clap clap clap 

Very few hhhhmmmm very few very very very few understand this...

Professional Football in Australia went or dis- guarded the the district or local area that almost every  code is based on to form their own professional league...

Having said that we still have using your figure close to 3, 000 clubs with committees who if approached right would promote Hal [ mostly not everyone obviously] 

The key is doing things for the clubs rather than asking the clubs to do something for you... as committees normally have little time.

To me the connection is to look for what clubs need... provide that in a way that promotes and connects to Hal...

Allowing for current ticketing arrangements for me the answer has been staring us in the face for yonks... 

Cost is roughly 6, 000 & $ 1, 000 dollar mobile computers maybe even cheaper in purchased in bulk..... essentially provide 2 computer to each club already preloaded with software and systems to ensure what follows works.

Develop a software system that allows the local clubs to sell tickets to Hal matches with a 10% discount... with half the discount going to the club and half the discount going to buyer... 

Most clubs need money and if they sold say $ 30, 000 in tickets, the club would get $ 1, 500.00, that buys lots of balls, and kit bags.... 

This way for promoting Hal the clubs get paid... the increase in crowds alone will pay for any discount costs... 

The HAL was modeled on the Super Rugby competition (and old Super League) from day 1.  The HAL maintained the same path it had set upon from season 1.  Whether this is a good or bad thing is another issue entirely.  

The thing that happened after season 6 is that the GFC destroyed attendances in some areas, made sponsorship harder to find and left the clubs making combined losses in excess of $20m pa.  In order to reign in some of the damage the clubs requested a change to the start of the season and the FFA agreed.  After the change of season attendances grew again but not to previous levels.

you should send to the clubs 

Linking to grassroots clubs makes sense
IF
you intend on having  a close top tier forever.

Otherwise, if you have a completely open pyramid, many of those grassroots clubs you are hoping to link with - they are wanting to move up the pyramid, and the more ambitious ones, want to replace you in the top tier!

the vast overwhelming majority of clubs in the country would have no ambition or intention of being anything other than an amateur sports club.

these ideas could/should bypass npl level teams altogether and focus on community clubs. I'm sure Gyfox could confirm the numbers are far larger in these clubs than the top tier clubs

That's fair enough, although using the Mariners as an example, there'd be clubs in the vicinity of Gosford who are currently not top tier of the state league, but who'd have the werewithal to move up the pyramid.

Then why was Lowy talking about P/R in 2007?

Having one Melbourne team created the need for 2. If we started with 2 Melbourne teams they would have averaged 7k-8k each and AAMI Park would never have happened. Derbies wouldnt have been big either

The structure of the A League in the first few years was a necessary evil, but the pathway was obvious

Sure, but still 

the vast overwhelming majority of clubs in the country would have no ambition or intention of being anything other than an amateur sports club.

John O'Neil was brought in specifically to model the HAL on the Super Rugby concept.  Fox was also backing this model and indicated to Lowy that it was their preferred model if FFA wanted Fox as a broadcast partner.  This was the model that FFA adopted and pursued and have not veered away from it until recent developments.  So, no, the HAL did not adopt NRL/AFL policies/gimmicks after year 6, they were adopted and followed right from day one and in the "successful" years.  

What's wrong with remaining as the same amateur sports club in the same league, with the only difference being the league is attached to a national pyramid instead of just the current state one?

The A League was successful in the first few seasons because it was better than the NSL. The salary cap was largely a placebo and prevented what little talent was available going to 2 teams. One Melbourne team (one team per city) helped consolidate support. And even though there were only 8 clubs with no youth or womens leagues the intention was always to grow them

But the blue print was always there for a sensible model. As I said, talks of P/R were as early as 2007

It was only until after season 6 we saw: 30 year licence, concessions, all stars, marquee fund, consolidation instead of expansion, October kick off, VAR, $250k fee to play international teams on Australian soil, revamped and re-cemented top 6 despite no pathway to 14 teams, unbalanced draw, etc...

