Excellent summation of what the privatisation of the game has done to Aust football.

One point to add:

How much of the money received for selling Mooy do u estimate the Abu Dahbi owners of Melb City will invest in Australia football ?

My guess : next to nothing.

How do we invest & grow football in Aust with the current model ?

When I read this at first I thought "pfft, whatever" but then remembered Melbourne City being stopped from changing their kit to City Blue. 

Big Brother is watching, innit.

It is interesting - with all these teams surfacing at the moment in a hope for A-League Expansion, the FFA have basically ready-made alternatives if like you said the clubs decide to "leave it". If say Adelaide United weren't happy with the deal and handed their franchise licence back, would your South Melbourne, Dandenong upstart, Wollongong, second Brisbane, etc say no to filling the void, almost scab-like? Of course they would accept the offer. 

Good summation. 
Most people on 442 forums (and editorial staff) will never understand it and  they will somehow think that this A League is something it can never be.
The "Owners" are the actual worst thing about the League. Always have been.  Lowy Sr. knew that would be the case apparently and set it up to protect the League itself and more, from them.

Think about this for a minute.  For $5M a foreign privately held entity can buy a portion of it.  At the moment, that investment allows them to operate in a sandbox where they have no power and limited influence. That could all change dramatically.  Horribly.

If those owners, by way of their very small investment on a global scale, get control of the national football organisation then we have something completely different and scary happening.  There would be absolutely nothing to stop them stripping the asset and throwing the husk away.  That's the complete reversal of the current situation.
While it's arguable that these owners bought in with their eyes open, the same can't be said for everybody that has a stake in Football in this country.
You might be asking where your $6.00 registration fee goes now?  You really want to be asking that question of a future organisation which is to be run exclusively for the benefit of foreign and a couple of local billionaires?  You trust these people?

Let me remind you:  Brisbane - Indonesian.  Sydney - Russian. Wellington - New Zealand. Newcastle - China.  Central Coast - English.  Melbourne City - Abu Dhabi.
The other remaining four are at least Australian, but there are only two that I would trust to run a football club for the benefit of football above anything else. This isn't a xenophobic rant - it's a comment that if your only stake in this country is to extract money from it, then you have to be dealt with as a banker-investor not as a benevolent benefactor who has the warm and fuzzy about advancing football here.  They may be a bunch of idealists but they don't look like it from this distance.

The A League has to die as it currently exists.  It worked for the best part of 10 years but now it is apparent that it is holding back the professional game here.  Above and beyond that, it now threatens all that lies beyond the professional game.  The crown jewels are the million people that have nothing to do with the A League and sure as hell don't want the faux-clubs running their organisation and putting their interests behind the further enrichment of already very rich people.

We do need a new ownership model (vis a vis the current A League model).  If the League cannot be held separate from the mainstream organisation then it is a very real problem.

Creating an independent professional League body will be a requirement whether the same League is kept and adjusted, or a totally new one is formed.  It will have to be responsible for its own fortunes and future, but failure should not threaten anything beyond its remit.  The FFA should give it rope, but retain a hand on it so that cannot get quasi-control of the whole sport here.  There is time and opportunity now (only just arisen really) whereby the FFA could create a completely new body to run Professional Football but bind it to an expansive model broadly governed by the FIFA statutes.  Anybody stepping into the Professional game in Australia would immediately know where the short and long term lies and so informed, could choose their path.

If I was FFA I would take two seriously disruptive steps and one big brave one:

1. Tell the A League Clubs that they can take it or leave it.  If they say "we'll leave" say goodbye to them.  Issue new franchises to make up the numbers if necessary.  There are very willing players in each "market" that would step up.  Players suddenly out of contract would be snapped up again. Easier actually than starting from scratch. Ugly, but very very workable.

2.  Simultaneously with above, announce the creation of a body to independently run the Professional game in Australia.  It should be constituted by truly independent people with the majority of the expertise brought in from abroad initially.  Japan, Germany and perhaps the US might be good places to start looking - not so much Bern(e).
The body would have to be in place and fully running the pro game here 2018-2019 with a clearly timetabled transition.

