Titus Day [left] seated next to Robert Whittaker during a 2018 interview.
After a lengthy court battle between celebrity manager Titus Day and Australian Idol winner and current The Voice Australia host Guy Sebastian, Day was arrested on charges that he misappropriated more than $1 million of Sebastian’s earnings.
Titus Day’s celebrity and athlete management business has had a rough go of things for the past several years. The longtime manager of Australian reality TV star & singer/songwriter Guy Sebastian had a well publicized split with his client back in 2017, with Sebastian accusing Day of walking away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in earnings belonging to the artist.
A lengthy court case ensued, with Day likewise claiming that Sebastian, in fact, owed him a large amount of money in unpaid fees. However, when the two sides failed to reach a settlement in 2019. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Day was forced to liquidate the 6 Degrees Management firm shortly afterward.
UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker first started working with Day in 2017, shortly after his bout with Jacare Souza. Following the 2019 liquidation of 6 Degrees Management The Herald reports that Day’s wife launched two talent agencies, Rival Sports Management and Media Talent Management. Rival Sports Management still represents Whittaker one of their premiere athlete talents—while also claiming representation of newly crowned UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski (although it appears Volkanovski is now represented by AP Sports Management), as well as light heavyweight prospect Jim Crute. A 2018 interview with Grange TV featuring both Whittaker and Day announced Day as “Rob’s manager and life coach”:
“I think that it’s easy to have a vision of a stereotype of a manager—Entourage, there’s a lot of movies and things, Don King—and there’s a lot of managers out there with big personalities that operate like that,” Day said in the interview with Grange TV, explaining his work with Whittaker at the time. “That tell their clients what to do, and that like the media and want to be in the spotlight. That’s why they do it, they like the glamour and the glitz of it. I’ve never been into it for that.
“People ask me, have I ever wanted to be a UFC fighter? Hell no. No, not in a million years. Have I ever wanted to be a rock star? No, I’d never want to be a rock star. I like working in the shadows. Nothing would be worse for me than people coming and asking for my photograph and signatures. I just wouldn’t want it. I don’t think the role of a manager is to tell their clients what to do, or to be in the spotlight.”
On July 2nd, Australian news site news.com.au posted video of Day’s arrest and delivery into police custody, reporting that Day had been charged with “61 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception,” totaling $1.15 million dollars of lost earnings for Guy Sebastian. The report also noted that Day had been granted bail following his arrest, however would be surrendering his passport and was required to report to the police daily between the hours of 8am & 8pm.
“He is to have no contact whatsoever under any circumstances with Mr Guy Sebastian except through a legal representative,” the Waverly court magistrate Ross Hudson announced.
News.com.au’s reports from the case accuse Day of receiving 24 payments on behalf of Sebastian for overseas royalties to his work, however they also alledge that only five of those payments ever made it to the artist’s accounts, with the other 19 supposedly withheld or diverted by Day.
“All my income was controlled via Titus into a Trust account,” Guy Sebastian said in a statement released on his Instagram account after the arrest, “and after noticing some disparities in payments, I requested important financial information that I was rightfully entitled to, and upon doing so our relationship began deteriorating.”
“No one in my industry deserves this to happen,” Sebastian continued “and I hope my case can serve as an example to all artists about the importance of transparency and trust between a manager and an artist. I will not be making any further comment as the matter is now with the police.”
The magistrate overseeing the case warned that the fraud was likely “not isolated” to Day’s handling of Sebastian’s account and that police “strongly believe there are more high-profile victims.” Both Day and Whittaker have declined to comment on the story to Bloody Elbow, however a source close to the situation says that their professional and personal relationship remains strong.