Supporters' Federation is a game-changer for A-League fans

Waz - Ben & Justin Thank you all for your input to this important matter. Waz,- some years ago I met a group of well presented people at a function who called themselves the Brisbane Celtic Supporters Club.To all intents and purposes they appeared to be set up under the jurisdiction of the parent club in Glasgow and had elected office bearers,had a beautiful uniform of tailored blazers and ties ,so I thought I'd try to investigate their "set up" for you. I googled them today and found that as late as 2013 they had changed their management structure into a "co-operative" as that move suited better what they are trying to achieve. Unfortunately that is as far as I got today but I will try and put this change of structure to a friend of mine with wide experience in these things and see if there is anything that could be of use to you in your efforts. Will keep in touch. Cheers jb.

Being moderated. I dare say the word monitor has baulked at my usage of the rather nefarious term "a*s*s*e*t".

As the franchise is effectively a contract rather than a business, legal separation of contractual obligations, financing mechanisms and asset control results in a number of legal instruments being used to reduce risk to all parties involved. Risk is also reduced by having board members on the effective controlling body who understand different areas of risk to an organisation. The effectiveness of this depends upon the role of the board however in Australian sporting organisations boards have a history of playing an active role. This has proven problematic in the past as board structures developed when organisations were less professional or dealing with fewer obligations and demands and have often fail to evolve with the professionalization of sport. Issues of surrounding performance enhancing drugs have provided high profile examples of late. What Waz is proposing is having an aspect of risk management capacity being enhanced at the Brisbane Roar, in this instance fan & community engagement. This aspect of risk is an area that has traditionally been poorly management and the impact of poor risk management has increased significantly with the advent of social media. Fan advocacy and risk management at the board level is something that has begun to happen in a number of sporting organisations across the World and something that is holding clubs and sports back in areas where old board governance systems are entrenched.

Absolutely nothing except the Board of the FFA who are the franchiser. To be clear, I was making no point about the desirability of fan ownership (I handed over $500 for some Victory shares once) but rather I was dealing with the myth that franchise laws and the laws that incorporate entities who may enter into franchise agreements are somehow related. Bottom line is they are not and the 'mythology' about a-league teams not being clubs is absurd. By an cultural meaning of the word they are (as are most of the big clubs in big leagues anywhere in the world), and in a legal sense it is unlikely that a 'club' will ever own an a-league license.

Justin, there's nothing in there that presents a barrier to fan ownership of BRFC. The first and logical step is for fans to decide if they want to do that and if so how much of a stake do they want? the second challenge is how can it get done which is merely a matter of mechanics and structuring things appropriately. Here though the fact it's a franchise does put some unique constraints and requirements on an investor but nothing that can't be addressed.

If you mean there moving to Instagram - which is correct - your point is wrong-headed. Do you know who bought and owns Instagram? Facebook. Under 35s - Instagram (owned by Facebook) 35+ - Facebook. I think Facebook knows exactly what they're doing.

Good to see Roar fans getting organised. I wish them well. The 'cultural' understanding and the legal one in respect f the terms 'club' and 'franchise' are interesting. Each term comes from different bodies of law established for different purposes, they do not overlap and even if South Melbourne FC were admitted into the a-league they still would'nt. Let me explain. In all States and Territories there are laws rgfulating the incorporation of entities for various purposes, clubs are among these and are incorporated for purposes described in their constitutions and on a NFP basis. With this comes a whole lot of regulation in respect of their governance and reporting. That is, who gets a say. Companies, entities governed by Federal law to carry on 'trade', are incorporated in a variety of ways also, usually for profit and can be private, public and/or listed. What neither of these types of legal incorporation of entities is remotely related to is the body of law that governs franchising in Australia - from memory a combination of State and Federal law. Franchising is not concerned with the governance of something, but rather the ownership of it. So, if someone wants to operate an A-League TEAM, they are required to enter into a franchise agreement and only an incorporated body (public, private, for profit, NFP and/or one governed under state incorporated bodies regulations, often called 'clubs' but not always at law) can do this. People in this discussion often conflate the nature of a legal entities incorporation with their opperating a franchise and they do this either out of ignorance or to somehow imply that one form of incorporation is better than another, which may be true, but is moot given that neither approach has anything to do with franchise opperation itself. A word of warning to those calling for 'clubs' incorporated under State incorporated bodies legislation to enter into franchise agreements. You can bet the first amendment to the standard licensing agreement by the FFA will be for the franchisee to incorporate a seperate operating entitiy with seperate governance to ensure that any such A-League team is not operated by an incorporated clubs and subject to the incpoorated bodies governance regulations. In short, the FFA will ensure 'South Melbourne FC Inc'.is a seperate legal entity to the incorporated club that currently operates an NPL franchise under the Victorian incorporated bodies legislation on a NFP basis and has done so historically since 1953. The potential owners of that entity will not be the 'members' of the incorporated NFP operation. They may share a name, but that'll be it. Welcome to the reality of modern football.