If any of that shit was even joked about at the start of the A League it wouldnt have gotten off the ground

The only good thing that came out of the FFA was the FFA cup, but even this was rigged to guarantee a semi final spot for a state league team. And no ACL spot despite it clearly being our national cup

As I said, you can draw a line at the end of season 6 between a progressive pathway to common sense, and hitting the abort button and going down an AFL / NRL direction

I always assumed the HAL was modeled on state cricket, state vfl and state rugby league. 

Thats why Victory got the Big V, Adelaide was red, SydFC was sky blue etc. That’ll get em interested !

Nothing?

Midfielder merely suggested a-league clubs get out in the community to local clubs offering ticket discounts with incentives.

Batega said in a pyramid the community clubs would be competitors to a-league clubs in an ideal world so wouldn't want to help a competitor.

I agreed but said a huge chunk of community clubs will never be competitors as they have no desire to gain 15 promotions by investing millions in this hypothetical league system.
Therefore with the right incentives could be happy to work with top tier clubs giving their u/7s ticket/merch discounts and keeping a cut.

In FNSW territory 215k out of 230k registered players are in community clubs in District Associations.  The last figure I saw for Football Vic there were 3k(?) out of 69k that were involved in the NPL system.

There is no need to include clubs that are happy to stay as community clubs in a P/R pyramid.  All that is needed is P/R involving the clubs that are more "serious" about the game.  Clubs that want to move into the pyramid should be able to express their interest and their State Fed can investigate if there is enough interest to start a new tier at the bottom of the pyramid.  It shouldn't be a difficult thing to move across.  More important than adding new tiers at this stage is getting 16 clubs in the existing tiers so that the season length for the serious clubs is longer.

Which existing tiers do you speak of?

A-league, every NPL level and state league levels if they exist.  Once a second division gets started it should have 16 clubs too.

I don't agree with this

One thing everybody points out is the number of other football codes in this country. The implications of this is we're not in a position of funding 16 fully professional football teams

I think we need 12 in a top tier, and 8-10 semi professional teams in a second tier. Then build from there as the opportunity presents itself

The issue is we have been building one high cost professional brick at a time from the top down and this is why we cant grow

Not only should we have 16 fully professional clubs in the top tier every club in the 2nd division should be professional.  Thats the aim and we need to get there as soon as possible if we are going to improve the final quality of the players we produce.  That aim is more important than adding new tiers at the bottom.

As far as providing more opportunities for young players each of the existing NPL tiers should be expanded to 16 clubs.  That can be done easily and at little cost to the State Feds.  It moves our system closer to what happens in the developed football countries as far as providing enough games for players to develop.  Later on we can expand to 18 and then 20 clubs per tier.  As an example FNSW has 4 NPL tiers and as of next season each will have 12 clubs.  Moving to 16 clubs per tier increases the number of players in the system by 33% and the number of games they play by 36%.

As far as the high cost league we have it all goes back to O'Neill who rejected the NSL Task Force Report that Lowy's Board commissioned before he arrived, rejected Crawford's  model for governance of football and developed the in house closed, high cost A-League model.  Unfortunately Lowy bought what O'Neill was selling and the game has suffered ever since.

The model that O'Neill put together wasn't high cost, it just wasn't meant to be used for the long term

IIRC teams didnt start to feel the impact of the league financially until season 4 or 5. Once we reached season 7 it was too late. Now we are finding ways to pay for teams like CCM to match and compete with teams like MV

I dont see how the A League could have started in any other way and yielded a better result. Football in this country never had a professional set up so it was something we hadn't had to deal with before. With no interest and no money I think what we ended up with was remarkable

Don't forget also that O'Neill left after the first season of the A League. Its hard to judge a 5-10 year vision based on 1 year. I see plenty of signs the A League was a necessary step for a sensible league

+1

The A-League clubs found in the first year that the costs were way above what was expected.  They were left scrambling to reduce expenditure.  In the case of Sydney FC this led the club to sell Yorke to Sunderland in order to help cover the excessive costs of the league.  Littbarski also left because he refused to take the pay cut that Sydney tabled.

