FFA needs to reconsider expansion plans for 2010/11

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By Adrian Musolino, 2 Sep 2009 Adrian Musolino is a Roar Expert

Tagged:: A-League, Brisbane Roar, FFA, football, Mark Viduka, melbourne heart

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Gold Coast players react after Jason Culina scored in the 59th minute to put the Coast 2-0 up during the 1st round A-League football match between Brisbane Roar and Gold Coast United at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Expansion hasn’t been the golden ticket to significantly better crowd figures with a below 10,000 average crowd for the last round highlighting the complexities of drawing punters at this time of the year. But rather than being the ticket to better crowds, expansion is partly the reason for the deplorable crowds in Brisbane.

Brisbane came into this season off the back of an impressive run in the latter stages of last season and have shown flashes of its exciting attacking capability this season, despite a woeful run of injuries.

They have some of the most exciting Australian youngsters in the league, an inspirational captain and national team hero, a well-known coach not afraid to speak his mind, and a gun new import.

So why the enormous drop in crowd figures?

Obviously there have been some self-inflicted mistakes that have cost the Roar big.

The much-discussed cost of tickets is a shambles with season ticket holders charged an extra $169 this season compared to last.

Once such information becomes public knowledge, then perceptions tend to be exaggerated, keeping away those mindful of their budgets.

It’s a warning to all A-League teams and the FFA — don’t treat the paying public with contempt for you will feel their wrath.

But the enormity of the crowd drop in Brisbane specifically must be partly put down to the changes in the Queensland football landscape.

From the sole representatives of the sunshine state, with its name reflecting that, Brisbane’s market for potential sponsors, television audiences and, to a certain extent, crowd figures, has been cut by a third, not good for a team struggling financially and relying on the FFA to help bolster their coffers.

For Queensland residents travelling down to the state capital or ex-pat Brisbane residents from Townsville or the Coast, there is little reason to catch a Roar match, especially if they have jumped off the bandwagon to follow their own teams.

This problem will be multiplied with second teams in Melbourne (the Hearts) and Sydney, for the simple reason that, in the latter’s case at least, the geographical distance between the second franchise will be a lot shorter than in Brisbane.

For all its promise and the encouraging signings of some impressive names from the backroom to the head coach, there is still no clear sign as to how the Melbourne Hearts will differentiate themselves from the Victory.

There will be no geographical difference.

If this was an important consideration, then South Melbourne would have been the only real option and that wasn’t necessarily going to happen considering the huge cultural shift of the FFA away from all that the NSL symbolised compared to the A-League.

Aside from attracting Victory fans when Archie and co are playing away and the Hearts are the only team in town, what will convince a Victory supporter to throw away their scarf and defect to the Hearts?

The differentiation will have to come from how the club plays its football with a European style already promised with the signing of experienced Dutch coach Henk van Stee.

Heaven forbid if they fail to achieve this differentiation in the way they approach their football for, unless they bring in Mark Viduka from the wilderness, they will have little to tempt Victory fans.

Last week the FFA delayed a final decision on the twelfth franchise to join the Hearts in the A-League to allow the bidders more time to present their case.

Perhaps there needs to be some acceptance that expansion, for next season at least, may be too much too soon, and working out a better strategy when introducing a second franchise into a market is needed.

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The Crowd Says (211) | Page 1 of Comments

Michael C said | September 2nd 2009 @ 6:22am | Report comment

The HAL operates in a super competitive market place –

for people to blithely suggest last year that falling crowds across the board was nothing to worry about because 2 new teams would generate all this new excitement and all that…..

….when exactly is all that excitement going to be generated??

After AFL and NRL finals??

If so, again, just further proof of the super competitive market place and the dangers of too rapid expansion too soon with too much overlap with AFL and NRL.

but – what if AFL and NRL aren’t the real reason??

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- Simmo said | September 2nd 2009 @ 9:53am | Report comment
  
  and what if they are?
  
