While four new teams would cause some hype, I feel it wouldn’t get too much more publicity than two teams. Should probably bring in two new teams, get big marquee for the next season, anounce further expansion a year later and after four years have the league at 14. This way, the publicity is sustained over four years, we give time for first expansion to settle and the league is set up for long term success.
I get what you’re saying but there’s also the risk that the current bid teams that are soo close now but get told no thanks and their investors may jettison their plans if they’re not gonna get a look in before 4-5 years time and even then there could be another bidding war.
That’s why for me they should say now that a further 2 (or 3) have been shortlisted (or selected) for the second round 2 years after. They can be consulted on this as to whether they’d be in, but anyone who is serious for the long term and can’t wait 2 years more, would probably have been a bad choice to make for the 1st expansion round anyway.
I know there’s all this stuff about a whole bunch of clubs creating a second division, and I seem to remember reading that they supposedly don’t need any money from the FFA/A-League to do it. I find that hard to believe.
However, it seems to me that the biggest boost you could give to a new hypothetical new second division would be to dangle the carrot of promotion to the A-league. 1 promotion per year until the A-league got to 16 teams (or whatever the magic number is) then have relegation start from there. Seems to me like that would be the most effective way to get fans on board in any significant numbers with second division teams - the knowledge they were playing for a truly worthwhile prize. You could then get these new teams entering with a fair bit of momentum too, and ‘freshening up’ the A-league every year. You could also cover a heap of geographical locations including more teams in Sydney and Melbourne, and regionals.
Would it be enough to make it all sustainable? Probably not, it’s probably all a pipe dream. Can’t imagine we’ll ever get promotion and relegation now the clubs are in control in any case. Would love to see it though.
2nd tier would be awesome but there’s absolutely no way that there is the money there to sustain it, given the NSL wasn’t sustainable and that was the top tier, which didn’t have a tier above it to compete with. Australia is too geographically dispersed to support a viable national 2nd tier in the near term.
Yeah, deep down I know it. Just can’t see it happening. But then I occasionally read about such and such billionaire wanting a team, Man City/melb city owners, Chinese billionaires, all these new potential expansion teams with supposedly $15 mill to throw at a license, etc, and that small hope rises again that there’s the interest out there.
IF we were to introduce promotion relegation, it would more likely be limited to a few spots on the ladder. I.E team currently in a-league aren’t effected, but the top to NPL teams get promoted to play in the a-league. After that, you have to figure out a way to choose if the two teams there stay or are replaced but should be possible? Would potentially pave the way for further growth if certain teams are constantly winning games with decent crowds.
Not sure if that makes sense?
A second division would need serious buy-in from the broadcaster, but I don’t necessarily think it’s as unobtainable as suggested.
I like to think there’s a reasonable value-proposition for them - doubles the content in the quiet summer months rather than expanding the season deeper into the NRL/AFL calendar, turns current dead-rubbers into must-watch relegation battles, enables expansion into new markets which might not otherwise be viable candidates for professional sports (new markets -> new fans -> new sports package subscribers).
If a B-League broadcast deal could come in at just one quarter of the A-League’s current one, it would fund 8 squads of 21 at an average salary of $62.5k while leaving $2m in the bank for league operations, which would make it very much viable.
Then the other big question - if you’ve got a fully-professional, national competition, which is broadcast alongside the A-League and offers promotion into A-League, would fans get behind it?
I like to think that they would. I imagine that battling for survival some years and being the big fish in a smaller pond pushing for promotion in others, would be a more compelling fan experience for the smaller clubs (given the divergence in the league in recent years) than ending near the bottom year-on-year and hoping that next season might finally be the one where you ‘crack the six’ (before being eliminated in the first away final, inter-state somewhere). That could just be my football-purist-tinted glasses talking, and maybe crowds would just fall down a cliff after relegation. Maybe the bids (Wollongong, Canberra, Tasmania, etc.) would not be able to attract a following at all if they had to start up in second-tier.
My idea of addressing all of that that is to reposition the FFA Cup as the primary knockout competition of our domestic calendar, which keeps the second-division sides in the loop. Give it some more meat to get the fans engaged - make the first round a ‘nations-league’ style mini-group (maybe drawn within the state federation, or conference-based, to keep travel costs down and create/maintain local rivalries across divisions) and play the knock-out stages over two legs. Give it some prestige by playing the semis and final on their own weekends (alongside P&R play-offs) after the league concludes, and giving the winner an ACL spot.
I reckon it could totally work.
Issue with promotion/relegation is the current a-league clubs will be completely opposed to it, namely due to the inevitable loss in revenue that occurs when relegated. You also open up the potential for the a-league to be completely stacked with clubs from Melbourne/Sydney as the game/money develops. Also throw in the fact that there will be an inevitable loss in support once a club drops into the second division. People don’t have the same passion for clubs in Australia as they do in other countries where you still get 10k+ to second division games. If SFC were to drop into the second division, you could barely see us scratching through with 2-3K which then causes huge issues with finances, player wages etc.
Fully agree. You must get a really strong and viable 2nd division in place before you can even dream about promotion and relegation.
Whether it is possible or not initially I would like to see a second division set up and future A league licences come from that division. It could be a good proving ground.
Whatever, any second division must be strong enough for any team promoted to survive more than one season and must also be strong enough for a relegated team not to crash and burn.
The only way I can see promotion and relegation happening quickly is if the Aleague builds to 20 + teams and then splits into 1st and 2nd Div.
