14 February 2015
Do regional clubs have any future in the A-League?
Robbie Slater suggests that Newcastle Jets and Central Coast Mariners are in a parlous state and they need to be saved by FFA.
They almost always have been.
However, to suggest that it would be “best for Tinkler to walk away” takes no account of basic business practice.
FFA sold Nathan Tinkler the license for Newcastle Jets for $5 million, at a time when FFA had no spare cash. He was told this was the ‘going price’ at a time when other licenses had been, at most, $2 million; some new club owners had paid nothing.
Who knows what Tinkler’s reasons were for buying a football team? From all reports, he was a ‘local’ who didn’t want to see a professional sporting club disappear from his home town, notwithstanding he knew nothing about the game. He didn’t manage the club day-to-day – some would say this is a refreshing change from an owner – but brought in another local lad and former A-League player as General Manager (Robbie Middleby), and a local great of the game to chair an advisory board (Ray Baartz). Membership and community engagement improved significantly; on-field performances didn’t.
While Tinkler is meeting the license conditions, FFA has no reason to give him the flick; and he is not likely to return the license as a gift to FFA. At the very least, he would want to recoup his initial and ongoing outlays.
While the ownership model for A-League clubs is in the hands of private ownership, these are the risks that FFA take. It is how business works – business decisions are not driven by charitable or ‘public good’ type, community objectives.
Slater also raises a broader issue – that of the place of regional clubs in the A-League.
If the professional game is to be relevant and accessible to regional Australia, regional A-League teams must be included, especially if we are to have a more authentic competition. It may not deliver many more pairs of eyes in broadcast dollars, but it does expand the interest in the game in other media; it does better fulfill the development of the game nationally and give pathways for young, elite players; and it does deliver a truly national footprint.
That is not to say that more metropolitan teams are not also part of the equation – just look at the additional public interest and media attention that flowed from the long-overdue introduction of the Western Sydney Wanderers.
The key to this is the money from the host broadcaster.
A report in The Economist last month showed that match-day sales are becoming less and less important, while commercial deals and broadcast rights more and more important in major club revenues. The new TV deal announced for the EPL earlier this week puts the 20 EPL clubs in the top 40 richest football clubs globally.
Australia is no different. The more money from TV rights, the greater the opportunity for all clubs - but particularly regional clubs, which are unable draw on the same level of fans or sponsors – to be sustainable and competitive. Expansion of the A-League has to maintain Central Coast and Newcastle Jets as the flag bearers of regional clubs, but there is no doubt that the next TV deal will depend on the new clubs being in locations where the “population is in the millions” to quote David Gallop.
It is the TV deal after the next that will depend on, and need, additional regional teams. Any regional club with aspirations to be on the national stage would be positioning itself now as a club that can grow a fan base, community support and commercial support within their region – in the knowledge that underwriting of the club’s team-related costs will come from the distribution of broadcast revenues.