The Holman Barnes Group is seeking board pay increases at a moment when governance credibility matters most. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the organisation that owns 90 per cent of Wests Tigers is proposing to lift the chairman's annual honorarium from $51,341 to $65,000, raise the deputy chair's fee from $33,371 to $50,000, and increase payments to all other directors from $25,670 to $32,500. Board members sitting on committees would receive an additional $5,000 annually.
The timing raises uncomfortable questions about institutional accountability. Just three months ago, HBG sacked chairman Barry O'Farrell and three other independent directors in December 2025 before hastily reinstating them days later after NRL intervention. The reversal followed a governance review process that had only been in place for eleven months.
The financial comparison is stark. HBG has 27,000 members but would pay its board more than Parramatta Leagues Club, which owns the Eels and has 65,000 members. The Eels' president receives $30,000 annually. Canterbury League Club, strongly linked to the Bulldogs with 60,000 members, distributes just $229,801 across seven directors. St George Leagues Club, owning 50 per cent of the Dragons with 25,000 members, pays its chairman $16,000 per year. Only Penrith Panthers, with revenue exceeding $180 million and 148,000 members, would pay its directors more generously.
HBG vice-chairman Frank Primerano justified the increase by pointing to expansion of the organisation's business and rising workload on directors. "As Holman Barnes Group's business has expanded, the workload and governance responsibilities placed on directors have increased substantially," Primerano said.
Yet the financial picture tells a different story about governance performance. HBG returned a net profit of $11.9 million in 2025 after recording $100 million in total revenue. Those numbers suggest financial health. What they do not capture is the cost of dysfunction. The organisation has been forced to pay out CEO Shane Richardson, who resigned amid the boardroom chaos eighteen months into a four-year contract, and settled with former HBG director Rick Wayde after he was banned for eight years.
An anonymous source close to HBG's operations framed the disconnect bluntly. "How can the most chaotic board in NSW simultaneously become one of the highest paid," they asked, adding, "If the stipend for the board were based on performance then quite obviously these people would be getting a pay cut, not a pay day."
The governance structure compounds concerns about accountability. HBG's board power rests with twenty debenture holders who choose most directors under a decades-old system that limits direct member input. Only two of nine board seats are directly elected by the wider membership, and this month's annual general meeting will not include a ballot for those positions after one nomination withdrew. The remaining two candidates are well known to HBG board members, limiting meaningful contestation.
There is a legitimate argument that good governance requires competitive compensation to attract quality directors. Well-run organisations compensate their leadership fairly. Yet compensation must align with outcomes. The Tigers have stabilised under independent oversight but remain vulnerable to ownership decisions made behind closed doors. That structural risk argues for restraint, not expansion, in board pay while trust is being rebuilt.
The contrast with the NRL's own governance model is instructive. The Australian Rugby League Commission, formed in 2012, operates as an independent body with commissioners required to distance themselves from club conflicts. Individual NRL clubs remain autonomous but operate under an increasingly watchful eye when dysfunction threatens competition integrity.
The pay rise vote comes as HBG owes players and coach Benji Marshall $36 million over the next five years. The organisation has also reduced independent representation on the Tigers board, giving itself effective control of the football club despite the structural separation that should exist between ownership and sporting governance.
The most troubling aspect is the message the pay increase sends to members and stakeholders. Institutional credibility rests on alignment between decision-making and accountability. A board that removes and then rehires leadership without clear explanation, that controls governance through an undemocratic appointment system, and that now seeks higher compensation for its work commands little moral authority to make that case.
Pragmatically, the Tigers need stability more than they need board pay rises. Whether members voting at the 21 March annual general meeting agree will test whether institutional accountability still matters at the club, or whether ownership power has become truly unquestioned.