Coolabah is excited to announce a new front of jersey partnership with the Crusaders
As a long-standing existing brand partner of the Crusaders, Coolabah will see their brand mark move from the back to the front of the Crusaders jersey for the first time when the Crusaders play the Blues this weekend at Apollo Projects Stadium.
“We first committed to supporting the Crusaders back in 2023 at a time when the organisation was facing tremendous change. We have been immensely impressed by the way in which the Crusaders group has stared down these challenges and evolved into an even more agile and innovative team, focussed on world-class outcomes,” says Christopher Joye, Coolabah’s Chief Investment Officer.
“Recognising these results, we recently resolved to very substantially up the ante and deepen our investment in the Crusaders and their unique high-performance culture and capability.”
Coolabah is one of the world’s leading fixed-income managers, running over $15 billion in funds around the world with offices in Auckland, London, Miami, Sydney and Melbourne.
Coolabah’s 53-person team is globally recognised for its outstanding performance, which has been driven by a highly differentiated investment approach founded on deep quantitative research and a high velocity style that involves more than $1 billion in transactions on average each day.
Joye says it was a natural progression for Coolabah to commit to the Crusaders front of jersey, which is something that the firm had been targeting for a number of years.
“We believe that the Crusaders are one of the best value brands in global sports. And when we are evaluating strategic partnerships, we are always looking for athletes and organisations that closely align with our core principles, which include a performance edge that is predicated on best-in-breed intellectual capabilities, extreme intensity, worth ethic, and a demonstrated capacity to make world-class decisions under conditions of extreme duress and imperfect information. From our vantage, the Crusaders and New Zealand’s pre-eminent ski racer, Alice Robinson, both share these important attributes.”
Coolabah has for years been one of Robinson’s primary sponsors and in 2025 she became the first New Zealand athlete to be awarded a World Championship alpine ski racing medal, securing a total of eight podiums from ten world cup starts during the season.
“We wanted to kick off the new partnership with the Crusaders as soon as possible, so our brand will be moving from the back to the front of the jersey this weekend. We can’t wait to see Coolabah’s brand emblazoned on the front of the boys as they go into battle against such a formidable adversary as the Blues.”
Crusaders CEO Colin Mansbridge says Coolabah have already proved they are a “perfect fit” for the Crusaders brand, and this announcement signals a strong future together.