Imagine for a moment that you’ve bought a new car. It’s nice enough - four wheels, an engine, a decent paint job, etc. However, the first time you turn the motor over, there’s a bit of an unhealthy ‘clunking’ noise. So you take it back to the dealer and they tell you, “Sorry- our warranty doesn’t cover this. You need to foot the bill”. Somewhat annoyed, you agree to pay to have the car repaired.
While you’re at the repair shop, you notice some awesome new paint which would look absolutely mint on your car. So you book the car in for a spray; but as the painter walks into the room with his spray gun, your car dealer bursts in and tells you you’re not allowed to paint the car - the car you purchased - without his say so. He’s even got a contract to prove it.
By now, you’re extremely pissed off. You decide to forget the paint job and just give your car a polish instead. Eventually, you get it looking so nice that you think you’ll take a photo and have a T-shirt printed (because you’re such a fashion-conscious guy). You’re proudly wearing this shirt on a car cruise with some mates, when all of a sudden the cruise comes to a dead stop due to a roadblock up ahead. It’s the car dealer, the police, and an army of lawyers - and they’re here to tell you that by printing that shirt without dealer permission, you’re in breach of copyright and facing a hefty fine.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? A world in which people may pay for goods and services but get no say in their modification or use. Essentially, they’re just pouring money into something they have no control over. So, is this a prediction of an apocalyptic future dominated by lawyers, accountants, and bureaucrats? No; it’s actually a reasonable description of what’s happening in the world of A-League franchise owners right now.
What do you actually get when you stump up the money required for an A-League franchise? Well, you get whatever players and staff might be employed already; and if you want rid of them you have to pay out their contracts. You don’t get a stadium, sales of food or drink, or even proceeds from the merchandise van. You can’t produce your own stuff stamped with the club logo, either - because you don’t even own that. This remains property of the FFA, and they’ll only let you put it on what they see fit. You don’t even own your own brand.
You do of course get some money. TV revenue, kit deals, and merchandising sales - all evenly split across clubs, regardless of how much they’ve actually sold - will make their way to your pockets. You also have the chance to organise your own sponsors, free of FFA interference (well, most of the time). Which shouldn’t be a hard task - people should be clambering to support something with no physical base of its own, surrounded by a hostile media; right? No; even with all this income, A-League ownership is (in most cases) a financial sinkhole.
Clearly, it must take a certain breed of person to own and run a football club. You put in time, effort, a bucketload of cash, and the most you can hope for is to minimise your losses and not have keyboard warriors threatening to kill you on fan forums every other week. That said, certain clubs such as Central Coast and Melbourne appear to be in a much healthier state, and personally I believe the latter to be an excellent example of how an A-League franchise should be run. Not that being based in a sports-mad city of four million people with several excellent stadium options doesn’t help. Not all teams are so lucky, though - just ask Tony Sage and his Perth Glory FC.
The home ground of Perth Glory, ME Bank Stadium in East Perth, has long been a point of contention for fans and the owner alike. When Tony Sage first took over the reins of the club, he was surprised at just how costly the club’s agreement with the Town of Vincent and Allia Holdings was; especially when you take into account the state of the facilities.
It is estimated that Sage spends somewhere between twenty and seventy thousand dollars every week just to bring MEBS up to the A-League standard. The FFA have all but ruled it out as a venue for Socceroos matches, let alone the World Cup, and it’s certainly a reflection on the management of WA venues that the change rooms had to be upgraded before EPL sides Wolverhampton and Fulham even dared visit the ground.
Many fans feel that the stadium deal and FFA red tape is killing any chance the Glory have of getting close to a profit on match days. Merchandise sales don’t go to the club; and food and drink sales go to stadium management, the caterers, and pretty much anyone but the club (though they do get a fractional percentage of beer sales). Liquor licences are controlled by the Town of Vincent and WA state government, resulting in ugly and draconian “please stand behind the yellow tape” areas around the ground.
To top it all off, live-to-the-gate Foxtel broadcasts ensure that Perth doesn’t even get close to the 13,000 people per game that they require to break even. Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not saying that football shouldn’t be on Foxtel (though a FTA highlights package would be nice) - I’m simply stating the obvious fact that showing a game live on telly will result in people sitting in their comfy couches, with their full-strength beer, no lines, no overpriced chicken rolls, and no other game day hassles.
