Football’s powerbrokers sitting on their hands doing nothing while the A-League crashes and burns is no longer looking like a commercially viable option.
Before we all rip into the diatribes about how this is just another navel-gazing, sky-is-falling waste of an article, let’s kick it off with some facts.
Such as the fact that ANZ Stadium will be nine-tenths empty tonight.
Or the fact that a fan base once considered the most loyal in the A-League has all but abandoned their team.
Or the fact that TV ratings are now so low it must be getting difficult to justify the cost of producing the broadcasts.
“So what?” I can picture the usual suspects thrashing away at the keyboard. “New revenue streams will come along!”
Fingers crossed. But if that were really the case, wouldn’t they have come along already?
And if promotion and relegation truly was the only thing holding football back, wouldn’t clubs in the National Premier Leagues be playing in front of packed houses every week?
And if all football needs to flourish is for Australians to ditch mainstream media and get all their information online, shouldn’t that include residents of a city like Perth?
Because I just wrote a positive piece about how Perth Glory topping the table was a good thing for the A-League, and practically no one from Perth responded.
In fact, almost no one did. It was the journalistic equivalent of tossing a handful of sand into the Fremantle Doctor and trying to catch it again in one motion.
Yet I hear, constantly, that the A-League is going fine. That when the broadcast money runs out, streaming rights will replace it. That online media is all that matters.
It’s nonsense, obviously, but it’s a collective delusion that seems to go largely unchallenged.
And when people do challenge it, like I’m doing right now, all the anger and opprobrium that results from it is almost always misdirected in the wrong place.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
I can guarantee right now that I don’t get paid enough to fix the A-League’s problems.
But I can think of a few people earning a quid from the game who have been conspicuously absent of late.
So what have Football Federation Australia been doing while A-League attendances have dropped precipitously, TV ratings have fallen off a cliff and our national teams have gone backwards?
Sacking successful coaches for reasons hitherto unknown? Telling expansion clubs they’ll have to wait an extra year so as not to inconvenience their neighbours?
Hey, at least the A-League is on a mainstream free-to-air network these days, right!
If I was the managing director of an A-League club, I would be extremely preoccupied with planning for an independently run competition right about now.
And I would be thinking very hard and very carefully about what the future looks like once the current broadcast deal runs out.
Because at the moment things don’t look particularly rosy.
And the next six months between when this dumpster fire of a season ends and the new season begins is looking increasingly critical.
Because the A-League cannot continue at the rate it’s going.
And it’s not good enough to expect the dwindling base of hardcore fans – people like me and you and the loyal supporters who actually do show up in Homebush tonight – to keep putting our hands in our pockets to fund mistake after strategic mistake.
We deserve better than the leadership we’ve been seeing. And it’s about time we started getting it.
More than a few of us will watch an A-League game or two this round, just like we do every weekend. And a handful of us will have it out in the comments section of this column.
But it’s not enough.
The A-League is withering on the vine before our very eyes.
And if the powers-that-be don’t start coming up with some plans to rejuvenate the competition, by the time next season rolls around, it might already be too late.
Bjd
Guest
Compared to the average European Country's national league. Small population = low revenue. Large country/distances= high costs. AFL, NRL, BBL, AFLW tough competition. Overall a very tough environment compared to Europe. I can't see that a second division which will roughly double cost, will get anywhere close to doubling revenue. Unfortunately it has to do at least that much just to maintain the status quo!
Peter Scott
Guest
What happens when you try to reset the football landscape entirely with meaningless franchises masquerading as make believe clubs. The new found "supporters" are also make believe.
rolly
Guest
channel sevens tv ratings for BBL and fox coverage are down three hundred thousand viewers .thats massive drop in numbers for BBL the women cricket coverage on seven is also atrocious tv figures
rolly
Guest
when the new stadium was announced it was wanderers crowds that convinced the govt to spend the money packed houses every week it was not for the league team but for the soccer team the eels have a new stadium .be grateful.the WSW going through some tough times that's because the owner is a D head
chris
Guest
Does it get under your skin?
