Extending slightly on Jesse Fink’s article Is the Bundesliga a model for the A-League?, part of the discussion addresses Geoff Lord’s mooted attempts at branching out into other sports such as basketball and rugby union.
There has been a mixed response from Melbourne fans, given some are thinking the focus and investment should be in terms of the football side of things only and others seeing some merit in branching out and cross-networking amongst “alternative” sports in order to have more influence in an AFL dominated market.
The matter is very interesting and there are some arguments with merit on both sides of the equation.
This has apparently been shot down by the FFA if Michael Lynch’s article in The Age is anything to go by.
There are some elements to the FFA’s policy directive that I found very interesting, though.
Firstly, regarding the element of the FFA’s mooted provision along the lines of prohibiting an “A League club and/or individual shareholders holding any form of ownership, shareholding or investment position within any club or franchise in either football or any other sporting code.”
To a degree, I can understand the FFA’s position. As a governing body, they want to protect and focus investment into the sport of football, and in terms of the business side of things, they are trying to protect the integrity of the A League.
This relates rightly to a larger prospective danger whereby outsiders buy into football and “screw it over” from within.
But once again this raises questions about the FFA’s attitudes to the clubs.
There is merit in the franchise structure being used in Australia. There needs to be centralisation to prevent issues of infighting that used to plague football in years past, but the local football economy simply can’t sustain a European pyramid-style structure and there is a need to be able to jettison ailing clubs such as the New Zealand Knights and replace them with better outfits when necessary.
But the FFA is taking the whole franchisor/franchisee thing a bit too far. Even Con Constantine was speaking of the FFA as a “big business” on the weekend, which is not quite correct.
The A League and football clubs in general are hybrid business/community institutions. Too far in either direction and you have an unhealthy dynamic. In years past, the focus was excessively community oriented. And within that, far too narrow to the point where some elements of the football fraternity felt excluded, meaning that despite enormous base, interest attendances were low.
The business side of things was a shambles, football was barely solvent and had few sponsors.
But there are signs that the dynamic is swinging unhealthily too far in the other direction now, which can have similar effects.
In this instance, the FFA are being over literal with the franchise structure, the impact of which will be, despite enormous base interest in football and sport in general, people (hard core football fans in particular) will feel excluded.
Fans aren’t just mere consumers but want to support something which means something to them and is not a soulless business franchise.
Generally speaking, football is only just moving into the mainstream. There is some merit to an argument that this can be facilitated and consolidated by prominent involvement by football institutions or their owners into other sports, such as Don Matheson with the Townsville Basketball club and Clive Palmer with the Gold Coast Basketball club.
Obviously football wants to avoid an issue, as with Carlton Soccer club and the Collingwood Warriors, but this needs more reasoned debate
Perhaps the solution lies in allowing only a certain percentage of investment in other sports, or have a review of ownership on its individual merits to separate the Carltons from something that may just be workable, similar to how Governments review prospective mergers to ensure they aren’t anti-competitive.
Either way, these are issues that requires some healthy discussion.
Recommend this story.
July 28th 2009 @ 1:17pm
Gibbo said | July 28th 2009 @ 1:17pm | Report comment
ha ha, slightly tongue in cheek… now that i’ve read it, my attempt to paraphrase is:
Because of how good Melbourne Victory are they’re actually making a profit which they will struggle to put back into football due to the FFA’s salary cap. So they came up with a pretty darn good idea about branching into RU using the same areana in the off season, and BBall across the road, thus growing the MV brand, but FFA have played the party poopers again due partly to fears that Football profits may get lost to failed non-football endeavours, and partly due to their treasured grip to absolute control.
July 28th 2009 @ 1:40pm
Redb said | July 28th 2009 @ 1:40pm | Report comment
Wasn’t there also some problem with the FFA owning the Victory brand?