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Opinion

The A-League's problem is money. Here's how to fix it without fans spending

Matt Mulhall new author
Roar Rookie
13th April, 2022
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Matt Mulhall new author
Roar Rookie
13th April, 2022
10

Football is a colossal industry worldwide, but the money it commands doesn’t come directly from fans. Hold onto that thought for a second.

Have you noticed the diatribe of ‘the A-League is crap’ coming from eurosnobs across the country and that it’s starting to infiltrate even the most passionate Australian football supporters?

‘Matildas suck. Socceroos suck. A-League quality sucks. Broadcaster sucks.’

And look, admittedly the quality has slipped over the years, and it seems our high-quality youngsters are bailing out to move overseas earlier and earlier in their careers. Remember the days of Tom Rogic, Mat Ryan and Mustafa Amini at the Mariners? Where did those days go for the league?

When we cut right down to it, the A-League is financially poor. The salaries offered to players and the money clubs have don’t come close to other leagues from poorer countries with smaller populations. And while we might normally justify that with other sports being more popular in this country, there’s more than enough money to go around. So where is it?

How do we get more money into the A-League without actually spending money as fans?

We know the TV rights play a big part in how much money goes into our game, but merely watching matches isn’t going to cut it. There’s so much more to it than that.

TV rights are worth money because of TV advertising, right? I mean, that’s how they can put a dollar value on these things. But that’s not the only income for the league and the clubs. They get a lot of advertising income from other sources, like shirt sponsors, the advertising boards around the ground and at training and by getting the club and players to do appearances.

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Melbourne Victory fans

(Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

This all adds up – it does not only come from viewing numbers. These days there are new metrics to consider, and it can mean big money for clubs and the league alike.

I want to talk about social media trends and sentiment analysis, and I want to talk about how the biggest marketing agencies and departments – the people who decide where their marketing money goes – get excited when these numbers go up.

Take the simple example of a hashtag like #WSWvPER and how it’s used to group tweets and other social media around a game. These hashtags, as well as #ALeague and team-based hashtags, are monitored automatically by both social media platforms as well as specialised tools like Google Trends. It all goes into a big suite of databases, and when there are significant numbers and growth, it gets the attention of these marketing gurus.

The ‘sentiment’ attached to those hashtags is analysed as well. There is AI that can statistically pick up on each post and provide a really good analysis of whether someone is talking positively, negatively or neutrally about the subject.

Now imagine how bonkers those departments will go for the A-League when there is a 200 per cent increase in social media posts and sentiment for all games and for the league itself – and how quickly Harvey Norman or similar companies will jump on the A-League bandwagon, how quickly foreign ownership and investment will go up and how much competition there will be for that coveted shirt sponsor, for stadium advertising and for paid appearances by players.

These days these metrics matter, and for the fans they’re free. It’s free to tweet or to post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and more. But for the league it means the money it sorely needs to keep our best players, attract better players from overseas and lift the entire quality of our local game, the Socceroos, the Matildas, our youngsters and more.

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Your online activity is worth a lot to our game, so don’t just watch it; get posting. Hashtag away. And get your mates to do it too.

It’s for the good of our game.

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