The A-League Expansion Thread

[Eastwest]

Too many mistakes have been made in organising the A League.
The last 2 expansion clubs were two of these mistakes. Western United and Macarthur should never have made the cut and their crowds prove this despite them having decent teams.

It was a push but with better development and adverts they could've done this much better. Easily plenty population and talent in those areas.
I hope thee crowd gets behind Canberra.

The wanderers and Heart was a good move to create derbies. But 2 is where it should have stayed. Western United should be moved to Geelong.

Probably but will that culture take to round ball?

I believe Football needs another team in Queensland, The states too big to have just one team. Gold Coast and North Queensland have previously failed, possibly a team on the Sunshine Coast could work. They already have an NPL team there.

It does but the 2 headed crowd wont come around. Shame.

Toowoomba is a Town of 140,000 people, it doesn't have any national league teams in any sport. Why not consider Toowoomba?

no. bogan town. Does league really well.

2 other areas that need addressing are the tv coverage and the ticket prices. I think the channel 10 coverage is good, but only one game on free to air TV isn't enough when you compare it to Rugby League, AFL and cricket and while this continues football won't go forward.

yep

I don't have Paramount and from what I've heard from subscribers is that it's crap coverage of football. They need to fix that up plus put more on Paramount to make it worth getting it.

I thinks its fine. Takes a little long for the replay to get put up.

[MFKS]

I reckon that $25 million figure is complete nonsense from the APL, they will take a can of coke and pie from anyone stupid enough to sign up for the league.

In all honesty, I reckon they are telling clubs to have $25 million in funds ready before they sign up, because they will spend that much over the next 5 years to buy a licence and keep a team afloat.

But even then if it's a case of 25 million in funds available over 5 years then we still have a problem

There is a fundamental structural problem with the competition if clubs need to be losing that type of money

Just looking at the Jets I would rather we went and picked 11 Newy locals paid them minimum wages and played 4-4-2 and played direct and kicked and scrapped all game and we played at Magic Park each game

Be auch better prospect than over paying the likes of Jurman ONeill Burhagier and still not making the semis and losing millions each year playing in an empty 30k stadium

[Frodo]

But even then if it's a case of 25 million in funds available over 5 years then we still have a problem

There is a fundamental structural problem with the competition if clubs need to be losing that type of money

Just looking at the Jets I would rather we went and picked 11 Newy locals paid them minimum wages and played 4-4-2 and played direct and kicked and scrapped all game and we played at Magic Park each game

Be auch better prospect than over paying the likes of Jurman ONeill Burhagier and still not making the semis and losing millions each year playing in an empty 30k stadium

Hey, you shut your mouth with that sort of logic. When we start agreeing on stuff it means everyone is in a lot of trouble.


For some reason the A League genuinely doesn't want to make itself profitable. Every decision is aimed at losing money for at least half a decade in order to become the No 1 sport in the country. When we all know that's not going to happen and if it did it would probably be 10-20 years away and would require a huge stuff up from the NRL and AFL instead of us just taking over from being so great a product.


Can only assume there's some business logic we don't understand where in one hand these owners pour fire onto large piles of money and somehow that translates into profits magically appearing in another hand from other sources. (Tax write offs, city planning kick backs, etc??? No idea.)

[plague]

Sporting franchises (thats what we are dealing with now) are not designed to make an operating profit (NFL exempt).

The $25m figure is designed to sucker someone in who has $25m to blow. If we charge $100k then every asshole wants in and we exist in a comp that has a bunch of small business owners as bosses. They will try and run it like a small business and we will forever exist at that level.

The second someone pays $25m for a licence then the next one is worth $35m and a good existing club is worth $50m and so on. From then ego gets involved and everyone wants to be in the club of wankers who own one of these things.

Double -eff-aye is only copying the US model which just saw its first MLS club be valued over a billion dollars. Feel free to go look at how much that club makes, youll be shocked.

Its why hedge funds and oil states are the only people rich enough to invest in high level sport now. The only way owners make money from sport is through the value of their franchise and their ability to sell it. Soccer had those suckers lining up in the early days but we stopped them from throwing their money around through salary caps and rules that didnt let them show off their spending power.

Palmer, Sage and Tinkler should all have been let loose with the chequebook and our sport would have been 100x better off.

All the fairness in the world will never stop poor clubs from being poor. What we want is for them to be desirable to others who arent poor and they get sold. Its a pyramid scheme of course and the bubble will burst eventually. But still, we will all be dead anyway so who gives a ****.

[MFKS]

Hey, you shut your mouth with that sort of logic. When we start agreeing on stuff it means everyone is in a lot of trouble.


For some reason the A League genuinely doesn't want to make itself profitable. Every decision is aimed at losing money for at least half a decade in order to become the No 1 sport in the country. When we all know that's not going to happen and if it did it would probably be 10-20 years away and would require a huge stuff up from the NRL and AFL instead of us just taking over from being so great a product.


Can only assume there's some business logic we don't understand where in one hand these owners pour fire onto large piles of money and somehow that translates into profits magically appearing in another hand from other sources. (Tax write offs, city planning kick backs, etc??? No idea.)