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- roary said | February 9th 2010 @ 11:36am | Report comment
  
  So what we do is not expand and have only 8 or 10 sides? You have to go to 12 to make it a reasonable league to give enough guys a chance of playing.
  
  Ideally, in my book 12 is the optimum amount. No more. Australia won’t be able to have more professional sides for another generation. It’ll be tight as it is.
  
  Gold Coast and Townsville were mistakes, pure and simple. Gold Coast has lost every pro sports team ever there. When Claude Palmer gets bored with this new toy, who will keep it going? Townsville is only a township.
  
  They should have gone to Wollongong, West Sydney and Melbourne or Geelong before these Queensland resort towns. Sometimes I wonder if the FFA really is that cluey. Bizarre.
  
  Anyhow, stick to 12 and aim to get playing salaries up to 10 million per club within a decade. With full time professionalism and all the international games in Asia it will raise the standards enormously from the old NSL era.
  
  It irritates me about the Euro-snob element. Outside the top 5 nations in Europe the interest in leagues and clubs drops away significantly even over there. It is all down to the almighty buck, who pays it gets all the talent. We need more money or just stay as a development league. It is actually a pretty realistic indication where Australia sits in the economic world too. Just like the Big Mac index with currencies.
  
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MVDave said | September 2nd 2009 @ 7:12am | Report comment

HAL started earlier and will learn lessons from scheduling mistakes this time around. More people have attended games this year so far than last and whilst Newcastle and Brisbane crowds have been poor the others have been ok and will grow as the season progresses. The standard of play is better and more players of quality are returning to play here.
Expansion to 12 is necessary and then take a break from expansion to see how the league is travelling.
HAL has followed the same path as J League and MLS in terms of attendances and both those leagues are doing very well now. Football has some very wealthy and influential people backing it and will continue to grow…look at the year ahead;
MV to move into a new stadium with their memberships approaching 19,000, 2nd highest ever and will grow again next season
A game in Melbourne every week next season
Likelihood of more Socceroos coming back to play in Oz next year after the WC
WC and the lead up to it to give even more exposure to the game
Over 250 full time professional footballers during 2010 plus over 100 NYL players
Extra Sydenee team based in the biggest football area in the country

Yes challenging times ahead but given the rocky past the game has endured in Oz l know how much stronger the game is now compared to just 5 years ago.
Dont worry about the doomsayers HAL you are doing just fine and need to continue measured growth.

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- Michael C said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:49am | Report comment
  
  So far, aggregate attendance is up 20K on last year, but, still down 8K on same stage of V3 (after 4 rounds).
  
  re last year, crowds effectively up 10% on aggregate, however, there’s 25% more games each week.
  
  Around the venues so far:
  Suncorp obviously down – - is -11% yr on yr for round 4 (is that all due the early start/season overlap?) – just don’t mention the year on year round 4 decline since the heady days of V1 and V2 (18K averages). 3 matches in 4 rounds – - including the 20K ‘blockbuster’ opener vs GCU.
  Wellington is going okay….one home crowd in at 10K. Too early to tell.
  Aussie – SFC is down 5% on last year so far, and again, looking back to V1 (20K) and V2 (17K), the current 13K figure must surely be due to the seasonal overlap with NRL/AFL.
  Up in Newcastle – 2 games in, and 6.5K avg, down 53% on same time last year. Blame the Knights.
  CCM – down 10% on V4, but, V4 started quite well, and the figure is the 2nd best, even up on the V3 start. So, that’s looking okay – - but, no direct NRL overlap.
  MVFC – at Etihad, 2 games in, and a drop of 21% already on last year. To this point last year 23.7K which was already down 5.7K on V3 and 16K on V2. Again, direct impact of overlap with AFL?
  ME stadium – 2 games in, and a 2% gain on V4. Sub 9K figures, so, still, hardly anything to write home about, but, in AFL territory – holding ground must be seen as a ‘win’.
  Hindmarsh – Ade Utd have started quite well, better than V3 so far, and up 36% on V4. Even with the Crows surging into the finals.
  
