{"id":711486,"date":"2026-06-03T00:43:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T00:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/711486\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T00:43:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T00:43:26","slug":"melbourne-stars-and-renegades-merger-why-cricket-victoria-is-retiring-the-iconic-bbl-brands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/711486\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne Stars and Renegades merger: Why Cricket Victoria is retiring the iconic BBL brands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

Updated June 3, 2026 \u2014 10:23am,first published June 3, 2026 \u2014 9:21am<\/p>\n

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At their peak, the Melbourne Stars and Renegades fought a derby in front of more than 80,000 spectators at the MCG.<\/p>\n

A 2013 derby dust-up on the field between Shane Warne and Marlon Samuels is part of the competition\u2019s folklore.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe confrontation between the late Shane Warne (right) and West Indies star Marlon Samuels in a Melbourne derby at the MCG remains one of the biggest moments in BBL history.Getty Images<\/p>\n

And in 2019, the two clubs played off for the Big Bash League trophy at Marvel Stadium. As was typical, the Stars appeared to have the game sewn up before they surrendered in the closing overs<\/a> to a Renegades fightback.<\/p>\n

Now they look destined to join the likes of the Fitzroy Lions<\/a>, Brisbane Bears, Illawarra Steelers and Adelaide Rams as merged or defunct sporting brands.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Cricket Victoria chief executive Nick Cummins, who spoke to this masthead after telling staff of the state association\u2019s plan to retire the brands of the Stars and Renegades<\/a> and merge the teams into one entity, is unapologetic about both the decision and its necessity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not doing this for the love of anything other than accepting it as a financial necessity,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cWe\u2019re supporting Cricket Australia in what they believe are the steps that need to be taken to help Australian cricket.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to have our funding cut because that will cascade onto areas we regard as important, so we think we can create a new structure in the new world where we can continue to drive a really successful BBL team, and at the same time protect the things that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just nine months ago, CV had been the most vocal opponent of selling stakes in BBL clubs because it wanted to protect the \u201cthings that matter,\u201d as CV\u2019s chair Ross Hepburn declared to a room full of cricket powerbrokers<\/a> at CA\u2019s AGM last October.<\/p>\n

\u201cCV is very supportive of the current strategic considerations to reset the BBL competition and strengthen the CA balance sheet,\u201d Hepburn had said. \u201cHowever we believe all other options need to be diligently canvassed before resorting to selling off member assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as Cummins recalled, the numbers being presented by CA\u2019s financial forecasters got grimmer and grimmer until he and the CV board decided to change course. Early estimates of CA requiring around $90 million to balance the books in coming years blew out to somewhere closer to $400 million.<\/p>\n

\"MarcusMarcus Stoinis leading the Melbourne Stars.Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first phase when we didn\u2019t want to sell at all was when we believed the gap was manageable,\u201d Cummins said, \u201cbecause we believed there were a whole lot of other ways where if we needed to find that money in the balance sheet that would be easily achieved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt then became clear that that figure is far larger, which then started to narrow down the things we could do.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I\u2019d made all the suggestions about expansion, selling a percentage in the league, and they were not producing the numbers they needed, and the reality of the sizes of the funding cuts we would be facing, we went \u2018well OK\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

That decision was made in the final two months of 2025, before conversations shifted to matters of transition. By Cummins\u2019 estimate, CV was ready to go forward with plans to rebrand the Melbourne Stars and place the Renegades in \u201ccaretaker mode\u201d ahead of selling the licence by February.<\/p>\n

But objection to CA\u2019s BBL sale plans<\/a> by other states, namely NSW, Queensland and South Australia, slowed the process. It is important to note that those states still hold reservations about sale plans, even as CA rejig them to allow \u201cself-determination\u201d.<\/p>\n

Senior figures in NSW and SA were shocked at CV\u2019s decision on Tuesday night. Cummins, though, is unrepentant.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Vaibhav<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we want to sell 100 per cent of one of our teams, we as CV need to structure our organisation accordingly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t have a group of people working for a team and then all of a sudden, that gets sold from under them to a different entity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat will happen, and we\u2019re starting to see this happen, is staff will start leaving because there\u2019s no certainty. So we needed to aggregate everyone into one team where they have certainty, and then make the other licence free so we can sell it to someone who can put their own stamp on it \u2013 name, colours and so on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe complication is one, we need a caretaker to look after the other team until it is sold. There\u2019s still a CA board meeting and there\u2019s the ACA negotiations, so there\u2019s a couple of bridges that need to be crossed before the sale goes ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement on Wednesday, Cricket Australia CEO Todd Greenberg said: \u201cWe continue to work with the states and ACA to explore options for private investment in the Big Bash Leagues. There\u2019s still plenty of work to be done and nothing has been decided or approved as yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are aware of Cricket Victoria\u2019s intentions, which would still mean there are two teams in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