Pedro
Guest
I don't think anyone would give a toss if soccer went away
chris
Guest
Well said Reuster. Its something that non-football people will never understand. They have very little option but to watch the local leagues in AFL and to a lesser extent league. They have no other choice. Football have so many options both domestically and internationally that the viewing is spread over a wide expanse. We aren't sitting around for 6 months of the year talking about drafting of some high school kid into some suburban team or other.
Onside
Roar Rookie
The day teams like South Melbourne are let in the A League is the day the A League gets fixed. As for the comment "And if promotion and relegation truly was the only thing holding football back, wouldn’t clubs in the National Premier Leagues be playing in front of packed houses every week?". How packed would the house be if Victory played in the Victorian NPL?
reuster75
Roar Rookie
" for the football community, football is much much more than just the ALeague." And that neatly sums up the issues I have with the administration of the game in Australia over many decades - administrators keep placing all their eggs in the professional competition basket in terms of spectator growth when the reality is we need spectator growth at all levels of the game. If a football fan attends NPL matches but not a-league or w-league (assuming they live in close proximity to a team) that's fine as they're still engaged with the game. Likelihood is they will attend a Matildas or Socceroos though as the truly international aspect of the game is what makes it so great being a fan. So bottom line is (for me) so long as the people running the game in this country focus on developing support for the game and not just support for the a-league & w-league then things will rapidly improve.
Christo the Daddyo
Roar Rookie
Maybe, maybe not. There do seem to be some welcome signs that CA is listening to the criticism though (e.g. compressing the season by scheduling more double headers). I actually think most of the problems at the moment are around how to juggle the various forms of the game. It's a problem almost no ther sport has...
chris
Guest
anon is shrilling louder and louder as people just ignore him.
Paul
Guest
A lot of AFL clubs lose money too...
anon
Roar Pro
The A-League won't exist in the next decade. The Socceroos have their own struggles, won't be receiving $10 million for merely making the World Cup, Socceroos crowd numbers have fallen off a cliff. A-League games have 20k people watching. You probably have more people watching repeats of I Dream of Jeannie on GEM than live soccer. Fox must be losing money on the games at this point. Without ratings, you don't have advertisers paying a premium. Without eyeballs watching, the rights become worthless. The media rights are the lifeblood of a league. Many of these A-League clubs must be breaking even at best each game day. After they pay stadium rental fees, they're making nothing when 7k people turn up. The A-League is in enormous trouble and is in a negative feedback loop much like the NSL was in its dying days.
Leonard Colquhoun
Roar Rookie
And, possibly the FFA's silliest 'What could possibly go wrong' wrong move . . . 6) keeping our mini-micro-me Down Under* comp up against the EPL and the top Euro-leagues for eyeballs on screens small, medium and large! * Didn't a former PM call our country "the arse end of the universe" (or something like that)?
Football is Life
Roar Rookie
Right. Each to his own. Have a good weekend.
Leonard Colquhoun
Roar Rookie
Is it just me, or are Australian sports journos tippy-toeing around the problems raised here, maybe for fear that factual, fair and fearless soccer* commentary would evoke accusations of 'racism' or at least wog-bashing^? Other major team sports - RU, RL, AFL, cricket - get barrages of bad press almost weekly. One of the few such negative opinions aimed at the A-League was in a recent 'Australian' - but only as an intro column to its main point about some player doing something weird. Were next season's AFL, NRL and Super crowds to plunge precariously close to four digits, journos from Albany to Cooktown and Darwin to Geelong would be ripping into their admins and CEOs like the mythical lions in Rome's Flavian amphitheatre. But soccer's top dudes seem to be able to do 'stupid' round after round and season after season, with rare-approaching-zero notice in the mainstream media - why? * don't start frothing, it is used as an unambiguous identifier, just as 'Aussie Rules', 'gridiron' and 'field hockey' can be. ^ there's a strong case that the biggest wog-bashers in Oz soccer have been the FFA and its apparatchiks
jamesb
Roar Guru
I don't think he was playing in his natural position. I'd like to see him play further up the park. He is young. He will learn.
jamesb
Roar Guru
I like to see the A League begin its season one month earlier. That way it prevents having a congested schedule in January.
peeeko
Roar Guru
Yes, but using a percentage turnout says nothing about the size of the crowd
peeeko
Roar Guru
I’m no staunch NRL person You just made a poor jibe and got called out for it Then you went on a massive unrelated ramble