  Importantly – Perth and Adelaide are NOT dual NRL/AFL cities. Where soccer is number 1 (Gosford), or number 2 (Adelaide/Perth/Wellington) – it’s doing okay, everywhere else is ranging from ordinary to dismal to really dismal if you look back as far as the honeymoon period.
  
  This is the obvious danger of too great an expansion, too soon, into AFL and NRL seasons in flagship cities such as Melb, Syd and Brisbane. The image of 6000 crowds at Suncorp and Skilled does not sit with all the hyperbole of Mr.Palmer. (how much of the stadium will he shut down? – - not saying this doesn’t happen elsewhere, but, inside the first 4 rounds???).
  
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agga78 said | September 2nd 2009 @ 7:39am | Report comment

Low crowd figures in Brisbane are not the result of expansion, they are a result of playing two games on Sat arvo for one, poor management with a disgraceful increase in ticket prices and not enough exposure in the media. Brisbane like all A league clubs should be tapping into the vast number of amateur players in Australia, they should be linking up with all there local associations in Brisbane and surrounds and offering hughly discounted memberships or 3, 5 or 7 game memberships with registered players within those junior or senior competitions. THese people are already interested in football, they just need a little push to make them interested in their local A league team. This may result in less revenue in the short term but may build a stronger fanbase in the long run, which is what A league clubs need.
The main reason for stopping expasion is quality on the pitch if the two new teams are more like NQF, then expasion should be delayed if they are more like Gold Coast then expansion should go ahead. Melbourne and especially Sydney love winners and if these teams can win on the park they will get good enough support, but the most important thing they have to doc is connect with their local football community and offer incentives to join the team and success will come at least off the pitch.

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Robbos said | September 2nd 2009 @ 8:03am | Report comment

‘Build it & they will come’

Firstly I think expansion is necessary, for us to even compete with AFL & NRL, we need more teams in the HAL. This is the worst possible scenerio they could follow by avoiding expansion.
With the 2 extra teams especially Gold Coast & even with Nh Queensland, the Fowler factor, I think it’s been a sucess.
While the crowds are not there yet, it’s only been 4 rounds & yes Brisbane is worrying, very worrying, the others are as expected. It will take Gold Coast & Nth Queensland awhile to build up their fan base. the other side that has poor crowd figures are Newcastle & can you blame them for the soap opera happening, they are as stable as the NSW labour government.

Secondly, don’t get caught up on this competitive market crap, even Cockerill mentioned that Sydney was the most competitive market in the world, what a load of crap. Look at the US they have 4 major sports & then they have football which isn’t up there as a major sport but has decent following & Rugby is a niche sport there as well. Add all the individual sports they excel at like Athletics, Tennis & Golf. England, they have all the same sports as Australia except for AFL.
France has football, both Rugby codes & basketball, don’t forget cycling is huge there, not to mention their winter sports.
Just because it’s not mentioned in this country doesn’t mean it does not exist. The AFL is never discussed in France but it’s huge here.

We in Australia areno different to the other countries as far as competition, only difference is in Australia football is the small sport, while in England even cricket pales into insignificant to Football.

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- md said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:36am | Report comment
  
  Robbos,
  
  The USA is a poor comparison. Yes they have 4 major professional codes, but they also have 300 million people, and only the major cities ( 2 million plus) are represented in all major competitions (and then, still not all of them – San Antonio Tx has a metro area of over 2 million people and only has the Spurs basketball team in a major competition). Further, US cities generally only have 1 team per code per city – with exceptions of major conurbations like LA, NY and Chicago (Chicago has 9.5 million people in its metro area and has 2 baseball teams and 1 team in each of the other codes).
  
  If you want to consider how crowded our market is: the square stadium in Melbourne that A-league fans desparately want already has 4 teams across 3 professional codes lining up to use it.
  
