Nick21's Roar Profile

It’s not so much they want it. They are struggling for money and this new private equity firm is demanding a 7% plus return which the A-league is struggling to achieve with diminishing revenue streams.

The solution is a sugar hit with new licenses at exhorbitant prices.

This is also a main driver for the second division. They are turning it into a franchise system and they don’t care if these teams fall over. They will just reissue the license. At the moment they are just desperate for the money.

The APL wants a 16-team A-League men's by 2026 - so after Auckland and Canberra, who's next?

The problem is the crowd figures aren’t accurate.

There are several teams with rubbery figures including Western United, Wanderers, Sydney FC and Melb City.

There were games this season where the Wanderers didn’t get more than 5,000 people of Western United more than 1,000 but the official crowds announced were about double that.

So the situation is more dire than it seems.

With a struggling Victory, A-League crowds are not pretty reading

May

It’s not about the fans and that’s the problem.

This new private equity firm that bought out part ownership of the league is demanding an 8% return.

The league is in trouble finanncially this is why they are desperate for two new teams and also to come up with a second division and ridiculously high costs of licenses. The league is in effect a franchise churning out licenses to meet the ROI of the investment firm. The A-league doesn’t care if these clubs go broke really, the will just reissue the licence to someone else and churn. The problem is it smacks of desperation and is not a plan for footballs future.

Does the A-League have a plan to win back alienated supporters?

2023

Is this a joke? I don’t think NPL fans who see the A-league as an Apartheid and illegally established league which destroyed their clubs would want anything to do with a support group from a bunch of franchises.
The game has long been broken and run by people who are clearly out of their league and in a downward spiral. Those of us who warned about this well in advance were shouted down.
The game is a corporate shell. It is run by franchises. It is NEVER going to be what the fans want it to be.
The game gets what it deserves.

Frustrated A-League fans form new body: Football Supporters Association Australia

I see alot of blaming in weather, stadiums, covid, exposure to elements and anything else we can think of.

Has this had an impact? If course but that doesn’t explain abysmal tv ratings.

NRL and AFL still pulling solid crowds too.

The game is in crisis. What we have now is a result of poor management destroying the game.

It’s a mess from the youth systems all the way to the top. The game has become sanitised and comeecialised. It has whitewashed its multicultural past and alienated its supporters both old and new.

A-league = Apartheid League.

Are we okay with the A-League Men becoming a made-for-TV competition?

2022

Problem is no one is watching on TV either.

Ratings are abysmal. Crowds are also being inflated by several teams.

And the equity deal can end up being a disaster because equity companies demand their pound of flesh. It was a desperate move to stay afloat.

The A-league is not as secure as people think. It has already had 2 government bailouts under the Lowy era just to survive.

And where are these so called “splashes of cash” the new A-league owners promised when they assumed leadership.

Crowds are now less than the old NSL (and the NSL as we know use to understate crowds for tax purposes).

For a broad based competition with many times the media coverage and $$$ of the NSL that should never be the case.

The suits running the game have run it into the ground. The fact this article even talks about what it does is in essence an admission of another failure.

Fans have been turned to customers. Clubs to franchises. The game into a product. And Johnny Warrens mission into a metric.

Crowd averages are actually lower than officially started.

There are several clubs inflating their crowds figures.

WU, Macarthur, Sydney FC and Wanderers all rubbery figures. For a couple of more recent home games Wanderers had no more than 2,000 people.

Eleven teams remain in the race for the A-League finals, but where are the fans?

The A-league is in its death spiral. I warned about this a few seasons ago because the warning signs were there but people had (and still do) have their head in the sand.
The problem is simple.
Clubs became franchises.
The game became a product.
Fans became customers.
And Johnny Warrens mission became a metric.

The A-Leagues' brand managers deserve to be sacked

Mate we don’t need channel 7 and 9 to give us a bad name.

We have completely shot ourselves in the foot through poor administration and strategy.

'Fading into obscurity': What's wrong with the A-League Men?

And the official crowd figures by several clubs are inflated. So it’s actually worse.
Western United and Macarthur have only had a few hundred this season for several of their matches.
The last Wanderers game was no more than 1,000 people. Yet they announced (approx) 4,100.

No the A-league is in trouble. Ratings are abysmal outrated by female AFL and dragging down channel 10 on a Saturday night to the point where they are out rated by SBS.

About 50% of sponsorship lost, destroyed youth pathways it is a basket case.

Mate it’s bad. Take off the rose coloured glasses. These sort of ratings are what people make decisions off including channel 10

Are more people watching the A-League Men this season, or less?