\"ChiefsChiefs no more: Jason Dunstall, far left, and Eddie McGuire, far right, were both punted as part of CV\u2019s decision to take back the reins of Melbourne\u2019s BBL clubs in 2019.Chris Hopkins<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019ve said before, private investment would involve some changes to the Big Bash Leagues and the clubs as we look to secure the future of Australian cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cummins is candid in his admission that much about the merger and sale is still unknown.<\/p>\n

Player contracts need to be migrated across to any new entities with the assent of the Australian Cricketers Association, and the CA board must still give final assent to the sale of the licence, which was technically leased to CV for a 30-year period in the early years of the BBL\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Cameron<\/a><\/p>\n

The decision to axe the Stars brand will go down poorly with the likes of longtime leader Glenn Maxwell and also the club\u2019s voluble former president Eddie McGuire. Cummins argued that it will need to change to be a team identity for all Victorians.<\/p>\n

One of the longstanding dynamics of the BBL is that the strongest team identities have tended to come from one team states: the Perth Scorchers being the leading example. Cummins wants the CV-owned Melbourne team to have that level of popularity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to us that the sponsors and the members and fans, they\u2019re Cricket Victoria fans, so we want them to have somewhere to live,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if they lost their team they don\u2019t have to go, \u2018So now who am I going to support\u2019, we will provide them with a viable option.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can support the new [privately owned] team, but also have an option with strong links to Victorian cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Equally, Cummins made it clear that he had spoken in detail to CA about how to manage the sale and rebranding. He added, moreover, that he had informed other state chief executives of CV\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been trying to tackle the challenge of what do we do around the caretaker period, between when we\u2019ve decided we want to sell that licence, and it actually going into the hands of the new owners because we need someone who cares about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just have it sitting there, wasting away. So we\u2019ve been working very closely with CA around that as well. That team is going to be trying to win the BBL.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he and a group of other CEOs recently returned from a trip to India<\/a> where they met with potential investors at a function hosted by the Raine Group in Mumbai, Cummins stressed that there was no shortlist of preferred candidates to buy.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Former<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the most important thing to understand is that if we continue to operate under the uncertainty, we wouldn\u2019t actually have any clubs left,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t sell uncertainty to sponsors, we can\u2019t sell uncertainty to players, we can\u2019t sell uncertainty to staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we need to be able to give a very clear picture to people about what it\u2019s going to look like. That became clear, so the delays have made that harder and harder, and now we\u2019ve committed to this path and we want to see it through.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a wave of economic rationalism washed through the AFL and the post-Super League NRL in the late 1990s, a host of figures became synonymous with the merging or dissolving of clubs.<\/p>\n

Then AFL boss Ross Oakley and commissioner Graeme Samuel were two in Melbourne, while Ken Arthurson and John Ribot were on the opposite sides of the Super League divide in Sydney.<\/p>\n

By choosing to kill off the Stars and Renegades to keep one team for Victoria and leave one \u201cclean\u201d Big Bash League licence to sell to a private investor, Cummins seems destined for similar notoriety. But he is insistent that this is a question of survival.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Vaibhav<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, they\u2019re 15 years old, both of them,\u201d Cummins said when asked if he had any qualms about \u201cretiring\u201d the team names. \u201cBut the reality is if we were selling 100 per cent of one of them, chances are that their name was going to change.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as soon as we made the decision to sell 100 per cent, we were taking the decision to cede control of the name to someone else, and even if they didn\u2019t change the Stars name or Renegades name, we wouldn\u2019t own it anymore. It was much more emotional making the decision to sell at all, more so than the brand itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut people can\u2019t discount the fact that the people in the organisation, this is their job, they think about this brand every day and are very passionate, so it\u2019s not an easy decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"DanielDaniel Brettig<\/a> is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated June 3, 2026 \u2014 10:23am,first published June 3, 2026 \u2014 9:21am Save You have reached your maximum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-711486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}