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The outcry around the “Have a fling with football” promotion was predictable, but things will never change unless fans start caring about what really counts.
First things first, how good was the Top 10 Socceroos Moments campaign?
I had fun writing it, I hope you enjoyed reading it and the whole thing was brought to us by Samsung – who were happy to give away two state-of-the-art Samsung QLED TVs to a couple of lucky readers of The Roar as part of the deal.
Not a bad bit of marketing before the World Cup, right? They even nabbed Tim Cahill to be the face of their campaign.
So why, as football fans, are we so conditioned to overlook the positives – like Samsung’s willingness to throw their support behind the Socceroos – and instead only focus on the negatives?
Maybe it’s because promotions like Hyundai’s “Have a fling” campaign – where Wendell Sailor, Damien Fleming and Luke Hodge encourage supposedly true-blue Aussie sports fans to temporarily lend their support to football for four weeks – are so spectacularly tone deaf.
What’s it going to take for football and its supporters to be taken seriously by marketing agencies, the mainstream media and all the other groups that pop up once every four years to exploit interest in the World Cup before disappearing into the ether?
And why do we need a former rugby player, an ex-cricketer and a one-time Aussie Rules player to tell us that football is worth watching anyway?
One of the public relations companies tasked with spruiking the campaign predictably argued that it was all just a bit of banter.
It’s an age-old tactic used to minimise the game’s significance in this country – trot out a tired trope that annoys football fans everywhere, then claim the whole thing was simply a joke anyway.
But maybe – and here’s where football fans need to take a look in the mirror – we’re also partly to blame for this frustrating state of affairs?
Football fans in Australia have every right to be sensitive – the game is routinely diminished by people who have no interest in it and who can’t understand the passion it generates – but there’s also a risk that by failing to engage with the football culture that does exist, advertisers see no value in the sport as a result.
And this apparent absence of ownership leads to companies like Global Public Events deeming it appropriate to charge adults more than $27 and a family of four more than $84 for general admission tickets to watch World Cup games at a dedicated live site in Parramatta.
Local councillor Steven Issa has long been a friend to football, but he should explain why public land in Centenary Square – most of us know it better by its former name of Church Street Mall – is being handed over to a private company to charge taxpayers to watch a free-to-air broadcast for a profit.
The Socceroos Active Support group has organised the Palace Hotel on George Street in the heart of Sydney’s CBD as its venue of choice, but that doesn’t really do much for fans across Western Sydney.
Little wonder, though, that fans have started to organise. From the Roar Supporters Federation in Brisbane to the nationwide Football Supporters Australia, there’s increasing recognition that unless football fans stand up for themselves, no one else will do it for them.
And while supporters federations aren’t exactly flawless themselves – if you ever want a lesson in personal politics, try getting something done as part of a group – it’s high time football fans started looking out for their own interests.
The “Have a fling” campaign may be pretty naff, but Hyundai also came up with the now seemingly deleted Socceroos thank you letters campaign.
So maybe – antsy columns aside – it’s worth engaging with the positive media the game generates every once in a while, instead of responding only to the negatives.