The in-house model for the league that O'Neill developed left the clubs with very few revenue streams to offset some of the club costs.  Even with most revenue streams kept in-house FFA A-league revenue was not enough to cover running the A-League and revenue from the Socceroos was used to subsidise the A-League.  This was all part of O'Neill's plan.  Move the money around where it is needed and then wait for the next thing that needed to be paid for.  When revenue reduced the only option was to get special funding from the government to cover costs.

O'Neill's bells and whistles model wasn't affordable and he had no other plan other than what experience with Super Rugby showed him and even in that he couldn't see that Super Rugby drained Rugby Union at all other levels of funds to operate.

If you look at the NSL Task Force Report written by football people rather than a Rugby Union man you will see what could have happened.  O'Neill rejected most of it.  A low cost model whether in house as O'Neill wanted or independent like Crawford, the FFA Board and the NSL Task Force committee wanted before O'Neill got in the way would have us way ahead of where we are now.

There isnt much deviation between what was recommended and what actually occured
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/19036991/on-behalf-of-nsl-task-force-australian-sports-commission

The main change is the one team per city model instead of 2 Melbourne and 3 Sydney teams. A big Melbourne and Sydney team paved way for the other Melbourne and Sydney teams. If we didnt have this the league could have easily been one of those leagues stacked with mediocre Melbourne and Sydney teams and would have failed. It wasnt a popular decision but MV would have been a shadow of themselves if there was a second Melbourne team from day 1

The second key change was no Independent league. IMO this was a necessary evil, but one of those many many instances where something necessary at the beginning became a sacred cow. It is undeniable the FFA had the charisma required to get the solid commercial backing the game needed, but it definitely shouldnt have been a forever thing

The venues is a subjective debate. It specified boutique but also specified minimum standards and public transport system. Playing games in iconic venues IMO assisted with the initial interest. If Brisbane, for example, started at Dolphin park they would be tiny in comparison. I dont think the teams went wrong with venue choices, but something theis forum wont agree on due to the obsession with small venues

The other point of deviation was August kick off instead of October. This proves there is still a bit of myth in the report that we need to crush from our game. We know (with hindsight) that August vs October didnt make a difference (early August arguably did because that made us a winter code, but late August didnt). If something can't be measured or proven then it shouldnt be criteria

I fail to see after reading the report where the model introduced in year 1, which is close to what was being asked for, resulted in teams being financially crippled. It was a report that recommended stringent financial criteria from the get go and I dont recall much difference between the figures cited by the task force and those implemented. It seems regardless of who was involved the first step was a necessary one. The finer details can and will be hotly debated, but the result was always going to be an 8-10 team stand alone league in strategic places with approx $2m in salaries and up to $5m expenditure per team overall


Its the next step that was to make or break the game

The financial model in the report should have remained in place as is. Let teams like MV and SFC grow, and if the smaller clubs couldn't grow beyond that then they serve the purpose of player development. Its easy to see how with a small low cost model cited in the report that we could have grown to 14 or even 16 clubs. But interest in our league will always stem from the biggest clubs. The issue was when the small cost model was no longer big enough to sustain interest, the budgets for all clubs blew out

With a $17m a year TV deal shared with the Socceroos we had 10 teams. With a $50m TV deal just the A League it wasnt enough for 10 teams. It was even said if we had $80m it wouldnt be enough for 10 teams. This is where the AFL / NRL model of demanding all teams be of the same size, a permanent part of the top flight, and supporting them from a central pool failed

The key issue is that we MUST have a minimum standard. We scan do without a maximum, and let clubs get as big as they can be, but there absolutely must be a minimum to ensure the league remains viable.

The minimum must be that any team wanting to be in the top 2 divisions of Australian football must be fully professional.

Nothing else matters.

If you get 2000 spectators to a match, and play at a suburban ground with a capacity of that amount, but you are a professional club where all players and staff are full time nd paid full time salaries, then that is no problem at all. As long as you can pay your way, the league will succeed and we will be growing our player base and improving the quality.

