Not really. I mean the destination leagues are pretty much all in Europe. If you’ve made it, you’re playing in Germany, Spain, Italy or the UK and to a lesser extent, France. That’s where all the money is. There’s no reason to have that as an insult. In fact it’s probably the best place to start. If we’re regularly developing talent that’s making it big overseas, then there’s no reason why we can’t then make more efforts to keep them over here. We need to start somewhere and it’s probably the easiest way to make money.
The A-League is a development league.
The A-League is not a development league.
Both of these are true.
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How the hell did you get access to audio from the APL Board meeting?
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I should clarify that I think developing players is an important function of the A league.
I guess it just comes off, to me, like corporate min-maxxing talk, as though we’re in an episode of Succession where we’ve been bought by Waystar and they are gutting us and only keeping the bit that makes the most profit. What’s the point of making big(ish) signings, or fighting to compete with the other codes domestically at all? We’re a development league. Who cares about players like Grant who have played their whole careers at this level and are up there with the club legends? We’re a development league.
Just because all the corporate money flooding into those big five leagues means their decision makers think that way doesn’t mean we have to snort their coke.
I don’t think it’s exactly that… It’s more referencing where most of your money is going to come from. A DevelopmentLeague will have a larger portion of their income generated through players sales, whereas a Destination League will do so through sponsorships and marketing.
It might be shortish, but how can you not like the insight and story telling.
Let alone the man himself. Also notice that it’s ‘A-leagues’ now not ‘Keep up’. Much better.
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I wish there was a time machine I could get in and go to myself two years ago and go “NO ALEX! DON’T DO IT! IT WILL ALL BE FOR NOTHING! YOU ARE GOING TO HATE YOURSELF EVEN MORE AFTER”
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But what if you didn’t and it was successful?
You had a go at putting your skill set into an area you’re passionate about it. It’s worth the attempt every time.
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Yeah, if you didn’t have a go you’d have wondered if you could have turned it around.
They have a £5 billion broadcast deal, first and foremost… they get the largest part of their money from the same place we do, a broadcaster. Gambling and car companies will just pay a lot more to run ads during the Prem than the A-liga.
We have a $200,000,000 deal split over 5 years, split between men and women. At best it works out to be $3.3 million a year for each team, assuming it ONLY goes to A league men clubs. That’s assuming 100% of the money goes to each team
If we’re at a place where outbound transfer fees regularly average more than that per club per season, then I’d be more comfortable calling ourselves a development league and orienting the whole league along a Mariners-like philosophy of buy cheap, sell high. As it is, only a few wonder kids have even gotten close to that number in the course of that broadcast deal, and most of them (except Irankunda) have been part of the City Sportswash Group and were leveraging their massive network more than our ability to produce talented players.
The deal - and producing a compelling domestic league that gets people watching, or at least tuning in so they know when to cash out of their bet - matters more to us than developing and selling players.
assuming the league met certain metrics, which as far as I can tell, they have not done. Goodness knows how short that leaves the APL and the clubs.
This source is probably banned but anyway…posting in the hope this forum will make sense of it all.
My 2 cents worth = Paramount+ killed the league. Everything else is just the same ups and downs we had for 15 years (and more), but putting the game out of reach to most existing fans and all would-be fans, and either not noticing or not caring when your fans first complain and then start to disappear, has been a disaster.
Paramount didn’t blow the money on coke and hookers (really they probably didn’t get anything nearly as good…). The APL are just inept.
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I’m supposed to trust a guy who says he had to google Western United? And keeps saying “it will be privatised” … it’s already “privatised” no? It is majority owned by the clubs and Silverlake.
The way he describes the deal with Silverlake also seems odd. They provide cash - but if the cash is spent it has to be paid back… what?
I very much doubt he’s got great contacts in the sport. He sounds like a hack. No doubt the financial picture isn’t rosy, but I wouldn’t be taking this guys word on the situation at face value.
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2GB is just a radio/audio version of clickbait on social media and the same vile comments and responses.
i’ll never forget being in an uber to work and the guy had it on, somebody called up and said “I’ve got no water to my house!” and they gave him a $100 Westfield voucher or something. Truly bizarre segment.
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It was probably just someone from their sales department.
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