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Central Coast Mariners players (L to R) Tom Pendeljak, Matthew Simon and John Hutchinson sit dejected after loosing 0-1 to the Newcastle Jets in the A-League Grand Final in Sydney on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2008. AAP Image/Paul Miller
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which is the driver of football in this country, the game itself or is it as a result of the Fox Sports cash injection?
The common consensus seems to be that we need free-to-air coverage to solve the A-League’s problems, but there is a certain naivety in this.
As in any start up, capital is the key. It costs money to run fully professional clubs. This extends beyond merely a professional playing staff, but also includes backroom staff, training and playing facilities. It is this side of the game that has truly been revolutionised since 2005.
One fact remains; this costs money.
Despite what people think, businesspeople don’t invest in black holes. Who’d heard of Sheikh Mansour, Roman Abramovich or the Glazer family before their high-profile takeovers of football clubs? The prestige and publicity attached to the ownership offsets the outlay. Sadly, the A-League model does not providing this upturn to justify the cost. The existence of a salary cap really takes out the benefit of this kind of ownership model, this isn’t a bad thing though.
The FFA/A-League should be issuing grants to cover the salary cap. By distributing money to cover the cap, you are never left with a situation whereby players aren’t getting paid. This was the worst part of the Newcastle Jets issue, the A-League’s credibility has been built on the solidity of its management and finances.
So, where does this leave us in regards to FTA coverage? The cold hard reality isn’t great. FTA is driven by ratings, higher ratings equal bigger advertising dollars. The interest simply isn’t there to generate the ratings required to generate the money that the game needs to run sustainably.
Fortunately for both the AFL and NRL, their popularity was cemented long before the television hit our shores. The culture was established, facilities in place. The TV deals have allowed them to move to the next level. Between the two, they have a captive audience in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. More than half the Australian population. This is pure gold, and worth top dollar.
Unfortunately for football, we are starting from scratch. As a game, we have been steadily been building momentum since 1997, but prior to that, to paraphrase the late Johnny Warren, it was the domain of “sheilas, wogs and poofters”. We have had to carve out an existence from nothing but a belief that there was interest brewing at the grass roots level. What the game needed was a huge injection of capital to act as the catalyst to really get things moving and put the wildly unpopular NSL into the past.
Enter Frank Lowy and Fox Sports.
Frank Lowy took the game by the scruff of the neck, but he isn’t bankrolling the game. He never has. A brilliant businessman, with all the contacts, his ability to bring Fox Sports to the table, squeeze a good, long term TV deal out of them, has bankrolled the A-League and led us into a new age for football in this country.
Make no mistake, without Fox Sports we would not have the A-League. It’s a simple reality. The money they put up was a sign to people that there was a change in the game in every aspect. Without it, we would have had existing NSL clubs putting together new business plans to meet new requirements, but really nothing would change. All the stigmatisms regarding “old soccer” would still be in place. If you don’t think that this is the case, look at the radical revolution that basketball is currently undertaking, the “new NBL” looks an awful lot like the “old NBL”, doesn’t it? Something is definitely not right with the emperor’s new clothes…
Fox Sports aren’t innocent. They have exploited the anti-siphoning legislation. Only the FA Cup and World Cup are covered for football, and sensing the growing popularity of the Socceroos, they grabbed to opportunity to offset the risk associated with the A-League. As far as Frank Lowy was concerned, it was a fair trade. Six years on, I think the mere existence of the A-League shows that he was correct.
Fox Sports’ monopoly of the A-League is how they can justify stumping up the cash, cash we need in the game. Why would we jepordise that? Weakening Fox Sports’ stake won’t be offset by gains in FTA. The game is more valuable to Fox Sports than it is to a FTA network.
The A-League is now established, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s still in its infancy. The MLS, J-League and K-League are all 10 years ahead of us, but experienced similar problems at similar times. We still need the Fox Sports cash to bankroll the game for another 10 years at least.
The FFA needs to do a better job of marketing the game, and we should have a strategy to take the A-League to a FTA network in some capacity, but caution is required. An extended highlights program would be a good place to start. It would protect Fox Sports monopoly of the game, and the subsequent cash it generates for the FFA/A-League, but drip feed domestic football to the wider public.
The FTA networks need to come to us though. We can’t be seen to be crawling to them begging, it shifts the power from us to them. If they are not going to add value (in dollars, which is what we need), then don’t do it. It’s not beneficial to the game.
If Fox Sports can guarantee the future of the game for the next 10 years, then we’d be mad not to take it.
You never bite the hand that feeds you.
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