Yeah ok so the comments weren’t made in the forum or feedback received, nor an environment that any of us were part of, was just interested why you keep bringing it up?
Half previously you’ve said APL and PE that was been done in football was an exemplar for rugby in Australia to follow, and posted quite regularly about the A League, surprised you haven’t jumped on the topic earlier. Theres definitely lessons earned about what not to do, and like English Rugby, I’m glad another sport PE deal has gone south to demonstrate that’s it’s not the holy grail of growth.
Yes and I stand by it, even more now.
they started with 8 teams, now they have 12 soon 14, they now have a full season of womens teams.
These teams provide players for there national teams, even if many transfer from the A-l to Europe to get selected, there crowds are up slightly on last year so to are there subscriptions [no idea how much subs are up]. They have two new teams coming in.
Those in charge made some huge management miscalculations, they started a digital network and spend 30 million on it and it failed badly, so they sacked everybody associated with it which was half their staff. They made other management stuff ups, quite a number so much so fans stopped going for a while in protest.
None of the mistakes Football management made were due to the system and structure they put in place.
Yet for all these mistakes people still wanta invest and buy teams in the A-L. The teams are not cheap 25 million buy in.
BTW, Nine / Fairfax & News / Fox are great places given the codes they own broadcast rights too, to read why the A-L is successful.
No one is denying the A-l is in deep trouble, equally the structures they have in place will allow them to reset.
As an aside, if you leave out the two new A-league teams they are averaging close to 9K, just over 8K with the new teams, and there crowds have steadily grown this year,
Even more than before, the structure they have in place is IMO the way to go, maybe I should instead of calling it Football make up a name, its like saying Football in any sense is a sin and needs to be cleansed from the site
For all the failures of the A-L, as you point out, since it started, player numbers have grown hugely across all ages and genders, a steady flow of players for the international sides, entry into the Asian Football Confederation [worth millions in sponsorship alone] . There national sides have gone from after thoughts once every four years and nude calendars to arguably with cricket the most popular teams in the country.
An example, prior the the A-l, player numbers on the Central Coast were around 5K, today they are well over 16k, many of the locals that play for the Mariners would have gone to league or union.
The A-L management, has made many mistakes that digital network was a wooper of a mistake. That the A-L is in serious trouble is beyond doubt, but the 50 million coming in from two new teams, and maybe another 20 million with the sale of Perth & Newcastle will help a little.
Back to me saying its the way to go, IMO its even clearer. Arguing their structure is wrong, well its akin to arguing that Super Rugby is the way forward