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Is it time that A-League ownership and finance structures are rethought?

Roar Rookie
26th July, 2015
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Matt McKay, Brisbane's grizzled veteran. (AAP Image/Glenn Hunt)
Roar Rookie
26th July, 2015
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1739 Reads

Here we are again, another great off-season of the A-League that feels like a bitter after-taste to what was a fantastic 2014/15 season.

Once again, another floundering billionaire is threatening to upset the balance of the competition and it seems that the Brisbane Roar will again be under FFA ownership.

Sound familiar?

Clive Palmer, Nathan Tinkler, Tony Sage, and now the Bakrie’s have all, in one way or another, brought the A-League into disrepute during their stints as franchise owners.

And while you may look at Melbourne Victory as the gleaming success story of wealthy individuals owning A-League franchises, it’s mostly due to a large number of united and devout members and supporters.

Many, including myself, would argue that the fans of Melbourne Victory are its most important yet least empowered contributors to the club’s off-field success.

Our club is financed largely by its members and supporters, who in turn receive no means whatsoever to contribute any further, which often leads to an uneasy and sometimes untrusting alliance of investors and financiers in which the financiers (owners/administration) have complete control and final say on all monies invested.

It works. Not always, but it does work.

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For the investors, there’s always a worry the financier might do the wrong thing with the capital and we’d have no way to challenge what our owners might do with our money that we’ve been investing.

What’s clear is that there’s no real security or safety net should situations arise that affect our clubs that we fans, the key investors, could have any options in dealing with.

And so we land back at Brisbane Roar, whose current predicament has more to do with offshore developments for the floundering coal empire of the Bakrie’s.

Since the US and China struck a deal to reduce China and the US’s carbon emissions, coal is largely on the nose. Hence the Bakrie’s mounting financial difficulties, which flows on to cause the Brisbane Roar’s difficulties.

And all the while, its fans are forced to stand idly by hoping that there’s a silver lining for the club.

I’m sure right now the Brisbane Roar fans would like nothing more than to step in and try to save their club. But ultimately, they’re being left in the cold by an outdated model of ownership that fails to meet the modern intricacies of a modern A-League club.

The problem with the A-League it that the status of the game has evolved, yet the FFA doesn’t evolve with it. So often we find ourselves still mired in the stringent measures of the Crawford Report from 2003.

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The A-League club ownership restrictions are yet another relic of the past that will keep coming back to bite us.

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