Depending on your viewpoint, Brisbane Roar are either the victims of terrible scheduling or the beneficiaries of a chance to bounce back quickly from defeat.
No A-League club suffers as much from Football Federation Australia’s overwhelming Sydney and Melbourne-centric focus as the Roar.
Perth Glory are largely forgotten by the east-coast media but tend to use that to fuel their fans’ parochialism, while Adelaide United often seem preoccupied with battling elements within their own South Australian government.
And neither the Glory nor the Reds seem to suffer from the vagaries of the A-League fixture list quite like Brisbane Roar do.
The FFA are quick to point to the problem of scheduling fixtures in venues shared with other sports as one reason for the fixture list’s many quirks, but that doesn’t explain why Brisbane Roar followed up a home game against Western Sydney Wanderers on Friday night with another one against Sydney FC tonight.
It was a similar story last season, when the Roar needed an injury-time winner from Brett Holman to see off the Wanderers on a Saturday night before recording a scoreless draw against the Sky Blues the following Friday. Even then there was almost a week between fixtures, not three nights.
To be fair, the tight turnaround is – seemingly – all part of the FFA’s ‘Summer Football Festival’ of 37 matches, including the W-League, across 25 days.
“This is football’s Christmas present to families,” said David Gallop in a blink-and-you-missed-it press release put out just before Christmas.
“Over the holidays most parents are wondering what they can do with their kids that is fun and affordable. The answer is to take them to see the A-League and W-League.”
A noble sentiment. Unfortunately, with Big Bash League tickets substantially cheaper than their A-League counterparts, casual sports-watching families have already voted with their feet and are attending the cricket instead.
It wouldn’t be right to talk about scheduling without mentioning the BBL, even if some A-League fans would prefer to bury their heads in the sand and pretend the competition didn’t exist.
While no-one would ever admit it, you can bet someone from Cricket Australia simply printed the A-League fixture list when it came out and then scheduled a BBL game up against the football at every opportunity. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence that so many A-League games seem to kick off in the same city on the same night as BBL matches.
And it’s the success of the BBL at drawing midweek crowds in the middle of school holidays that prompted the FFA to come up with the Summer Football Festival in the first place.
The problem is that it smacks of reacting to a rival competition instead of coming up with a clear and consistent marketing strategy of the A-League’s own.
And by – yet again – aiming the campaign exclusively at families, the FFA once again fails to acknowledge the dedicated club members and active supporters who make up the bulk of loyal A-League fans.
So it is that Brisbane Roar supporters are rewarded for their attendance at last Friday night’s disappointing 2-0 defeat to the Wanderers by being asked to back up again on a Monday night.
And Sydney FC fans, for their part, look at a fixture many would no doubt liked to have attended and think, “Maybe next season”.
The A-League fixture list is a hot mess, and the Summer Football Festival hasn’t helped.
From scheduling Melbourne Victory and Central Coast’s 1-1 draw in an open-air stadium in Geelong on Saturday afternoon under a scorching summer sun to refusing to accommodate Brisbane Roar’s upcoming AFC Champions League commitments and neglecting to include a Sunday game this weekend, the fixture list remains another of the A-League’s bugbears.
And it’s worth talking about right now, because it’s having an impact as we speak.
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
So, in other words Nemesis, Twitter has procured live footage from current broadcaster Teledeporte and is simply providing another platform on which to view that footage. And without Teledeporte, that footage wouldn't exist.
Kangajets
Guest
These baffling summer fixtures has seen Sydney get an 18000 crowd on a Wednesday night And Newcastle get a 13000 crowd on a Tuesday night Well done A league
Nemesis
Guest
For those who have moved beyond linear TV, this will come as no surprise. It's happening all over the world. But, of course, some prefer to sit on their couch with the remote & watch linear TV. Twitter to LiveStream Spanish women's basketball "The Twitter deal will exist alongside La Liga's partnership with Teledeporte, the sports channel of the public-serviec broadcaster TVE. The facts say that our girls are a world power in basketball and that fans want to see them, so it is our responsibility as organisers of the Liga to be able to find channels like Twitter where, with the help of Dia, we are convinced that we will achieve the audience figures that the players deserve." Full story: https://www.sportbusiness.com/sport-news/twitter-live-stream-spanish-women’s-basketball-league
GavanD
Guest
the only to MA-LGA is to expand to 12 clubs starting with Canberra United the other spot randomized each week for a new Goals for Grassroots programme in that the team on the bye plays an NPL/Grassroots plays for an incremental Jackpot until a NPL/Grassroots and then resets to 10k
Perry Bridge
Guest
"I have 10 north Melbourne afl jerseys but live in nsw" I like the man!!
Cool N Cold
Guest
Good idea. A club has 13.5 home games down to 13 only (if 14 clubs). However, there are still 26 matches for a club. How can just one match less (27 to 26) ease the scheduling problem for a single club? A 14-club-model is a marketing and promotion topic. Maybe, add 2 clubs to Qld (1 to city 1 to Gold Coast or Ipswich), 1 to Vic and 1 to NSW. To ease the scheduling problem, the most easy (but not necessarily the best) way is to start the season earlier or end the season later.
Cool N Cold
Guest
"One way to fill the gap is to have the first Australian League Cup played during that time plus the final rounds of the FFA Cup." Good transitional arrangements. Needs more elaborations on the transitional arrangements. Player contracts? Club revenue? Need more details and the input or investments. Marketing? Why Australian soccer began that way, starting in Oct? Australian League Cup? What is it? Seems a huge transition. Would clubs and FFA like to do so?
Paul D
Roar Guru
The Ayn Rand jibe is pretty spot on too.