3.  "Balls move" (as if the others aren't).  Genuinely reform the Congress so that it is truly representative.  Stephen Lowy doesn't want to be doing this shit for the rest of his life, so his best move is to create a power structure that is genuinely democratic and move on from the benevolent oligarchy.
Fill the Congress with seats and votes that cover all the interests of the game nationally and thereby insure against the seizure of control by narrow and greedy interests (or benevolent ones) because if you look at the long history of the game in this country - that is the path that it has always taken and then fallen by.

Democracy is inefficient and frustrating but it is enduring and ultimately enriching.

I don't have a problem with the clubs (as a collective) getting more money. But $40m for 20 clubs is better than $40m for 10 clubs. The club owners are being selfish by demanding more money and making it difficult for expansions and further tiers

IMO the answer is simple:
1/ Give clubs full ownership and IP
2/ Give clubs full control of merchandising, gate keepings, preseason friendlies and finals
3/ Give clubs $2.75m for 12 tier 1 clubs and $1m for 8 tier 2 clubs as a minimum subsidy

Every club who enters the league knows they have a minimal viability subsidy, an expectation to attract $500k to $1m a year in sponsorship or investment (ie- they cant just ride on funds created by MV and SFC), and reward for investment. The bigger they become they more they get. If they host the grand final they end up with $1m from the gate as a reward


Having the FFA try to run and pay for 10 clubs is nothing short of stupidity. Having club owners do little more than manage cash flow is also detrimental to the game

If this is the new "ownership" model then these clowns need to go. We need a complete and utter change. Fuck off this franchise shit and balanced model. There is more than one way to run a professional sports competition. We need more than one trick ponies

while i don't know the ins and out of this and don't know how much the FFA is screwing over the clubs with the funding model, but the reality of the situation is that the more money the clubs get, the less likely expansion will happen... because the expansion clubs will need this funding too. I'm of the view that expanding by 2 teams is not enough. it should be 4.  

So when is the right time?

The clubs are fine. The FFA are the ones in trouble here.

It just goes to show that the current FFA model for a National Competition is all wrong.

Yeah, I think the clubs need to be careful because going in for a fight now just for the sake of it could end up damaging them even more, financially.

Everyone can see that the system needs to change, away from the franchise/FFA controlled league to a more independent league that incorporates secondary divisions and grassroots, but going all out in that fight now for the sake of $500k a year might not be wise.

Absolutely the clubs need to agitate for more say/representation in the running of the game and gradually from there we would like to see things like independent league with clubs given more control of their recources and income and the building of the football pyramid but I'm not sure that getting into a fight about it at this time and dragging the game through the mud is the right option.

The HAL is run as a franchise system with the clubs being issues licenses to participate. FFA as the master franchisor controls & owns everything, the intellectual property, the names, the brands, team colors, websites. Everything. If your interested in seeing what options current Franchise owners have, just google how Clive Palmer & Gold Coast untied went when they took on the FFA when they pulled Clive's license. 

With regard to setting up a rebel league,  assuming current owners would be able to get past non-compete clauses in their license agreements (which will be there without a doubt), how many HAL fans will swap to Sydney City FC, Western Sydney Rovers or Melbourne Victorious, each wearing different team colors as FFA owns current strips? Doubt many would, so value of tv deals or sponsorship would be minimal. Also other than the big 3, the other teams are already on their knees financially so where will funds to set up new clubs & league come from? 

Plus as we have seen in the past with GC, Brisbane and Newcastle, if current owners pull the pin, FFA could just take over the running of the teams themselves, costs would be covered by the Fox TV money and they could then flog them to new owners when they wanted. The average fan doesn't care who the owners are. 

Personally I believe  many of the current issues are caused by the lack of a traditional "football club" organisation in the HAL, but unfortunately, the current system is based on the "Jim's Mowing" business model and Jim (FFA) is the king. 

I'm feeling more and more disillusioned each day.

For the FFA to ba apart of FIFA, I would assume ANY contract the FFA either signs or puts forward to be signed, no matter who the other party is, would have all the correct FIFA conditions in place.

