You make a good point

I will not be easy and I often say to football folk … look we are going to have enough trouble keeping our head above water to worry about anyone else… just hold and grow a little and be ready for 2014 when the new media deal kicks in….

Asia remains the great unknown.

I too read the article – I saw the pluses for the magnates – but not many people want to lose a few mill per annum for years on end.

I always said the years 5 to 8 would be the hardest .. Just happens that when JON signed the 7 year deal it worked with my analysis…

We still have 5 years of huge slog to get tho… so many issues … so many problems… so little money …

It’s strange in a way but the limited (to date) success of the New Football launch has not affected the main stream codes .. but IMO has had a huge impact on the smaller codes all trying to get themselves noticed…

However the one big difference is Asia and the smh had a great article on it .. towards the end it shows how the Perth Glory owner used football and compared it to Clive (the Belly) Palmer …good read .. bias of course as it is a football writer … but the Asian connections do kinda get a lot of support… http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/football/a-league/times-tough-but-club-ownership-is-good-business/2009/11/03/1257010201092.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Remember he is paralleling the A League and the NBL competitions not basketball and soccer.

The Soccerros are irrelevant.

Gweeds, soccer would indeed have a far bigger catchment than basketball but the A League suffers from its poorer quality comp comparison to overseas versions (EPL, etc) This is similiar to basketball in that the standard is not as good and they both in terms of spectatorship are 2nd tier sports domestic comps struggling to find air in competition with the AFL and NRL. They also both moved to summer to avoid the clash.

I’d listen rather than knock his opinion given the whole NBL competition almost completely failed.

Redb

Soccer does have a longer history in Australia than basketball, but people should try and remember just how big basketball became at one point (pretty much over the same period that the AFL were trying to save the Swans).

Basketball was viewed as a major threat to the AFL at one point – the Melbourne press was full of articles about how big the NBL now was, the size of crowds, the participation rates, etc etc

Looking back – it all looks so silly now.

Whether direct comparisons can be made, I don’t know, but one thing is for sure – don’t measure any new comp from the first year, or the first 5 years, or even the first 25 years – you really need to be looking at it 50 years hence to know whether it has succeeded or failed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_war

and this:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/League/How-the-war-unfolded/2005/03/25/1111692633683.html

Mate, it was a hostile takeover pure and simple, the only reason that Souths were touch and go (in fact they were expelled) was because News wanted them to go

I know that lots of people that don’t like football succeeding in this country point to the rapid rise and fall of basketball popularity as an example of what will happen to the A-League, but I don’t think this may be the case.

Basketball seemed to me to rise a lot on the wave of a surge in popularity of American sports and personalities (especially Micheal Jordan). Of course there are committed basketball fans in Australia. But I still think that the tradition of football is stronger, mainly through Australians of Non-English speaking backgrounds that have created a base of football support, albeit not huge, but significant (of course some have rejected the A-League, but that’s another story – the football culture is there).

The AFL and the NRL have had their share of teams that were not going well and had to be rescued/restructured for them to survive, especially in markets where they were not playing the main sport. Take the Sydney Swans. By the mid 80’s the Sydney Swans were going badly. Losing money and low attendances. So in came medical entrepreneur Dr. Geoffrey Edelsten in 1985. Edelstein instigated a marketing campaign based on razzmatazz, excitement and a carnival atmosphere. The doctor flew a pink helicopter and cheer girls waved their goodies at the crowd. Of course, once the razzmatazz became old hat, the support dwindled and the club once more tittered on the edge of extinction. By 1988 the licence was sold back to the VFL for ten dollars. Losses were in the millions. A group of financial backers including Mike Willessee, Basil Sellers, Peter Weinert and Craig Kimberley purchased the licence and bankrolled the club until 1993, when the AFL stepped with substantial monetary and management support, draft and salary cap concessions.

I don’t follow the NRL but I believe that there was quite a restructure when news limited came to the rescue. And I believe that traditional teams such as South Sydney were touch and go whether they survived (I am happy to be corrected on these facts).

So the A-League is establlishing not a new team here and there, but a whole competition – in markets where other codes are dominant. It is not surprising that in some instances difficulties arise.

All it could take is a poor or unentertaining showing in South Africa (a strong possibility with Pim’s team), or the continued antics of A-league owners like Palmer and Constantine, or the removal of the salary cap to halt Australia’s current interest in the sport. Already this year we have seen diminished crowds for the Socceroos home games.

These issues combined with the “us-or-them” agenda of some soccer journalists against traditional codes means the game needs to be careful how it positions itself in the next crucial years.