@simione001

If they remove the cap then the bigger clubs will increase its costs in purchasing bigger player contracts. In turn smaller clubs will at least maintain current player expenditure to have any chance to keep up. Can’t see how this will reduce their running costs.

@Burzter

To promote non football sports and health activities cost money. If affordable they should be doing it now but doesn’t seem to generally be the case. Can they do it with less available funds?

Foxtel Foxtel.....  this really is a 'slap in the face' to the A-league and Football overall.  :(

I think we should stop praying for some benefactor to swoop in and save the league. It's not sustainable or realistic.

That was an example from the J League. It also spoke about having greater local focus and support (Victory in Business is a good example imo). There should be plenty of opportunities around but there might not be the incentive since Foxtel covers a significant part of the cost or at least, there is less incentive to look for other sources.

As for cutting costs, I'm not sure. $7-$10m to run a HAL club doesn't sound too exorbitant in all honesty. Assuming CCM are spending $7m p.a., I can't see them having too much fat to trim. 

clubs should able to spend as little or as much as they want or can afford.

Maybe however most ( if not all ) clubs are not reducing their salary costs even to the minimum specified by the FFA. This is within their control now.

just go back on sbs problem solved 

In other words the current model is garbage. 

If the FFA are throwing all of its eggs under the Foxtel basket for not just consolidation let alone growth of the a-league then its a severe high risk for failure as everything will dictate that we are not running a football league but a commercial monopoly from a TV company.

So now we are relying on Foxtel to set the future for the sport going forward and if it doesn't go their that's it? Is this a sustainable model for the game in the long term?

Where does to missing Foxtel millions come from then????

Contraction for stability - growth from stability. 

Where to trim budgets?  Impossible to say without a break-down of each franchise's budget - but there's clubs all over the world, and around Australia, operating at a pretty good level for less than $5m/season.

Our reliance on Fox is part of the reason the game is falling on its arse.  We've built a league so reliant on their cash that we have to bend over every time they tell us too...  Play a short season during the off-season of their more popular sports...  Stagger fixtures across the weekend so no one can remember when the next game is...  Pick teams from capital cities rather than have teams in the league by virtue of their football...  Play in oversized stadia because the media facilities and lighting is more important than the club's own cash-flow. 

All sustainable professional leagues rely on TV money as their main source of income.

These days i question whether the closure of the NSL was worth it or not, with the FFA starting the game again a clean sheet of paper and for the FFA to set out a new era where everything is dictated by a TV company on how many teams to games played, even some of the stadiums sizes are not properly fixed for the benefit of the football product.

At least for all of the problems in the NSL era, at least we had a football structure which propelled to have the right amount of teams and games played and youth league structure, but since the 'new football era' began we only expanded to 10 teams( 2 failed sides), cut costing youth league structure, fragmented system where the a-league is played in a different season from the NPL, to having the longest offseason in world football! .

Have we really we made progress? I have to highly question the work of Frank Lowy and John O'Neill if blow torching the game in starting again in 2005 was a great idea but right now the game is at a crossroads as we dont know what the a-league will even look like in the future due to the incompetence of the FFA in there inability creating the right structure of a proper football league should look like in a global standpoint at the beginning.

In Australia yes, but overseas this isnt entirely the case due to the poor infrastructure of the clubs inability to sustain there own businesses without the sugar daddy hits here and there.

Manu, MC, Chelsea etc say hello.

Unless you can find billionaire benefactors for the HAL and billion dollar TV deals, we can't compare or try to emulate the EPL model. 

South Melbourne FC sounds pretty good.

Too esfhhnix

EPL clubs are overwhelmingly profitable and dont just rely on TV $ or benefactors, those days are long gone. Interesting article below

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/06/premier-league-clubs-profit-record-revenues-tv-deal

All sustainable TV deals come as a result of competition between bidders.  If your principal backer drops out, others will line up to replace them, so clubs can have a degree of confidence that income streams will exist long into the future.

The A-League operates on a deal that the principal partner is currently doing its best to get out of, having been unable to on-sell FTA rights for any significant sum.  When they bought the rights they did so without any serious competition.  Since buying the rights, ratings have fallen rather than grown.

We can either operate on the premise that Fox will continue to give the FFA generous deals despite a lack of competition, and allow them to negatively impact the actual game, or we can operate in the best interests of the game and develop a league which doesn't rely on a small handout.

Take away all tv money and they wouldn't be profitable anymore...  That's why relegated clubs usually go into slash and burn mode...

However...  If the main broadcaster dropped away in England, there would be another to jump into their place.  Our problem here is that no one else appears to want to take Fox on for our relatively small tv deal.  As a result there's no force to push the value up, and more importantly there's no safety net if they collapse.

ive always found it confusing that despite the fact that the league appears to be struggling there seems to be no lack of interest from individuals looking to start new franchises.

There are plenty of articles in the web but ManU TV revenue was only 34% of their total last year, with the tv exposure driving other income sources. Spurs didnt build a new stadium because they were going to get more TV money!In portugal majority of their income is from transfer fees & TV money is poor comparatively.

some of you guys need to explore the world outside the HAL Franchise bubble

Ty Fox for forcing these muppets do their job correctly.

-PB

It obvious Fox overspent on Cricket and now don't want spend extra on other sports if they don't have to. 

So there wont be a FTA channel next season? Or it goes to the ABC.

It would be interesting to see what the cost of cricket vs AFL vs HAL is on $ per average viewers, will give you an idea of where they get most bank for the buck

Quality of players & coaches in a league, do have an effect on ratings as the assumption the more you pay the better the competition...

This is one of the key arguments in getting rid of the salary cap.... ie increase the quality of players to lift the league.. 

If we lost the Fox money, those assuming a great new dawning will be disappointed in the outcome... If the A-League falls over, then don't expect any broadcaster, streaming or otherwise to invest in a major way.... professional Football in Australia without the coverage a major news outlet brings and the revenue it brings will be set back a number of years...

The assumption of some vast, huge untapped Football market in Australia just waiting for a change in operating systems boarders on insane...

P & R will come, but in and of itself without money for quality players and coaches, it will not drag the playing base across ..

 

which is great of course. they clearly believe in the long term it'll be worthwhile. However, it will be interesting to hear if there will be any stories about potential bidders walking away due the dropping away of the HAL in the coming years.


that would be very interesting data. Maybe FootyIndustry Twitter might be able to provide those figures. 

Safe to say I've explored way beyond the HAL franchise bubble...  I was commenting on the EPL money, not any other leagues around the world.  Using the finances of the top 3-4 English clubs to demonstrate that the majority of the league would be viable without the tv deal is dubious logic.