wazsere@yahoo.com

jb. You ask how will we build this "organisation", I'll happily give you an outline here but it's not a short answer - and I'll put my email address at the end so you can contact me directly if you wish, I'm sure you can imagine what it's up against. It is a Supporters club, that's it!! Perhaps the title is more fancy than it needs to be but we were restricted by the FFAs trademarks from using "Brisbane Roar" on any future merchandise so it was not that easy to choose a name and "Supporters club" in the many guises we wanted was already in use. But we had to pick a name. It will be a federated model though where Supporters clubs (eg Sydney, Dublin) can form and align with us, that expands quicker that we can do on our own, limits the workload on volunteers, but still allows a coherent voice to occur. It's been set up as a not for profit members organisation which gives it a defined legal existence in Australia. I won't go into that as it's searchable but it means it must be democratic and it must be run by a committee of members. There are many challenges with this, not least credibility, risk of infighting and even apathy - can we actually change anything? will the club listen? We cant manage all the risks nor please everyone all the time but we had to start somewhere. And we must create an organisation that can withstand disagreement, football supporters are a passionate lot and we don't agree on everything so the way we do things needs to accept that and find a way of giving everyone a voice and a democratic vote on key decisions - we're planning to use chat boards and online voting more than face-face meetings, all of which is proven technology now. But the starting point was with some aspirational stuff, stuff we felt many fans really believed in which were: 1. The club needs a long term vision and we should contribute to that 2. The fans do have rights 3. We believe fans should have a say in the way the club is run 4. We believed Roar fans needed to get organised 5. And fans had to have a credible voice and that the club had to respect the organisation enough to listen and act. And we believed it had to be a group for all fans with no distinction between members - all equal whether you go to Suncorp for game days or not. We also felt we should own part of the club, that still has to be agreed upon and will be a big decision for the group. The first challenge was understanding the fans, I rather cheekily went to the market research company Daniel Cobb used and said "you know a lot about Roar fans, what can you tell me?". They gave me days of their time for free to help out. Many other people helped for free when asked and it's been quite moving. The second challenge was numbers - how to go from 0 to a thousand quickly, and when there how to go to 10's of thousands? So I went to the clubs MD and explained what we wanted to do, and I rather cheeky asked to use their email distribution list of 55,000 Supporters. Remarkably they said yes and that's where we started and that's how we got nearly 2,000 members in the first 36 hours. I asked Roar to put it on their Facebook page where they have 120k likes; they haven't done that yet but I hope they will. And yet some people were suspicious that we managed to use the clubs email database; were we independent some asked? Yes we are and always will be, but the suspicion was there why would the club help? My answer is simple - how would it have looked if we'd have started this out saying "the club refused to help"? So we hoped a few hundred would join and instead we've got a few thousand, and we're just over a day old. That has been a surprise. But we now have a two week holiday period where lawyers and IT people are all on vacation and some things will slow down, and that risks frustrating some people. There's an impatience that's built up over the years, many have had the desire, the same idea, the motivation and now it's coming to a reality so we need to get on with it. So we plan to hold our first meeting before the Jets game, we'll call for nominations for key positions and hold elections within 2 weeks. We'll then need volunteers to get stuff done, what that stuff is the group must decide Personally for me one of the early objectives is to formalise the relationship with the club. Independence should not mean isolation - having amassed a credible number of members I feel confident we can present a credible fans voice now. So how do we formalise that? How do we get the club management and owners to listen to us and act? Another important area is how do we work with The Den? anyone that's been involved with active support in this country knows the challenges faced and the hard work involved, again from volunteers. And the Den have unique requirements such as dealing with police, members, club etc. but I would hope the RSF can stay out of their way when needed, help with their members and funding, and take the general holistic fan feedback stuff to the club directly. So how we build this organisation is imo a matter of mechanics, it's a simple process to follow, but more important is why we build this organisation - it's what Roar fans believe in that drives the why, the rest must follow that, if it does then it will succeed ... but if it gets distracted and loses focus from support of the players by side-issues and politics and mistrust then it will surely fail. How successful it becomes is not down to any one individual, it will only be successful if tens of thousands join up and if hundreds help out over time. So there's much work to be done but we've taken the first step, maybe ask me again in 6 months time though lol

Thanks :)

the irony wasn't lost on me either AR lol

Good luck sir with your crusade to McSoccer Australia.

"2) just like The Roar, there’s no way of stopping people registering under thousands of different aliases." Oh that is too funny.

Waz - Could you do me a favour and take a minute to explain to me how you are going to proceed in building this "organisation" which to me sounds more and more like a Supporters Club. I use this term deliberately for as a "club" your idea would fit my thinking into what you are trying to achieve. Cheers mate jb.

Mike -Thank you for the answer but it could be argued the 2 games you,or Mark, mention as being telling factors have historically been well attended. During last season the rather poor attendance fIgures showed the Melb.City game,(without Cahill) drawing Roar's second largest crowd of the season at 16,500. Then 5 days later on 2/1 they enjoyed their largest crowd nearly 18,000 against -----Perth Glory. It also could be argued that these 2 games were played over the holiday period,thus generating some sort of extraordinary interest. Unfortunately we cannot hope to compare this season's figures as the Sydney game will be played in that city and ,as someone else has stated last night's figure,13,110 is Roar's worst of the season so far, but does not reflect well on any comparison that could have been made. Back to my original question . It would be interesting to know if any "special " work has been done that could explain why Roar's six home game average crowd has increased from 11,550 to the 15,900 which in percentage terms is 37% a huge increase attained in just one season.There has to be something. Cheers jb.

same thing in my eyes. good luck with your draining

Arsenal dod a risk assesment several years ago and found the absence of fan advocacy on the board as a key risk to the club. Arsenal changed their board stucture as a result and many clubs followef suit. What Waz is pursuing is good governance. Kudos

I am on the road and on a phone so aplogise in advance for the lack of input into a very important governance development. For those unaware a few years ago Arsenal undertook a study and discovered one of their greatest risks was a lack of advocacy on their board for their primary stakeholders, their fans. As a result they, and many other clubs, changed their board compositions to ensure such advocacy was endured. What Waz and the Brisbane Board are working towards is cutting edge in sports governance. Kudos.

Waz - just wanted to say, I'm not a fanatic for any team or code, but I totally admire what you're doing. It's so important to take fans from just grumbling to offering constructive comments and getting the powers that be to actually pay attention. You're well on the road. Excellent

good comment Brisvegas Gooner perhaps they should introduce a $10 annual membership fee starting in 12 months time