Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Prime Financial Group (ASX:PFG), Partner – Sales & Distribution, Darren Reed
Lel Smits: Prime Financial Group is an integrated advice, capital and asset management group built around connected advice at scale. With around $1.9 billion in funds under management, a 27-year track record and a global footprint, Prime is positioned at the centre of several powerful structural tailwinds reshaping the Australian mid-market. Ahead of Wholesale Investors Emergence 2026 conference, I’m joined by partners sales and distribution Darren Reed to discuss where growth is coming from next with a particular focus on sports.
Darren, welcome to the Stock Network.
Darren Reed: Thank you so much, I’m very happy to be here.
Lel Smits: Now intergenerational wealth transfer, the private markets and alternatives, M&A and succession technology enabled advice and mid-market expansion are all accelerating. Which of these themes are really currently driving the strongest growth for Prime and also how is Prime positioned to capture the opportunity?
Darren Reed: Yeah, I think if you rank the themes, the two that probably matter most to us are private markets and alternatives and the intergenerational wealth transfer. Like the others that you’ve spoken about, M&A, technical enabled advice etc, those I think are the plumbing that actually help those trends scale. Intergenerational wealth transfer is really in a way changing what people want to own.
The next generation is very different and they still want returns but what we’re seeing more and more is they want to own assets that have identity relevance that they can connect to in a real-world presence. We see sports and entertainment as one of the few asset classes that actually sits on the intersection of culture and the capital that’s going to be entering the ecosystem. Sports and entertainment sits within private and alternatives.
Globally, sport has totally been re-rated because investors now understand how unique it is as a piece of content and they’ve started to underwrite it properly. They’ve started to realise that there’s long-duration demand, recurring revenues, multiple monetisation rails. Investing in sports is not just about buying teams, it’s about media rights, sponsorship, ticketing, hospitality, merchandise, data, property and precinct developments.
I think that those areas of private markets and alternatives and that intergenerational wealth transfer, they collide really well in our sports and entertainment push.
Lel Smits: Excellent. Capital of course is increasingly flowing into private markets, property and alternative assets while the mid-market businesses remain active across M&A and capital raising.
How does Prime’s approach translate here really in terms of these trends becoming scalable earnings growth?
Darren Reed: Yeah, well I think if I push again on the sport thematic, what we’re seeing is that asset class transitioning from a high net worth passion asset or hobby into an actual institutional private market allocation. Like I said, it’s because these assets are becoming much easier to underwrite. Media rights are increasingly valuable.
Our attention is incredibly fragmented. There’s screens all around us competing for our attention. Sport as a piece of content is one of the last ones on earth that we feel we have to experience live and we want to watch it with other people.
We want to watch with our friends and our family. So that makes sponsorship most measurable and more and more measurable in sports. Teams have more levers than they ever used to.
So as we’ve mentioned, contact experiences, direct consumer data, property, etc. All of that makes the opportunity scalable. It makes the revenues consistent, which makes the risk far easier to underwrite.
It makes deals easier to originate, structure, syndicate. All of these things keep compounding. I think that you’ll see the asset class enter more and more and more into people’s private markets and alternative education as the asset class matures in Australia and Asia Pacific.
Lel Smits: Well, Darren, I really appreciate the update from Prime Financial Group and I look forward to hearing more at the Wholesale Investor Emergence 2026 conference.
Darren Reed: Yeah, I can’t wait to speak there and I look forward to seeing you.
Ends