A-League model looks like a licence for financial failure
Michael Lynch
April 2, 2011
NO DOUBT about it. The A-League this year was played at a higher standard than any other season. Champion Brisbane Roar is almost certainly the best side to have graced the six-year-old competition.
But off field the game plummeted to its lowest ebb. The Roar had to be taken over by Football Federation Australia even at the moment of its greatest triumph. North Queensland Fury drowned in a sea of red ink.
No club is making money. Only Melbourne Victory is breaking even. There is disquiet about the game's revenue streams and its commercial deals and a desperate hope that the next television contract might yield the wherewithal to project clubs into the black.
But did it have to be this way? Did the FFA, under then CEO John O'Neill, back the wrong horse in 2004-05 when it gave licences to eight clubs on a one-city, one-team model, with the original licensees all guaranteed a five-year moratorium on opposition in their own marketplace.
There was another alternative. Back in the dim and distant days of the early Noughties there was the Crawford Report, a damning indictment of the structure, management and governance of the Australian game. This was the federal government document that paved the way for the Frank Lowy-led revolution which blew up the NSL.
After that a taskforce was created to determine the shape of a new competition.
Chief among the material it considered was a document produced by the players' union, the PFA, which advocated the creation of an eight- to 10-team league.
It even had a catchy name, the Australian Premier League.
The APL was designed to encourage grassroots engagement and community involvement. It was strongly in favour of clubs operating out of boutique stadia that created partisan environments at home games, all of which added to the buzz of going to matches.
The union believed that a market which contained 250,000 soccer fans would be sufficient to generate enough supporters to produce crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 for each club.
PFA studies showed that interest in football was comparable to that in cricket, Australian rules, rugby league and rugby union; the difficulty was converting that interest and turning those families and young men who played and watched the sport (usually telecasts of overseas leagues) into consumers of the local product.
The APL envisaged single teams in markets like Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Newcastle (which is what the FFA adopted through its own criteria).
But, unlike FFA, the union believed that the key to driving growth in the sport and its visibility with media and commercial sponsors was to broaden its reach in the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne.
Thus the APL called for two clubs in Melbourne from the outset, and three in Sydney, with the split to be geographical.
In Melbourne that was simpler: with public transport geared for easy access to the city centre, the PFA wanted Melbourne to be split on a north west/south east axis, with both clubs groundsharing for home matches in a central location, either at an upgraded Olympic Park or refurbished Bob Jane Stadium.
Branding would be all, with one club marketed as elitist, European style and sophisticated, the other as the battler from Struggle Street: fans would empathise with the one whose values they liked best. After all, well-heeled Collingwood fans have no problem living in Brighton or Toorak.
In Sydney the division was in thirds: one club to be based in the western suburbs, another in the south-west (heading out towards Canberra) and the third to be north-central.
The latter was always believed by the PFA to be the most problematic market, largely because of demographics and the problem of getting around that part of the city.
When the FFA handed out the licence it was, however, the north-central option that became Sydney FC. Even though AFL has moved into what is regarded as Australian soccer's heartland, Sydney's western suburbs, there is still no A-League club there.
The union was very strong on the idea of playing in right-sized grounds because crowd involvement and atmosphere was a key to making the new league work. It suggested the FFA looked at upgrading Sydney venues like Leichardt Oval, Paramatta Stadium or St George, as well as Olympic Park in Melbourne before the new AAMI Park was given the go-ahead.
It also advocated a separation of the league and the governing body.
''League think'' was its mantra, with investors and clubs owning and managing the competition, thus having a vested interest in promoting it, driving deals and increasing revenue streams, with dividends going straight back to the clubs.
The FFA opted for the opposite, with a centralised model of control. Would the game be in the financial mess it is now if the APL had been adopted. Who knows?
But there is plenty to like about the notion of the league being managed as a separate entity and clubs playing in ''right-sized'' stadia with a good atmosphere, lower overheads and real community engagement with strong local rivalries.
It's how football is around the rest of the world.
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/a-league/aleague-model-looks-like-a-licence-for-financial-failure-20110401-1crqp.html