Nemesis
Guest
"What you are advocating is a barebones service and expecting advertisers to get on board, its honestly nonsense" Utter tosh. You are focused on the Blue Chip brands and advertisers. I'm not. I'm focused on the SMEs that form part of every community. The SMEs that used to fill Yellow Pages advertisements & local newspaper advertisements. I used to be a partner in a small professional business consultancy in the suburbs. We would advertise in local newspapers & Yellow Pages. There is no way we could afford to advertise on National TV. This is the untapped advertising market that online streaming will target. A 15 second ad might only cost 20 cents. My consultancy would have got better ROI on our advertising budget from placing targeted ads with postcodes & demographics we specifically wanted, than just placing an ad in the local newspaper. Maybe you never listened to sport on radio. I did. The advertisers were not the ASX listed companies. Think creatively.
Bilbo
Guest
Nemesis, you are skipping to point B before dealing with point A Yes, I have in the past woken up at 4am to watch Partizan games using various websites, again, live I mentioned earlier, these games had proper feeds and commentary as they were broadbast by a network, this is the issue I'm getting at. They weren't in HD obviously but that wasn't the issue, they had proper feeds and multiple cameras so the play could be followed What you are advocating is a barebones service and expecting advertisers to get on board, its honestly nonsense Take Fox Sports and their $50 mil a year out of the league and where is the money going to come from to have a national competition? How many decent players would be lost? salaries cut? And you basically have the NSL again Name one sport that does well via streaming only? That is, no network support at all I bet you can't
Paul D
Roar Guru
Anyone who managed to sit through this entire Ashes series is a masochist. I thought it was the most boring test series in a long time, very one sided and an exercise in spending 3-4 days waiting for the inevitable
punter
Guest
As an Australian football (remembering what tab you are on) fan, I too played cricket in the summer & football in the winter for most of my youth, so not sure you have all the ownership to cricket. Now while my favourite sport is football, I too follow cricket & have so for a very long time, but with the A-League moving to summer, I don’t catch every ball of a test match, I catch what I can, especially with the beach calling. The A-League & Test don’t clash all the time, maybe a little in the Perth Test. I don’t watch ODI or BBL though, I have given those a miss due to A-League, but then neither of those has been around for 150 years. But that doesn’t stop from saying this was a very one-sided Test series & the my interest did wane with the lack of contest.
Timber Tim
Guest
Easy way to fix the fixture is to expand the A-League by 4 teams bringing it up to 14 26 round home and away season that has international breaks and still a top 6 finals series. By only having 14 teams you can develop also a strong national 2nd tier from existing NPL teams and other regions who miss out. Best of both worlds. To be honest with a competitive sporting market we have to face facts that for the short to medium term we will be nothing more than a development league. 26 games is probably plenty from a fairly stretched competitive environment.
Sydneysider
Guest
"But I could happily watch every ball of an Ashes Test Match." I differ from that AR. In fairness, I am actually looking forward to the South Africa v Australia test series in South Africa in a couple of months time.
Sydneysider
Guest
Nah I don't mind that the cricket gets the coverage it gets. It's been a part of Australia since before federation. The issue is the over-exaggeration and embellishment of the achievement when it's: 1. a 2 horse race 2. a sport that is barely played by 12 (thanks for the correction Rasty) nations (West Indies isn't a nation, and the less said about Zimbabwe as a cricket playing nation the better) 3. the series was over after the 3rd test. 4. the 4th and 5th tests were dead rubbers. 5. Now there are 6 one day internationals against the same country. Even as a cricket fan, I am bored with it. I've been watching the South Africa v India series on Fox which hopefully will be a much tighter compelling contest.
Kangajets
Guest
Basil fawlty That’s made my day Don’t mention the war
FC Sky Blue
Guest
haha.. touche
Nemesis
Guest
Rationale for Option 2 1) Synchronising football in Australia - ALeague will be played when the rest of football is being played - major benefit, the ALeague players who do not get a game can play for the NPL side 2) ACL entry - Currently the Premiers & Champions of ALeague enter the ACL 9 months after they won their trophies. - the new calendar means they will enter the ACL competition 2 months after they were successful 3) Avoid extreme heat of AUS summer - ALeague will not be played in extreme heat 4) Avoiding Christmas vacations - ALeague will not be played when people are at their Beach Houses, or taking vacations away from their home 5) Avoid playing ALeague on FIFA International Dates If I think of more advantages, I'll keep adding. You make a very good point about there being a break in the season we move from current calendar to new calendar. One way to fill the gap is to have the first Australian League Cup played during that time plus the final rounds of the FFA Cup.
Nemesis
Guest
@northerner If you make the content free, there is ZERO incentive to access content via nefarious means. So, content providers & broadcasters need to find ways to generate revenue from providing free content - be it free news; free articles (like this website); free music; free LIVE sport. If the FFA were to broadcast every piece of FFA content via Youtube LiveStreaming platform no rational person would choose to watch pirate streams that can expose the viewer to malware, when he/she can watch the same content in HD on a safe, reliable streaming platform, like Youtube (or Facebook, Twitter, etc.) My strategy would be to use targeted ads (now being referred to as "addressable TV") to generate revenue from Free online streaming. If people don't want ads, not a problem. They can pay a subscription to watch ad-free content. Same as Youtube offers "Youtube Red" which is the ad-free streaming platform. I'd rather FFA not get 1 cent for the online streaming rights, but put it on a Free Platform & generate revenue via targeted ads; rather than get some paltry figure and it remains hidden to everyone other than Optus, or Telstra, customers.
mattq
Roar Rookie
I agree with all of your complains but man it shts me no end that Sydney FC fans refer to their club as FC. It's got to be the stupidest nickname in all of football. Every club could nickname themselves FC for goodness sake. DUMB!