Visits to Australia by global giants Chelsea and Real Madrid do not help the A-League
Date April 26, 2015
Michael Cockerill
Football Writer
All of a sudden, the Australian football market is hot property. Ripe for profit, ripe for exploitation. Over the next few months, seven big European clubs will descend on our shores – filling stadiums over nine games in four cities which the spin doctors will present as a win for the Australian game. Truth is, the local game will be lucky to get away with a draw.
Two years ago, Liverpool came to Melbourne, filled the MCG, and walked away with a $10 million profit. Now the Reds are on the way back, along with AS Roma, Villareal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Manchester City and Real Madrid. It's an impressive list, and, yes, an exciting one.
But please don't tell me there are any altruistic motives. What Liverpool showed is that there's good money to be made in Australia – the sort of money that interests even the biggest clubs in the world. That's why these clubs are embarking on a sweep through the country which some estimates suggest will generate around $45m in revenue. How much of that money stays here to re-invest in the Australian game? Maybe 10 per cent.
Football's global appeal is, of course, both a strength and a weakness. Certainly, the likes of AFL, rugby league and rugby union envy football's worldwide reach.
Yet if you're looking for the greatest impediment to football's growth in this country, here it is. The endless fascination and constant comparison between the local product and the overseas one. These people have a name. Eurosnobs.
It's a glass ceiling the game here has never quite broken through. The advent of Australia's first professional competition, the A-League, has over the past decade at least provided a counterweight. Indeed, in the past few years, there were some promising signs that the competition was ready to make some serious commercial inroads. But then along comes the foreign juggernaut to put the A-League back in its place.
Consider this. Football Federation Australia has been working feverishly to get commercial free-to-air interested in the A-League, with no resolution in sight. But Channel Nine and Channel Seven have fallen over themselves to broadcast some of these upcoming exhibitions. Potentially, that's money diverted from the local game.
Secondly, the FFA is constantly courting state governments for funding, but often stands at the back of the queue. Yet the state governments of Victoria, Queensland, NSW and South Australia have been willing to provide around $20m in guarantees for these exhibition matches to go ahead. In the case of Victoria, that might result in the public purse being snapped shut and the Socceroos miss out on a home game in Melbourne during the next phase of the World Cup campaign. Watch this space.
The FFA could, conceivably, stop the invasion, or at least minimise it. The national body must sanction every match played by a foreign club on our shores, so technically David Gallop could say no. He hasn't. He won't.
The rule is there, but rarely enforced. These invasions happen on an annual basis in North America and South-East Asia, where football struggles for traction, just like Australia. In an ideal world, the local game would be able to protect itself. But the market forces are too powerful, too strong. The political will to control the situation simply isn't there. Japan stands alone as a country prepared to buck the trend.
Thus the FFA bends with the wind, waiting to ride out the storm. Sooner or later – having milked the Australian market dry – the travelling circus will move on. The only issue is when.
In the meantime, the game here is told to be grateful for the small change. Between sanction fees ($250,000 per game) and a share of the TV rights, the FFA will pocket around $3m from these exhibitions – about the same it would have made if the annual All-Stars game had gone ahead. The three A-League clubs involved – Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar and Sydney FC – might make about $500,000 each. Short-term gain, true enough, but what about the long-term pain?
Here's a disturbing statistic. Of primary school age kids who claim football as their preferred sport, only 22 per cent identify with an A-League club. The rest are, in effect, budding Eurosnobs. So there's yet another generation to convert. That's the real legacy of these tours. In Australia, football's enduring battle is not with the other codes, it's with itself. You wonder if things will ever change.
http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/visi ... mtd5d.html
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