Final score in Heart/South Melb friendly. Melbourne Heart 6-1 South Melbourne. Including a Jason Hoffman hat-trick. Can't really take much out of it other than it was a good exercise for both parties to get some run in their legs. Hopefully when Lakeside Park is redeveloped it can become a regular event.

Heart wont be alive by then

No wonder Greece went broke. Your understanding of finance leaves a bit to be desired. At least Melbourne Heart aren't signing refugees.

Detective Columbopoulos?

What about the pack of morons at belmore that cant come up with the 300000 for olympic. So much for the revolution, when they may not even be playing in the NSWPL next season

seriously is this guy serious? Olympic had a massive stall yesterday at one of sydney beaches with over 10 thousand people, given away junior passes, selling memberships and collecting emails the club is signing players everyday preseason training starts this week wtf r u on about

So when is Alex getting banned again? Personal threats against Joffa?

:d :d

I noticed the threat as well, impressed Ultragirl is still posting after that.

Almost as good as the Aussie maths that had us comfortable in the first round of voting for the world cup, eh? ;)

Apparently we hired the same guy as the English, he is from Sunderland

Yep, they started at the top of the league and worked down until they found someone they could afford. Obviously, Newcastle didn't come into the equation. ;)

Well obviously we don't like to pay 2.575 million AUD per goal for a striker. :-"

I'll just be leaving this here.....

900k pounds a goal thank you very much [-(

Now this is why they didn't go to Newcastle to get a numbers man...

In order for your value-for-money equation to work you have to first ignore the fact that Owen was on double Gyan's wages, and then assume that Gyan won't score another 6 goals whilst at Sunderland. As witnessed last night - the bloke doesn't even have to play that well to get goals - they just bounce in off him.

And I'll raise you a...

Not as bad as

i'm sorry but i doubt they lost 60 million

we cant have possibly been that bad

That's it, deflect attention from the real problem by concentrating on a typo. Always the best policy.

thats what the a-league is all about though benjamin

As many people have already pointed out, there will be start-up costs associated with the Heart that is likely to result in posting a large loss for their inaugural season. For example, set-up costs for administration, marketing costs, legal and related costs (eg for signing sponsorship agreements, tenancy agreements, etc).

It's also proven difficult to break in to a market with a clearly established existing brand like the Victory (please note, this is not a comment on the relative merits of each club). Consequently, attendances at games have not been perhaps as good as initially hoped. I suspect that if the FFA did not provide them with a helping hand in scheduling 2 of the 3 derbies as Heart home games, they would be even deeper in the red (so to speak) - these two games served to inflate the average home attendances. In addition, it was also not clear exactly who the Heart were targeting to be supporters - was it only disaffected Victory fans (ie a larger slice of the pie) or new fans (ie grow the pie)?

In addition, my personal view is that the Heart possibly priced themselves out of the reach of many potential supporters. For example, my $225 gets me a premium C membership and reserved seat on the east side, in line with the goal line. From memory (I am ready to stand corrected) a basic Heart $225 membership entitles one to a reserved seat at either end of the ground. For my money, therefore, a Victory membership offers slightly better value in terms of seating possibilities.

However, if given the chance, the club will continue to grow - there is no reason why two teams cannot thrive in Melbourne - the sporting capital of the world!

Melbourne Heart will be around for a while as the FFA own the Intellectual Property (the IP). While the current owners of the Franchise may not. If the current franchise owners find losses are too high with little or no oppurtunity to turn to profitability then they may decide to hand in their franchise ownership back to the FFA.
The FFA as in the past with other franchise IP's that have been handed back will cover the losses, continue the operation until a new franchisee is found.

On that basis Melbourne Heart will be around for some time. Just who owns the franchise agreement will probably change.

This is another key for me. Heart need to differentiate themselves from Victory as much as possible. Slashing admission prices and marketing themselves as the 'team of the people', would give them a great chance of increasing their supporter base both on different levels (some would get behind them as 'the people's team', and others simply because they were the cheap night out.

As has often been said, 20,000 paying $10 each is better than 10,000 paying $20 each - and as they are already paying for a 31,000 seat venue, what have they got to lose?

More like $2.5 Mil.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/m-hole-in-hearts-first-season/story-fn63e0vj-1226005959033