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For Football Federation Australia, the A-League grand final was a great success but there’s one aspect they aren’t keen to see ever again.
On televison screens around Australia, more than 650,000 tuned in to the meeting of heavyweight clubs Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC.
Around the world, FFA says that number swells to a quarter of a billion people in more than 100 countries.
A-League chief Damien de Bohun hailed growing interest in the match.
“The global audience continues to grow, some 54 countries took the game live and another 50-odd countries on delay,” he said.
“Somewhere between 250 and 300 million people would have watched the A-League grand final yesterday which is a massive result for us.”
While the television audience was the biggest, the crowd was the smallest in the 10-year history of the A-League.
Almost 30,000 witnessed Melbourne Victory take apart Sydney FC 3-0 at AAMI Park.
De Bohun said the boutique stadium created an “atmosphere unparalleled in Australian sport”.
But FFA is working to ensure it won’t host the A-League’s biggest match again.
Etihad Stadium is the FFA’s preferred venue in Melbourne for the grand final but on Sunday it was two-thirds empty for an AFL match.
The Docklands venue hosted just 18,170 people for Fremantle’s defeat of Western Bulldogs.
De Bohun said another AAMI Park decider was “very unlikely”.
“The sport has grown so much, the code has grown so much that our biggest games, our marquee matches need to be played on the biggest stages,” he said.
“We’ll work with the government and the stadiums to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Next on the FFA’s agenda is a packed schedule of touring European clubs.
That begins in a fortnight with Spanish club Villarreal’s visit to Adelaide and Brisbane followed by beaten grand finalists Sydney FC’s hosting of English Premier League clubs Tottenham and Chelsea.
If there is an off-season headache, it might be Brisbane Roar.
In the Bakrie Group, the 2014 champions have want-out owners and have seen their managing director and football director leave the club in the past fortnight.
De Bohun said it was “too early” to determine whether an ownership change, which inlcudes the possibility of an FFA takeover, was needed.
“We’re sure they’ll get to where they need to over the coming weeks to be a powerhouse of the competition like they have been for the last four or five years,” he said.
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