But it is reasonably logical as to why things are so out of hand in the ALeague in relation to costs

The Ponzi scheme of Franchises can not be reduced. Ie you can't sell of Western United and MacArthur Rams licences to those suckers and then start undercutting the next franchise

The other issue is it keeps the "wogs" out which has been a ridiculous failure from day 1 of Lowys scapegoating of them

If for example we dropped salary caps to 1-1.5 milliomn a year then not only are smaller markets like Tasmania Wollongong Gold Coast able to run teams but it also brings the likes of Sth Melbourne Hellas Adelaide City Sydney Croatia etc right into the picture of being able to compete in the top flight when they can rustle up those funds

**** me go one better the Jets might be able to get stable ownership 5Lol5

Throw into the equation we could easily start to get a 20 team top flight going and a 2nd division pretty quickly if the overall costs were reduced

But once again it is back to players being overpaid which cripples local clubs at NPL level but it is also crippling ALeague clubs paying 2-3 million a year in wages to the likes of Hoffman Hoole Osama Malik Hutcho Simon and every other shit **** ALeague player there has been

[Frodo]

An article came out today which says the asking price for the Jets is set at $15 million.

We are screwed. The only type of people stupid enough to spend that on a business that's guaranteed to lose more money than they can cover with any increase to valuation, would be the sort of business person who would run us into the ground anyways... just like the other amateur owners we already had.

[plague]

An article came out today which says the asking price for the Jets is set at $15 million.

Interesting timing for that little tidbit of information to surface.

Its almost like the double eff aye is letting everyone know that you can have a used club like us for $15m, or a new shiny one for $20m, or wait til the next ones that will be even dearer.

Get in now, stocks are limited.

[Alton]

This can’t be serious

[Bon]

Weren't we supposed to have been evaluated at around 5mil a few years ago??
I know everything else in this world has gone up in price, but based on performance we are one thing that almost certainly shouldn't have..

[Frodo]

Weren't we supposed to have been evaluated at around 5mil a few years ago??
I know everything else in this world has gone up in price, but based on performance we are one thing that almost certainly shouldn't have..

Lee paid $5 million, wanted to recoup his investment but couldn't. The A League wanted $8 million but couldn't find any buyers in 2021. So 2 years later these new idiots in charge think they can get double that for us.

We are screwed. Enjoy it while we can and start supporting the idea of a second division so we maybe have a chance to start again down there.

[My2BobsWorth]

NRL has big leagues clubs with pokie revenue, AFL had 90,000 fans on a thursday night, A league has

[MFKS]

NRL has big leagues clubs with pokie revenue, AFL had 90,000 fans on a thursday night, A league has

I don't see exactly how any of this is actually relevant

The clubs ain't sustainable based on the exorbitant inflated costs being forced onto the owners

It ain't a case of our clubs are trying to spend beyond their means

They are being forced to due to the incompetent poorly organised comp from Day 1 under the FFA and now under the current bunch of fools

[My2BobsWorth]

The point is, the sugar daddy model ain't sustainable, so they can go for the NRL model or AFL model. They have no big licensed clubs so it's the AFL model. As you say the FFA has totally ruined the product. Soccer is a contact sport and people want to see contact, you get more contact with a game of pool. To get the crowds back they need a better product and more exciting game. Not in the near future.

[northern_swan]

The point is, the sugar daddy model ain't sustainable, so they can go for the NRL model or AFL model. They have no big licensed clubs so it's the AFL model. As you say the FFA has totally ruined the product. Soccer is a contact sport and people want to see contact, you get more contact with a game of pool. To get the crowds back they need a better product and more exciting game. Not in the near future.

The key part you’re missing regarding the AFL model is the TV rights deal. It funds all the way down to grassroots, where football is funding the sport via registrations.

[My2BobsWorth]

I don't miss things. The big money comes from packing out stadiums on a regular basis, not 5 thousand on a regular basis

[MFKS]

The point is, the sugar daddy model ain't sustainable, so they can go for the NRL model or AFL model. They have no big licensed clubs so it's the AFL model. As you say the FFA has totally ruined the product. Soccer is a contact sport and people want to see contact, you get more contact with a game of pool. To get the crowds back they need a better product and more exciting game. Not in the near future.

Fixing the product

May I suggest not playing at 3pm or 5pm in Summer for a start

How exactly do we expect good product when we choose to kick off at stupid times in poor weather ??

[Frodo]

Fixing the product

May I suggest not playing at 3pm or 5pm in Summer for a start

How exactly do we expect good product when we choose to kick off at stupid times in poor weather ??

Piss summer football off altogether. Football is a winter sport, always has been. All of a sudden the afternoon family catered kick off times make a lot more sense then too.

[furns]

Lee paid $5 million, wanted to recoup his investment but couldn't. The A League wanted $8 million but couldn't find any buyers in 2021. So 2 years later these new idiots in charge think they can get double that for us.

We are screwed. Enjoy it while we can and start supporting the idea of a second division so we maybe have a chance to start again down there.

things were fine with Martin Lee until he was cut off at the knees by the Chinese govt clamping down on funds going offshore. If that hadn't occurred, he'd still be here and we wouldn't be in #foreverseventh mediocrity

[belchardo]

Really not hearing a lot about this in canberra lately. Starting to get a little worried.

[Alton]

There won?t be an expansion, with Perth, Roar and us with no owners they can?t afford to bring in new clubs, not to mention the lack of talent in the current league let alone finding another 60 players