Whilst I can see a second div some time in the future promotion and relegation is so far away I really do not see it happening in many of our lifetimes (definitely not mine).
Very sensible post.
My biggest fear/question has always been when clubs get relegated. EG. If Brisbane went down and there were no Qld team in the HAL. Not only would the club struggle to keep investors/sponsors but suddenly there’d be zero HAL presence in the whole state. Could the league afford that? Same goes for SA and WA…
Talks about promotion/relegation on the agenda it seems…but some ways off in reality I’m sure.
https://dailyfootballshow.com/the-future-of-the-game-in-the-eyes-of-the-boss/
Why would Sydney FC or Brisbane get relegated?
The worst we’ve ever finished is third-last one time. Similarly, the worst Melbourne has finished is 7th. The worst City has finished under CFG is 5th. Outside of the season they tanked to focus on ACL/CWC (which they could afford to, as there was no disincentive), WSW has never been bottom three. Outside of the year Ange took over and cleared out the squad to rebuild Roarcelona from scatch (which he could afford to, as there was no disincentive), Brisbane has never finished worse than 6th.
Even without any negative consequences of finishing near the bottom, and despite most of HAL history being spent with a far more rigid/equitable cap than we have today (let alone the inevitable further relaxations in any P&R scenario), it just hasn’t been a thing that well-run well-supported and well-funded clubs end up in the bottom places. Why would it suddenly become a thing when there is a clear penalty to do so?
For one thing, I’m not sure that’s a necessarily a bad thing. If Townsville or Hobart or Bathurst can’t develop the youth, attract the support or the financial backing to be able to out-perform the 7th-strongest Sydney side in the long-run, then I don’t know what business do they have being in the league ahead of the 7th best Sydney team.
But P&R doesn’t also necessarily mean that it’s a completely open pyramid - you can still control which teams are admitted into the professional tier, which would still be a summer comp for the forseeable future, as opposed to the winter-comp grassroots/NPL.
In my mind, a second-division should be launched with a preference for the regional markets with marginal expansion bids, or A-League aspirations (Hobart, Wollongong, Canberra, Geelong, Gold Coast, Townsville, Cairns, etc.). The more successful ones would in time move up to the top-tier, while the rest meddle along with a minimally-professional set-up in front of their 2k/3k/5k crowds - but at least they’d have a professional football team to follow, which wouldn’t otherwise be viable in a single-division A-League.
I’m also pretty sceptical that there’d be all that many viable second-division clubs forming in existing markets, and being able to find success. How do you build up a fan-base and attract investors, sponsors or corporate interest from the second-division, when you are competing with top-tier clubs in the same area?
That doesn’t need relegation or a second division to be a problem.
There’s equally an inevitable loss in support when a club regularly finds itself near the bottom of the table, with no meaningful games and nothing to hope for year after year.
That’s the awkward place that Mariners and Phoenix have found themselves in recent years, as the softening salary cap (second marquee, loyalty and home-grown concessions, academy scholarships, etc.) has broadened the gap between haves and have-nots.
Now you’d be hard-pressed to find even a particularly optimistic fan of those teams credibly predicting a season better than 5th or 6th.
How long can fans continue going into season after season with little/nothing to hope for? What will motivate them to keep showing up every week if this trend continues for another 5 years? Another 10 years? 20? And how would those motivations preclude them from continuing to support their team in a second-division some years?
It seems to me that equality is a necessary ingredient of a single-division competition. If the smaller clubs (joined by any expansion clubs that don’t particularly succeed, once the novelty wears off) can’t keep up to maintain that equality what do we do? Lower the bar low and artificially impede the growth of the big clubs, so that the stragglers can keep up? What’s the good in that?
Phew, so that won’t ever change and CCM / Welly will just quietly accept their fate.
So many of these ideas about expansion are based on the idea that the league is going to keep growing in terms of popularity and overall financial value. However if you look at other codes, its fairly clear that there just isn’t enough interest/people/money to support second divisions and promotion/relegation. There’s no reason to suspect football will suddenly outgrow all these other codes which have been around far longer. Football will keep growing but I’d be very surprised if it grew enough to have 30+ teams and two divisions.
I think the best we can hope for is a 15ish team league without promotion/relegation.
The MLS shows it is possible to cut through the noise when football isn’t seen as a top tier sport in an established sports marketplace. Granted, there are still questions about pro/rel, second division and grassroots for both leagues and I think it will be many years before these get addressed.
Perhaps this is just me being a bit of an optimist but I have always believed in the sleeping giant which could be awoken if we could get the narrative, vision and administration of football in this country right. Fuck knows when that will occur though.
The MLS also benefits from a country that has a massive population. We do not, which is the big issue when it comes to expansion of any sport. We just don’t have the people living here and the travel distances between centres is also bigger than most countries.
Agreed and I’m not suggesting that we will have new expansion teams drawing 60k on the regular ala Atlanta. Success for us would obviously be in proportion to our population. A tassy team regularly getting 8k to a small boutique stadium would be a success in my books.
The distance question is different altogether and will be one of the toughest to address when it comes to getting a proper second division.
@scooter literally said it. Look at our population in comparison to the US. It would be sick if we could somehow do it, but its super unlikely with a population of less than 30 million.
I address most of that in my reply to Scooter’s post (looks like we posted at the same time though) - scaled back expectations of success would be required but ultimately distance may still screw us.
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