penrith could not yet match, but would, over time, seek to close.

From the Narrative

This contrast sits alongside the developments described in Part 4 — From Small Beginnings, where Penrith’s early structures begin to take shape against a backdrop of more established clubs.

A Little Extra

Here is the complete 1963 Opening Program for Penrith Rugby League Club — it was a big day, starting with lunch, then evening and supper — and lots of dancing! And plaudits to the Penrith Rugby League Orchestra who must have exhausted by night’s end.

Related Material

Related Themes

Financial Management · Growth

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The Temby Inquiry

The Temby Inquiry was a formal investigation, commissioned by the New South Wales Department of Gaming and Racing in 2004, into the governance and operations of Penrith Rugby League Club.

Conducted by former senior prosecutor Ian Temby QC, the Inquiry examined a range of matters relating to the administration of the Club and the conduct of individuals associated with it. Its report, delivered in December 2004, marked the culmination of a period of conflict that forms a central thread of this series.

While the Inquiry sits outside the early timeline of this series, it becomes an increasingly important reference point as the narrative unfolds.

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The Impact of a Turnover Tax

A turnover tax on gambling is a tax imposed on the total amount of money wagered or “turned over” in a gambling activity, rather than on the profits generated by the gambling operators.

For example, imagine you take $100 to the races, and you place a $100 on the first race, it wins and you now have $350. You continue to bet $50 on each of the 7 remaining races. So, if you add up the amount you bet it comes to $450 – your first bet of $100 plus 7 bets of $50.

A turnover tax on this activity means the tax is calculated on the total value of the the bets placed, $450. Yet, the amount spent by the punter was only $100.

This example shows the very best result for the betting provider would be for the punter to finish the day broke – and the provider would have a revenue of $100. But they would be paying tax on $450.

Of course, it would be possible for the provider to lose hundreds of dollars to this punter, yet still pay tax on the $450 turned over.

Industry opponents of turnover taxation argued that the structure materially reduced operators’ capacity to improve return-to-player rates.

The mathematics of a turnover tax make it extremely restrictive – and, in fact, for some gambling games (like blackjack) even a small turnover tax would mean the game would not be viable.

For example, poker machines in NSW have a minimum return to player rate of 87%.

At a theoretical level this means a couple of things:

Firstly, it means the theoretical revenue for the operator is 13% – that is the operator can expect to retain $13 in every $100 staked on their games.
Secondly, it means the theoretical turnover for the player is 3.42 times their orginal stake. So, starting $100 and playing until depleted will generate a theoretical turnover of $342.

In the case of a starting stake of $100, theoretically the operator will retain $13. If a 3% turnover tax is applied their obligation to the tax office will be 3% of $342, which is $10.25.

Now, imagine an operator wants to offer a better deal to their patrons with a 90% return to player. So $100 stake produces a theoretical $10 revenue for the operator. The turnover is $388 and a 3% turnover tax will produce a tax obligation of $11.74 – so the tax office will take all the operator’s revenue plus more.

Critics maintained that turnover taxation limited pricing flexibility and distorted game viability.

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Winning Games

Attack and Defence (Tries Scored & Tries Against)

Final Ladder Position

A further consequence of the change …

Conclusion

Related Topics

Related Themes

Project Updates

The Low Point

The Change

A Different Way of Thinking — from Goals to Outcomes

Related Topics

Related Themes

Project Updates

A Different Way of Looking at Growth

The Five Stages

Why This Resonated with Roger Cowan

A Beginning, Not an Answer

Source Material

Related Topics

Related Themes

Project Updates

Source Material*

Related Topics

Related Themes

Project Updates

Related Topics

Related Themes

Project Updates

Related Topics

Related Themes

Project Updates

From the Narrative

A Little Extra

Related Material

Related Themes

Project Updates

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