A rescue bid to save one of Australia’s most popular sports outlets, The Roar, has fallen over amid a dispute over its ownership and responsibility for paying staff, which has resulted in the website falling silent for a month.
The Roar, which attracts 2 million visitors a month, stopped publishing stories four weeks ago after its four full-time staff downed tools, claiming they were not being paid. Documents show the amount has risen to more than $100,000 in unpaid wages and superannuation.
The Roar’s editor, Tony Harper, said he and his staff were last paid eight weeks ago.
“I can confirm that staff are currently owed a total in excess of $100,000 in missing wages and super,” Harper said in a statement to this masthead.
“Obviously, one impact of this is the stress that the missing super and wages are causing to me, the staff and our families. However, beyond that, The Roar has been a site for sports fans to express their opinions for 20 years and is a beloved brand in the Australian sports market.
“The loss for many of our readers is red raw and the unnecessary demise of this platform will hurt many.”
Founded in 2006, The Roar quickly became a destination for opinionated fans who were making about 20,000 comments a month on its coverage of sports such as the NRL, AFL, soccer and cricket.
But after being sold several times, the free-to-access site became embroiled in an ownership dispute between Fan Media, a company directed by a little-known Melburnian called Miro Mikrut, and former cosmetic surgery entrepreneur Daniel Corsello. As previously reported by this masthead, both men’s ownership claims originated with a series of complex deals and corporate manoeuvres by PlayUp, a gambling technology company that had bought The Roar in 2021.
Adding to the complex ownership picture, an independent report into PlayUp, commissioned by the company to assist its planned $19 million sale of its Australian assets to another gambling firm and seen by this masthead, shows PlayUp is still exposed to The Roar.
The November 2025 document from accountancy Moore Australia cites an outstanding loan of $600,000 PlayUp made to Fan Media. “Fan Media operates The Roar and has been a loss-making asset since PlayUp’s acquisition and therefore has no capacity to repay the loan,” the document says.
The document notes there have been ongoing attempts to “sell Fan Media”, but said buyer interest and value was “uncertain”.
Thomas Monnox, a lawyer from Mills Oakles representing Daniel Simic, the founder and global chief executive of PlayUp, responded to a series of questions sent by this masthead to his client with a brief email marked “confidential”.
“Mr Simic is unable to comment on any of the matters raised and reserves all of his rights against yourself and the publisher in connection with the story, including his right to commence an action in defamation should your publication prove to be libellous,” Monnox wrote.
He said Simic could not respond to the independent expert report, which was addressed to PlayUp’s directors and marked as being for distribution to its shareholders, without being provided with a copy.
Amid the dispute between Corsello and Fan Media, which is now before the NSW Supreme Court, staff grew hopeful last week that a deal was on the horizon amid interest from Dylan Howard, the Australian former editor of American tabloid The National Enquirer turned media entrepreneur. This masthead also reported on previous interest from Hong Kong-based The Sporting News.
Last week, Howard, who became embroiled in the Stormy Daniels saga during Donald Trump’s first presidency, made an in-principle verbal agreement to pay out two figures at the heart of a battle for ownership of The Roar, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. The proposed deal would have resulted in Howard, who is now CEO of his own media company Mystify Group, purchasing The Roar, but not the companies associated with it, such as Fan Media.
Howard, however, confirmed on Wednesday that his attempts to rescue The Roar had failed.
“As an Australian sports mainstay, The Roar did not deserve to die,” Howard told this masthead.
“More than that, I believed it could become an economically viable brand, rebuilt for the current media landscape — and protecting the livelihoods of a number of staff and contributors.
“I did make good faith efforts to see if a deal on the brand could be done, but I have not been successful,” he said.
The deal proposed by Howard would have resolved the ownership matter, but would not have paid out the entitlements owed to the four staff and about 60 freelance contributors, whose claims date back to 2025, as previously reported by this masthead.
The staff have now begun taking the initial steps towards legal action in hopes of recouping their owed wages and super. Their union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, has also begun investigating the matter on behalf of both full-time staff and freelancers, according to emails seen by this masthead.
MEAA media director Cassie Derrick said in some cases, writers had given hundreds of hours of their time and expertise to connect sports fans to the games they loved for The Roar.
“The owners of The Roar’s decision to leave wages unpaid, effectively stealing their time and work, is completely unacceptable. They need to pay up,” Derrick said.
As of this week, wages owing to the four staff members currently total $43,100.80 in addition to $64,807.41 in missing superannuation dating back to October. There is an estimated $100,000 also owed to 60 contributors, said two sources with knowledge of the figures, not authorised to speak publicly.
Despite the deals made by Simic and PlayUp in 2024 and 2025, Harper said Fan Technologies Pty Ltd, a company that corporate records show is a wholly owned subsidiary of PlayUp, was still their ultimate employer, and responsible for their unpaid wages. He added that Fan Media, a company operated by one sole director, Melbourne-based Miro Mikrut, had previously paid staff’s wages, but not super.
Harper said the issue had been raised with the Australian Taxation Office, who confirmed they were chasing the missing super, in addition to claims from three former employees also missing super payments. Staff have made claims to both PlayUp and Fan Media, the company currently operating the outlet “under licence”, in the hopes that someone will pay them.
“I raised concerns about missing super with [PlayUp chief executive] Daniel Simic late last year and he passed the buck to Mikrut and Fan Media,” Harper said.
Last week, Harper and his three colleagues wrote to PlayUp’s Australian CEO Paul Jeronimo regarding their unpaid entitlements. Jeronimo confirmed he had received the emails in a statement to this masthead, but said as of August 1, 2024, Fan Media had assumed responsibility for employee entitlements and collected all revenues generated by The Roar.
Mikrut, the director of Fan Media, did not respond to a request for comment.
Corsello – who is listed as the owner of the theroar.com.au domain and claims ownership of the associated intellectual property – confirmed he was involved in the in-principle deal to save the site. Its failure, he said, was not the result of any issues between Howard and himself.
“It is my understanding that the failure to proceed reflects factors involving other parties, which is disappointing, particularly given the platform has not been publishing for several weeks and staff entitlements continue to accrue and remain outstanding,” Corsello said.
Howard started his career at The Geelong Advertiser before covering AFL on the Seven Network where he was embroiled in several controversies.
After exiting the Australian industry, he rose to prominence as a tabloid journalist in the United States, and found himself at the centre of Donald Trump’s Stormy Daniels hush money trial in 2024, which involved allegations Howard’s employer had worked with Trump’s lawyers to “catch and kill” unflattering stories by purchasing the rights to them without publishing the material.
A lawyer for Howard said at the time that he had always fully co-operated with the government inquiries regarding his former employer’s relationship with Trump, and the actions he was directed to take.
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.
