Let’s begin with some cognitive dissonance. Friday’s announcement that the 2019-20 A-League season will recommence as planned and the 2020-21 campaign will remain on Fox Sports is, in these extraordinary circumstances, a positive result for Football Federation Australia that demonstrates collective fortitude in rejecting the lowball offer on the table throughout much of the lockdown and sparking a period of expectation as the game unshackles itself from a codependent broadcast deal.
At the same time, there is cause for angst and fury that the game, not flush with cash, has agreed to the haemorrhaging of 44% of next year’s broadcast revenue and the loss of the guarantee of a further $114m for the following two seasons during the least favourable economic conditions in living memory. Nothing is ever straightforward in Australian football.
But at least it is something. “In any moment of decision,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt, “the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” After three months of nothing the A-League can now hustle through its next clutch of matches then figure out where savings have to be made before next season begins, all the while seeding the world of opportunity that presents thereafter.
These opportunities will likewise come loaded with cognitive dissonance and an absence of a conclusively correct answer. The first of these will arrive in December when the A-League begins to shift from a summer-focussed competition to one easing its way back to a winter sport, for the first time in 30 years. This will eventually bring the A-League more in line with the rest of the football pyramid in Australia (proving the ground for the introduction of promotion and relegation) as well as Asian Football Confederation neighbours, and reduce exposure to scorching midsummer temperatures. It also means competing with domestic behemoths the AFL and NRL for media space and stadium access, and the risk of poorer quality playing surfaces.
However, the issue of coverage in the media is perhaps a red herring given the paucity of attention football already receives. The window of supposed clear summer air has long since been occupied by the Big Bash League and more recently by AFLW, offerings that quickly garnered much greater buy-in by free-to-air TV channels and popular mastheads. This is compounded by budgetary challenges at Nine Newspapers, the very survival of AAP, and the departure of football specialists like David Davutovic, Daniel Garb and Tom Smithies from the News Corp family, indicating column inches on football will be hard to come by regardless of the time of year.
“We know what people are reading and we know, even more importantly, why people are subscribing,” News Corp national executive editor Peter Blunden said earlier this month. “In the end, the numbers don’t lie.” It seems safe to assume those numbers do not reflect a high demand for Australian football content, nor should it come as little surprise that Foxtel, 65% owned by News Corp, would look to extricate itself from a formal relationship with the game during a period of extreme belt-tightening.
In other words, the status quo is not in football’s favour. Moreover, it is inconceivable to see the tide turning if the game at the highest level continues on its current path, all too often an anodyne made-for-TV schedule filler lacking narrative or jeopardy. It has to excite its way into the zeitgeist once again, authentically, confidently and of its own volition.
“We’ve got to get our act together, the clubs have to invest, and we have to be hungry,” FFA CEO James Johnson told SBS. “We have to give the owners a vision and they have to buy into that.”
Whatever the mechanisms may be, from a second division to FFA TV, there has to be a forthright football-first attitude driving the decision making. This is how the game will establish the identity it needs to carve out. Despite facing extraordinary operating challenges, this is an opportunity for the game to grasp.
Here’s one example. I would argue that football’s unique selling point in Australia is the active supporter experience and the atmosphere it generates. Providing optimal conditions for this to flourish should be a pillar in this next phase. That requires appropriately sized venues, flexible ticketing, knowledgeable stewarding and policing, and, most challengingly, a collective approach to supporter behaviour that encourages the febrile to flourish, without that given inch being taken a mile.
This taps into the existential question that should be confronted periodically, but especially at a juncture where everything is on the table: what is the point of the A-League? (It’s an easy sop to offer an “it’s for the fans” platitude in response, but backing that up is another matter entirely.) There are many competing answers to that question of course, but for the first time in the league’s history, the list need not be topped by one relating to the need to satisfy the requirements of a broadcaster in exchange for revenue.
That is at once terrifying and also full of possibility. Bringing us neatly to the end, wrestling once more with cognitive dissonance. Nothing is ever straightforward in Australian football.