  Cheers
  md
  
  Reply
True Tah said | September 2nd 2009 @ 8:13am | Report comment

Robbos

one thing you fail to mention is that the UK and France have populations over 60m in an area roughly the same size as NSW. The US is huge, but it has over 300m and is the worlds largest economy.

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- Robbos said | September 2nd 2009 @ 8:47pm | Report comment
  
  Ok there is not many countries like Australia that you can compare us to. Canada? Ice Hockey, American Football, baseball, football?
  
  Reply
  - True Tah said | September 2nd 2009 @ 8:57pm | Report comment
    
    Ireland – Gaelic football, Hurling and Rugby
    Wales – Rugby
    
    Again these are both small countries and insignificant in world terms.
    
    South Africa is probably the closest in terms in size, although population they are much bigger and whilst futbol is the biggest sport in South Africa, Australia is far more successful on the world stage and has far more players playing in the strongest leagues. Whilst rugby and cricket will take some of that support away, that will only happen over time.
    
    Reply
    - Robbos said | September 2nd 2009 @ 9:10pm | Report comment
      
      What I’m getting at is that other countries have other sports, Handball is massive in northern Europe, basketball is also very big in europe as is alpine sports. We tend to think we have the market cornered for most competitive sports. I lived in England & sure they have a bigger population, but generally they are not as sports mad as us Aussies are.
      
      Reply
    - Pippinu said | September 2nd 2009 @ 9:41pm | Report comment
      
      Sports like handball and basketball are quite popular in parts of Europe, but generally speaking, they involve newish clubs, not 100 year old clubs as are to be found in the top tiers of many of the football comps.
      
      I keep coming back to this point – it’s an important one.
      
      Reply
    - Robbos said | September 2nd 2009 @ 9:58pm | Report comment
      
      According to wikipedia handball was first introduced to the summer olympics in 1936, so that is 70 years old. There are some handball clubs dating back to the turn of the last century & there is 19 million registered players worldwide.
      
      Reply
    - Robbos said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:00pm | Report comment
      
      Many Basketball clubs in Europe date back to the 1930s.
      
      Reply
    - Pippinu said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:11pm | Report comment
      
      Fair enough – but it’s still not the 1890s – and you can imagine that those early clubs would have been pretty anonymous for a few decades.
      
      In fact, one of the stronger leagues, the Handball Bundesliga, was only formed in 1965.
      
      I think it’s fair to say that this game in a place like Germany has filled the void that may have been filled by other forms of football.
      
      Reply
albe said | September 2nd 2009 @ 8:21am | Report comment

Expansion is still the right course IMO … i think the second Melbourne team will actually do really well if they tap into the VPL fan base and people who maybe want a more ‘Euro’ team over the Muscat-led Victory.

As far as the 12th team goes, i agree Sydney II is a risk and perhaps Canberra with its more modest aims is the better option.

I really think going forward, regional areas are where the league needs to expand to. One more Sydney team at some point, but beyond that any 2nd division needs to go to new (regional) areas to make it viable. Rather than crowding out existing teams. Looking like 12 teams are the max for the top flight.

On the crowds generally, the 10k average still looks fine and this is early season. The only ones stoking the panic flames are the usual suspects …

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whiskeymac said | September 2nd 2009 @ 9:44am | Report comment

considering the distance am not conviced NQs inclusion is diluting the Roar’s crowds – wld people really travel the distance to watch a roar game from NQ? if so why quibble over the price of a ticket when the petrol alone would have set you back the cost of a Man City striker. GCU however might be more realistic in splitting the fanbase, but at the same time you’d think (admittedly from a PC miles away from either) that the rivalry (overtime) it might geerate will gain momentum and be a good thing for the sporting landscape and therefore crowds will grow. you’d think anyway.