@bluebird

The one team per city model was crass stupidity in Sydney.  There were two bidders for a licence and both were viable.  One was encouraged to withdraw.  What resulted was Sydney FC playing in a stadium that was too big and total attendance in Sydney being a bit over half of what attended the NSL.  It was only when Wanderers entered the league that total attendance in Sydney exceeded what used to attend NSL games.  That decision wasted 7 years of growth of the league in Sydney and with Sydney generating the largest proportion of STV viewers in the early years (40%+) and the best media coverage both the value of the broadcast rights and sponsorship were held down to the detriment of the whole league.  The sad thing is that the one team per city policy was simply following the Super Rugby model without proper consideration of the needs of football here.  

I supported keeping the league in house and shuffling the money around for a few years but with clubs and the FFA haemorrhaging money from day 1 it didn't get to the point where separation was possible until the 2012 broadcast rights meant total costs could be covered without government assistance.  Just a couple of more examples of the effect of the league on the clubs in season 1: Nick Tana was trying to offload his 75% share of Perth Glory during that first season and at the end of the season all the owners of the club agreed to hand in the license to the FFA and Mariners only survived due to the generosity of John Singleton.

It was only in Brisbane and Sydney that the league played in iconic stadia at the start.  The cost of rental for Suncorp was and still is prohibitive and it would have been better to be playing at a stadium that allowed real football atmosphere to be generated.  That gets people coming back and it gets people watching on TV.  I think Sydney got a reasonable deal at Allianz but again when not 60%+- full it is as dead as a doornail for atmosphere.  15,000+ at Kogarah eats it as would any boutique stadium that is designed correctly.  

The late start to the season was a result of what was found in the NSL.  Crowds were better with the late start.  This is why when attendances nose dived in the A-League, and caused the clubs to lose in excess of $20m pa between them, the clubs requested the FFA to return to the late start.  FFA acquiesced to their request.  Looking at attendances they began to drop in season 4 when the GFC appeared on the horizon in Sept 2008 and by season 6 the average had dropped by 42% from the peak in season 3.  The effects of the GFC were still being felt a couple of years further on so for season 7 with the late start to get an increase in attendance of 24% it would appear on the face of it that the move to the October start was a positive change.

The difference between the financial model in the Taskforce Report and the O'Neill model was that the latter delivered increased costs across the board with higher player costs and on-costs, higher football department costs, significantly higher but not uniform venue costs and increased administration costs.  Club budgets were blown out to above the Taskforce's year 5 figures in some cases by significantly more than $1m.

I'm not sure why you do the comparison between club numbers and broadcast rights deal.  The clubs were funding more in each case.  More teams ie W-league and NYL, bigger player payments due to the CBA, running NPL teams etc and now some of them are funding academies all of which are essential to the growth of the game and the FFA has increased its distribution to the clubs to offset some of those additional costs.  The FFA also had to move to stop its dependance on special grants from the government which meant reallocating some of its new revenues to that end.

If the licence requirements for the clubs had been reduced to levels that allowed viable operation at the levels of expenditure in the Taskforce Report then we could have 14-16 club A-League, W-League, NYL, NPL and academies and possibly a 2nd division and we could have been slowly increasing the requirements for keeping the license as FIFA is doing in its licensing process.  I would suggest that if we had been able to expand the leagues and develop the clubs earlier that revenue from broadcast rights and sponsorship would be significantly above what it is now.  Unfortunately by going high cost from the start and then being hit badly by the GFC we are where we are.

I reckon we should call it quits.  It has been a good discussion but this is the ratings thread.  

“A body of research undertaken for the A-League owners by a global data analytical company has shown a reach for games via Kayo and the Telstra MyFootball app of more than 100,000 for each of last weekend’s four games – in some cases getting closer to 150,000”

(Telegraph)

well that fucks up a few people’s theories 😂

Waz

Do you have a link for that... as you said it fucks up a lot of the negativity... 

It’s just started it’s own thread Mid. And yes, it does ...

It will be good to see the continuing data over the weeks ahead.