We have to stop looking through rose coloured glasses. The game is in serious trouble. The signs were there many seasons ago but people bury their heads in the sand.
From people at the Western United game there was no more than 1,000 at the game. Crowds have been inflated too.
TV ratings are sliding. 68,000 for the Melb Derby. Channel 10 is getting smashed in the ratings. The A-league is dragging them down. The Ashes meanwhile regularly pulls over 600,000.
We have sold one third of our game to private equity for let’s be honest, a short term cash grab from our supposed wealthy club owners who had plenty to invest. Let’s hope this is not a regrettable decision because private equity firms don’t muck about when it comes to demanding profit. They need to put some of that money into marquees for a short term sugar hit while they work out genuine medium to long term plans to grow the game. Importantly they need to drop this franchise mentality of viewing fans like customers and sterilising the game.

Big picture my friend

For its own sake, Channel Ten should do a lot more with the A-Leagues

Heads buried in the sand mate. We got a proportion of fans in denial. The A-league has going backwards for years but they find any reason to tell themselves its all good.

This is a good article.
The problem of locking up your game on pay TV for cash is not good for the long term growth of the game or creating inter generational fans.
The other issue is channel 10 is a major commercial network. It will not put up with such poor ratings in the long run.

Crowds and ratings are unacceptable and this is down to poor administration.

The A-league website doesn’t even pop up when you search on the first page. Who comes up with this stuff?

Worryingly instead of putting the blow torch over administration fans bury their had in the sand and believe things will somehow get better. Well proof is in the pudding look where we are.

Channel 10 too is a major commercial network. They will not put up with poor TV ratings and getting hammered in the Saturday night time slot for the long run.

Why aren’t people turning up to the A-League Men?

No they aren’t mate. Crowds and ratings are unacceptable and 10 as a commercial network won’t stand for getting hammered in the ratings for the long run.

We need to accept that the game has gone backwards for reasons beyond covid and this is down to poor administration.

Yes good points.

And yes active fans are only a piece of the puzzle.

It’s not a good deal Mike.

The old A-league deal was worth $57 million.

This is significantly below that. About 50%Of sponsors walking away, tv r a tinga down about 70% from the peak, average crowds down 60 – 70% from the peak (and now lower than the old NSL at its peak which is unmaceptable by any measure) and a symbolic youth system.

The game is a mess and although I hope this turns around it may be in terminal decline.

A-league should have been promoted as a stand alone competition with its own value not a add on to the Socceroos for broadcast negotiations.

Fans should be treated like fans not dollar signs and we need to drop this metric corporate franchise mentality.

Only hope is to bring in a big name for the short term and work on medium to long.

But these metrics bozos who run the game have no idea.

A new broadcast deal is fantastic news for the A-League

Except it’s not. Western United inflated their crowd. There was no more than 500 people at the match they said was 900.

Last night’s official crowd was 2020 from memory. There was no more than 1,000 people there.

The reality is much worse.

That’s what you get for letting Foxtel run your football strategy.

They also have one of the worst most generic bland name in the history of Australian football.

Western United youth play in front of bigger crowd than A-League team

That’s just incorrect. You miss the point. These Socceroos grew up in the youth systems of these clubs. They were part of the clubs fabric and a part of the family.

Ask Viduka what Melbourne Croatia means to him, or Popovic, Kalac and Culina what Sydney Croatia means to them.

These clubs gave us these players and to say they had little or nothing to do with the NSL is wrong and disrespectful.

The NSL did produce better players. It had better systems and coaches. Today our players can’t tackle they aren’t taught how to shoot properly. And we are lugged wotjba restrictive 4-3-3 system and a junior comp where scores aren’t kept and no tables Cos we don’t want to upset the young ones.

Has the A-League finally converted the 'Bring back the NSL' crowd?

Too much glass half full. A-league is in a death spiral. Sponsors and broadcasters walking away and crowds and TV ratings now smaller than the NSL at its peak.

Will be interesting to see how much $$ is been put on the table from new broadcasters.

The problem we have is simple. The old NSL clubs were genuine community clubs but too narrow in their representation. The A-league clubs are more bored based but are rujblike franchises not family clubs.

While I admire people’s optimism for the A-league as someone involved in growing business or turning around ailing businesses I can tell you the A-league is in a death spiral. It isn’t impossible to pull out of a death spiral but it’s damn hard. The best they can hope for is to survive as a cut price league for a few season and eventually hope for slow low level growth to start with.

It’s a result of years of neglect and incompetence. A shambles of a youth policy, metrics bozos running the game who have no idea of football’s value proposition and TV stations running the games strategy.

For every positive you mentioned there is a harsh reality.

MacArthur is struggling to survive financially (and it gets its ground for free) and crowds are very poor only 2,600 turning up to the last game. The only reason it was put in was cos Fox demanded a club in Sydney or Melb metro.

The broadcast rights is bad news. Ratings are horrible. If there is competition no one is willing to pay anywhere near what the league use to get and why should they?

The league is in a world of pain. If it survives the next two seasons in its current form that will be an achiement.

Ten reasons to be optimistic about the A-League’s future

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