about us.
Rival Sports Management formed in 2017 offering exclusive expert management and marketing services to a select number of leading sports stars.
The company launched with major names across three different extreme sports - Australia’s #1 Ironman champion Matt Poole, Australia’s #1 female skateboarder Poppy Starr and Australia’s #1 MMA fighter Robert Whittaker.
As Rival grew it elected to focus primarily on combat sports – signing future superstars Alexander Volkanovski, Steve Erceg, Jimmy Crute and Jacob Malkoun amongst others.
Rival’s success is reflected in its achievements and remains the only management company in Australia to have guided MMA athletes from the regional scene through to becoming UFC Champions!
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In 2021 Rival opened its “Brand Partnerships” division - a specialist service connecting athletes, events and leading brands in the combat sports space. Since then it has consulted and delivered hugely successful marketing campaigns with a variety of international brands including Musashi, Samsung, Culture Kings, Bethesda, Unibet, Playstation and Warner Brothers.
Outside of direct management, Rival also sources commercial opportunities for elite international sports stars during their trips to Australia – recent successes include working with Shaquille O'Neal and Tom Brady.
Rival is extremely passionate about sports and entertainment - with over 60 years combined management experience across the team - and already boasts a roster which includes most of Australia’s elite ‘established’ and ‘next-generation’ combat sports athletes. We have been involved in the negotiation of some of the biggest commercial sports and media deals in Australian history!
In 2025 Rival will be expanding its operations to the US and Saudi Arabia, opening an office in the combat sports capitals of the world – Las Vegas and Riyadh! As ‘the’ combat sports management pioneer in Australia, Rival has realistic aspirations of becoming the #1 combat sports management agency in the world!