...that is something that Lowy would surely wish would disappear

Actually no .....if a party can show a contract is unfair a judge may rule it invalid.There may be a case for this here.There may also be grounds for the clubs to apply for breach of contract. Without knowing what the exact terms and conditions are are we can't really know.
In many cases the mere threat of years of litigation may be more motivation than what the contract actually says anyway.

Seriously wtf.

No. Just no.

The broadcaster goes with the incumbent clubs. See: English Premier League break away

If the clubs break away then FFA cannot meet its contractual obligation to Fox. Fox will tear up the contract and deal with the existing clubs in a new league. They will not take your utterly braindead strategy of dealing with an upstart FFA backed league comprised of new clubs formed with the leftovers from the 130 largest football clubs in the land. FFA will have proven themselves incapable of honouring contracts and won't be dealt with ever again.

You are just so far up the arse of the AFL it isn't funny

And yet you're somehow trying to argue here that FFA is in an advantaged position.

If the clubs want to break away then FFA can go to court and take on 10 aleague clubs and 120 of the next biggest clubs. That will be one hell of a day in court. Frank, Steve and Dave going head to head with the 130 biggest football clubs in the country, threatening to replace them with the Sydney Pirates, Melbourne Blues and with the full support of 1% of football fans left that have faith in the FFA.

Bring it the fuck on

If ya can't beat 'em

I can translate this is in Latin - Lowius Hippocratius

There are currently 10 votes in the congress.
Currently as I understand Vic and NSW want 13 votes, FFA would like to have 12.

In order to even get to an expanded congress of 12 or even 13 they need to be able to change the constitution. 
They need 8 votes to do this. 7/10 is only 70% they need 75%

Even if the FFA get what they want it is still very unlikely that FIFA will agree to those low numbers as their congress. 

Well, we both know the answer - Lowy was allowed to do whatever he wanted in setting up the FFA (Government asked him to do it, gave him the funds, Lowy wanted carte blanche and got it).

Lowy set up a structure that meant the game would never fall into the hands of those pesky wogs again.

He, and his son now, achieve this by having all the smaller state federations in their back pocket.

He can go to 13 seats at the table and still control things via the 7 smaller state federations (just).

Anything higher than that, and Lowy loses control.

So we know and understand why, but the problem remains that he does have those 7 votes in his back pocket, and the disgruntled stakeholders only have 3.  That's where things currently stand, and Lowy can rightly argue that he is closer to having the numbers to change the constitution than the other 3 members.

Gallop.............Lowy is never there to make a decision.

It is a big deal. I am not sure why the FFA is treating this situation so lightly. All they have to do is have more votes in their congress. Not an unreasonable request. 

Do you mean Lowy and Gallop, or just Gallop?

Whoever it is I am signing up and cancelling fox. 

It doesn't matter where its run from, run it from Adelaide for all I care. The whole point is that the FFA under Gallop is in trouble and he knows it. Hence the unnecessary delay in changing the constitution and the congress numbers. Its not a difficult task. At the end of the day football will change and Gallop I will be surprised if he survives.

True, it might go to one of the other bidders who missed out.

Well we agree on your first point, but I am still amazed that there are so-called football fans on here who honestly believe that having FIFA take such an extreme action is somehow good.

Firstly, are you forgetting how it was that the FFA came into existence?  Even with government throwing tens of millions of dollars at it, it was anything but quick and easy.

Why do people think it will be quick and easy the next time?

Why do people think that such major disruption is a good thing?

Why do people suppose that everyone will fall into lock-step with whoever FIFA puts forward to run Australian Football.  That seems like a mighty big assumption based on nothing.

Already too Sydney centric. We need a national league run out of Melbourne. Sydney is already "won". There needs to be a seperation away from FFA.

An expansion on your idea would be to have a co-run federation (NSW and Vic). These 2 could form a union and invite A-League teams from outside of NSW and Vic control (BR, NJ, AU & PG) to play in their combined  league system/league. Further teams from NNSW, Qld, Tas, ACT, SA and WA could be granted permission to join after application. 

Yes, a Sydney and Melbourne league plus extras. This is a way to success. 

Yes but they need 8 so they can change the constitution  and change it from 10 votes to 12 votes, which FIFA wont allow anyway. Just watch.