still the sentiment that the HAL is going through growing pains is enough to numb any fears, and nagging voices from some bloggers, for now. Maybe after the WC boost and Asian Cup interest (assuming we qualify) it will follow that football will have in the forseeable future 2 good years, followed by 2 leaner ones, before the cycle resets itself? very biblical. or topical if you prefer el nino, la nina analogies. and as the game grows and ply improves (assuming it does) maybe the leaner years wont be as worrying for the administrators (advertisers etc)…

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Realfootball said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:02am | Report comment

Adrian, being a local I do not buy the argument that expansion into the Gold Coast has hurt Brisbane crowds. Having travelled by train to Roar games from Gold Coast since game 1 of the A League, my firm impression is that the numbers of fans travelling up was never significant -certainly nowhere near enough to cause what has happened this season at Roar games. Brisbane’s falling crowds have been due to confluence of factors: the local NRL and AFL sides surging into the finals in their comps; glorious unseasonal weather which made the 3pm starts relatively unattractive; the 3pm starts coinciding with all the local comps (junior and senior) finals; tough times meaning people are being hit in the wallets; a long history of the team disappointing its fans at home and two bad home results first up; and the offensive and simply stupid (the only word) ticket price increases that run counter to all marketing principles. The idiocy of the Roar’s ticket price increases in a time of recession and uncertainty is breathtaking. This single factor, if you listen to people talk, is what is doing the most to keep people (including myself) away from Suncorp. I have atttended once, with two kids and for resonable but not great seats it cost me $94. What a ripoff. So I’ve voted with my feet. I’ll watch it on Fox, except for the “blockbuster” games.

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Marlon said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:07am | Report comment

Agree….expansion willl destroy the A League. They should focus on the teams that they have and then look to the quality of the comp – which is dreadful.

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AndyRoo said | September 2nd 2009 @ 10:11am | Report comment

If there were no new teams this season would have been a lot worse. Another season with the same 8 teams again aghhh.

And despite the horrible prices the Roar will still likely average more than 10k by seasons end. Not only were those games during the day they were also the two worst drawing crowds (Nix and Mariners)

I see more of a risk in the Melbourne team (they will be playing in the same Stadium) than the West Sydney one but both will probably help the existing teams in the Derby and actually creating stories. How much tripe we read about AFL in Brisbane and Sydney because with only the one team there isn’t a lot to talk about to fill their space. But look at rugby league, the Titans and Cowboys were good for the Broncos and league in QLD. Fury and GCU should have been the same for the Roar but they self destructed so can’t take advantage of much more QLD interest.

The gate receipts they got for the GCU game I suspect are a regular season record for the Roar even if I there were likely1,000 freebies for the kids.
Imagine if the opening game in QLD had of been against say Adelaide instead of the Gold Coast. They may have only got 15k and would be even more worried.

I really can’t see how we will ever have enough teams for a 2nd Division. After West Sydney are in whats left…. Tasmania and Canberra would be the next in line. They would both be regional teams like the Fury who I would like too see in eventually but that’s it. 14 teams.
It would be yonks (like 15 to 20 years) before I could even imagine ever putting in a second team in say Adelaide or Perth. Or expanding to Auckland.

I expect we wil see West Sydney with Hearts for next year then a year of non expansion and then perhaps Canberra and then 1 or 2 years later Tasmania. Then 5 years of no expansion.

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- Realfootball said | September 2nd 2009 @ 11:26am | Report comment
  
  The GCU game was not the regular season record for the Roar, but it was one of their bigger regular season crowds.
  
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  - AndyRoo said | September 2nd 2009 @ 11:31am | Report comment
    
    Yes, crowd size wise they have done better but I think Gate Receipt wise (the money they received) it would have been the biggest becasue of the price of tickets.
    
    if you use steves figures of 25% higher prices then getting 19k this year is the equiv of getting 23,750 people last year
    
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    - TomF said | September 2nd 2009 @ 1:02pm | Report comment
      
      Still doesn’t come near the biggest crowds, even with the mark up. Some of the crowds v Sydney have been huge!
      
      Reply