loyalty ain’t the issue. the salary cap changing year on year and no transfer fees allowed means that most players just get one year contracts so those journeymen players just go where the work is.
completely agree on the effect it has for existing and potential fans though.
What’s a Western United?
i know it’s all subjective, but i’m the complete opposite. i love the chaotic nature of a-league football and find the premier league, la liga, etc boring because it’s so clean and tidy (which is a weird way of putting it but i hope it gets my viewpoint across)
It also means there is no difference between each club, other than the name and colour on the guernsey. What do they stand for? Especially when most of the players are changing clubs.
I felt the same about the Big Bash. I have zero interest…. And it’s probably reduced my interest in Cricket as a whole.
You have amazing 100+ year rivalry of State vs State, then they divide each state to teams. I couldn’t give a f*ck between Melbourne Stars or Renegades. These teams mean nothing other than the colour they wear.
In fact If we played a quiz, and I had to answer what was a Big Bash team or NBL team…. I’d have no idea.
marketing and engagement consultants are a scourge on sport
-edit- i do a bit of work with fox sports, and “promote athletes, not the teams” is at the core of their marketing strategy for all the sports they show. kind of makes me wonder if the constant player movement is why they gave up on a-league. it also makes me think that super netball will do very well under their new deal.
-edit again- fk i could post about the business side of sport all day. i keep thinking i should make a thread for it but it would devolve into 100x “fold north and move gc to tas” pretty much immediately.
fair enough, each to their own. i mean i don’t mind a bit of chaos but there just aren’t a lot of guys who can make something out of nothing in the A-league or who are just architects with their passing.
it’s very hard to artificially manufacture an emotional connection with a team. It’s a very personal thing it takes years and years of connection and nurturing. Marketing is all about short term measurable returns. Fox doesn’t care whether you love Victory, they only care if you subscribe. The goals of the clubs and the broadcasters aren’t really aligned, indeed they almost compete to a degree.
i think there is something about developing an emotional affinity to an organization as a child that is very difficult if not impossible to replicate amongst adults.
some one above gave an example of the big bash, it’s perfect. I still care how Victoria does in the shield but once they binned the state league 20/20 my interest in that comp disappeared. I could imagine if my kids got into it that would pull me along for the ride.
I can enjoy watching European football for the skill level but I’m not invested in any one particular club. i followed leeds when Viduka and Kewell where there but not since then. I like to keep an on the aussies in the NBA but certainly would not say i have a team. I sorta follow the steelers but that’s because i lived there as a child and have an emotional connection from that.
I see above that @scotty21 is not a fan of the new Melbourne Western United team.
I am very surprised at this as he has form in supporting MEL WU.
Yep. Should have been South East. We were primed for a team and instead they sent it out west.
Really should have had a team here 30 years ago. But what are you going to do when you have council after council and mayor after mayor stuck in the 1950’s.
The stockyards in Dandy should have been bulldozed 20 years before they actually did it. Could have had a great opportunity to build a stadium right next to the Dandy train station and really set the region up properly.
No foresight. Just really poor planning.
It has always been a rubbish product.
it’s developed through narratives. humans are always a sucker for a good story.
kids can get hooked via simple stories (eg: renegades are good guys because they are in melbourne and wear the colour red. the end.) but adults will mostly seek out stories with a little more complexity than that. (eg: leicester in 2016)
what the consultants always get wrong is that yeah, hooking the kids is easy and gives you a base audience to build off over 20 years or whatever. but the trouble with this is as those kids get older the narrative remains too simple and they lose interest. the consultants don’t care - they got paid years ago.
Peggy O’Neal may disagree
i’m not saying it’s impossible at an individual level but it’s tough to manufacture it externally. Peggy moved here and followed her local club and got hooked.
It’s a fascinating topic. I love the story of the club, I love that we have so many AFL clubs in Melbourne. Each has a geographic place, some more than others, and a cultural place. I love the names and dynasties of father-son (soon to be parent-child I hope). We have a precious way of following Aussie Rules.
Yet the AFL explicitly promotes player trades, presumably for media attention, despite the damage it does to the story and the unnecessary stress it puts on players. Most overseas sport appears similar, though in the GAA players explicitly want to get back to play for their home. From this thread’s descriptions of the A League, the bond between club and player is near-invisible .
I was surprised when Footscray changed its name to Western- Western what? Melbourne Victory, Melbourne Heart/City and Western Suburbs/United are amazingly bland. Perhaps our next A League club could be called “Soccer FC” and really keep its options open.
They thought they were going to be relocated to Sydney…
on every single industry.
biggest load of money pits ive ever seen. useless wankers that ■■■■ up a process more than benefit it who only rake in dollars on exploiting existing teams going above and beyond their scope to make a ■■■■ process work.
and Ted Lasso
haven’t got to that, had on the back burner as something the wife wasn’t going to be into and hadn’t got around to it. then the other day she chimes in that someone at work told her Ted Lasso is good so i plan on following through on that, just got distracted by Foundation the other night.
Re Ted Lasso, on the sports side (rather than the general feelgood side) there is definitely something to be said about the role of the head coach in setting the culture a sports club, and not necessarily needing to be the expert on tactics or training drills - provided that they have strong assistants for those aspects.
i’m not convinced of that at all to be honest.