It’s problems like this that will ensue that the A-League does not get a (truly national) second division for some time to come. To do so when 80% of existing A-League clubs are in the red would be financial suicide. The anticipated new TV deal will pump some more money back to these clubs, but if any of the other owners are like Tony Sage, they don’t want to rely on governing body handouts to survive. They want to make their own money. Therefore, there’s only one thing to do - and that’s to give A-League owners a fair go.
I’m sure we’re all familiar enough with the financial horror stories of our last national competition, so let’s not go there. Certainly, I’m not advocating the FFA throw the baby out with the bathwater - some kind of control needs to remain in the hands of a central league body (though preferably an independent one as specified in the Crawford Report). But there are some suggestions I have which I believe could improve day-to-day business for franchise owners:
- Decentralise kit contracts. For me, one of the most important things each club needs to do is forge its own identity. Something which can help this goal is control over the look and make of their own kits. We should say thanks to Reebok for five years of mostly mediocre designs, and give each club an option to negotiate their own kit contracts; it would, after all, be a good test of each club’s bargaining power and business nous. Each club would initially be instructed that they must keep building on the colours they already have, but they’d be free to alter designs and change suppliers at will. Remember, one of the original selling points about the Glory was the purple kit; a non-traditional soccer colour, it represented something new, something unique. Each A-League club should have the freedom to have that same experience.
- Give each club control of its own name, logo, and brand. How can you market yourself effectively if you keep having to check with someone if it’s okay to whack your name on a product or event? How can you differentiate yourself from the rest of the market if everyone works to the same email and website template? How can a club “be itself” when there are puppet strings attached at every turn? Give the clubs the freedom to market themselves as they see fit - within reason, of course - and let’s get a little bit more individuality into the competition. It’d be nice to see something like the cheeky ‘Welcome to Manchester’ billboard we saw prior to the EPL Season; rather than the FFA-designed posters for each club which stick to a common national theme.
- Delay the local Foxtel feed for club home games. Working on the assumption that anything is technically possible in the world of TV and IT, it would be nice to go back to the days where Glory matches would be on the telly three to four hours after the actual game was played. Fox is great for watching football - but I’d really like to try to twist the arm of some of the couch potatoes out there, and try to encourage them to watch football as it’s meant to be watched - not in an armchair but from the stands. Granted, I’m unsure if Foxtel could get to the level where a game in Sydney was delayed to Sydney but not to Newcastle, but for some of the remote centres like Perth, Adelaide, and Wellington it must surely be an option.
- Football Federation Australia to negotiate stadium rights on behalf of clubs. On some things, I believe the clubs can go it alone; I’ve highlighted some of the best candidates above. On others, the clubs could do with some more help - and I feel stadium negotiations are top of that list. Around Australia, especially in states where there aren’t many options in regards to stadia, it’s easy for a government or stadium manager to put a small A-League franchise over a barrel when it comes to ticketing, revenue, and facilities. Yet the FFA have demonstrated they have some ability to get their own way with these things - so why not do that on behalf of the A-League clubs? Gold Coast United have already been a beneficiary of the FFA’s assistance; why can’t the rest of the franchises? Surely it’s not just because they don’t have obese, obnoxious owners with a pile of cash?
- Football Federation Australia to start a facilities development fund. For the game to grow in this country, it needs the proper infrastructure. If we’re trying to become an Asian powerhouse, places like ME Bank Stadium simply aren’t up to scratch. Yet often these stadiums are the only option in place for a team, due to short-sighted governments and a lack of investment in local stadiums or football in general. I’d like to see the FFA turn that situation on its head. Forget just helping Gold Coast pay its bills from week to week; what about long term solution for the game as a whole? I am of course talking about starting a “future fund”. If the FFA could save some of their Socceroos and World Cup revenue, they could gather a sizeable amount of cash through some shrewd investments; and with this money they could start building stadiums and training facilities of their own - or at least go in as part of a bid backed by multiple parties. Imagine then a future where it’s the football team who gets to dictate how and when a rugby league or AFL side should use their stadium! Imagine the fury on Eddie McGuire’s face when he can’t rant about Collingwood losing the MCG or Etihad for a week! Just imagine...
Of course, these are nothing more than suggestions - some would say dreams - and it may well be that none of them will come to fruition. But if they do, I for one think we’d start to see franchises making a little more money; which of course makes the position a lot more attractive to other potential club owners.
Suddenly, owners would be a lot less like charities and a lot more like their celebrity counterparts in Europe or the AFL, and we’d have people being able to take some real ownership over the destiny of their franchises - and in turn, leave their own mark on football in this country.
