Business of Sport

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I dunno, I rocked up to plenty of games at Marvel between 2017-2019 and just got a GA ticket at the gate.

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or just scanned into random ga section 5 minutes before bounce never had issues the last 3 years

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The tickets are released in so many different allotments (presumably to artificially stimulate demand) there’s basically never a sellout

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something interesting the nfl are doing

basically a system where teams have exclusive commercial rights for particular territories. fan events, commercial outlets, potentially media rights, and i assume a while down the track a home game or two.

i wonder which idiot team bidded on australia

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I’m not really sure how that will work. I imagine anyone with an interest will already have a team? Maybe in a generation it may have some payback. Really sounds like a way of outsourcing game development.

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so commonwealth games are going to be in vic in 2026

interestingly enough it’s mostly going to be happening in regional areas, abandoning the idea of massive sold out stadiums in favour of “boutique” venues. definitely the way to go, ain’t gonna have many malawi lawn bowls fans booking flights to avalon.

geelong - swimming/diving, beach volleyball, t20, gymnastics, hockey, table tennis, triathlon
bendigo - t20, road cycling, lawn bowls, netball, squash, weightlifting
ballarat - athletics, boxing, t20
gippsland - badminton, t20, road cycling, rugby 7s

off my rudimentary knowledge of existing regional victorian facilities it seems like geelong’s getting a new or upgraded aquatic centre and hockey pitch, and ballarat is getting either llanberris or city oval done up. and probably a revamp of falcons stadium in morwell for the 7s.

surprised shepparton hasn’t been included. maybe they’ll get something else happening there.

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Hahahahahaha there’s all of 5 real cities in Australia, and not a single one of them wanted it, and it still got awarded here?

Be good to get some investment in Bendigo & Ballarat. Natural places for the next AFL team IMO.

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Relocation is the only way Bendigo or Ballarat get a team

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yeah they’re going for a proof-of-concept of smaller cities hosting with existing or upgraded infrastructure. because otherwise they won’t get bids for future versions.

world games does the same thing

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This article may be of interest to some in here. It’s got a few animated graphs/charts that won’t embed so you’ll need to click through.

1 Like
91

well i said in the aleague thread i’d rant about this at some point

this is through a lens of my own stupid opinion as someone who works in sport. i make a lot of generalisations based on first and second hand info. so if i say something that makes you go “well not this one specific club”, of course i fkng didn’t mean that one specific club. it’s also going to have a very heavy victorian slant because, well, that’s where i work.

you’re gonna see lots of calls to “fund” women’s soccer after the tillies wrecked everyone’s sht. but what the hell does that look like? building more pitches? more billboards? making the players public servants?

soccer in australia itself can’t agree. different governing bodies have different ambitions, and a lot of the time they’re at odds with each other. there’s no unified plan that all national, state and local associations have bought into. many ministers over recent years have met with orgs and asked them “so how do we make this work” and get all sorts of bonkers ideas barked at them, making the minister go “ah i see” and giving the money to afl or nrl instead who have simple, concise goals. “please build us this reserve so that we can convert ___ kids playing at schools in the area into community participants, we have clubs and coaches ready to go.” done. easy win.

build more facilities. okay. what? and where? a lot of proposals put forward involve the virtual or actual gifting of public land to soccer clubs. community consultation blocks that because “wtf that’s a perfectly good park don’t fkng rip it up and fence it off”. which soccer interprets as “omg everyone hates soccer.” one proposal i saw a while back was turning a four-ish acre public reserve into entirely synthetic turf. which is fkng awful idea from a pure environmentalist standpoint, let alone making the entire park completely unusable on a 36 degree day. i wrote an objection to that as a resident. full 3aw listener sht. facilities are getting built in outer suburbs en masse because there’s still space out there. but they’re not visible and most people don’t have object permanence.

even if you build them, soccer is protectionist as fk. no changes pls, the glory days of the 80s will be returning any minute now and we don’t want to stand in the way of that. plus the sexism at club administration level makes the afl look like the country women’s association. women’s and girls teams get their trainings and games “rescheduled” constantly. sorry, the lads need extra cardio work. (this is by no means exclusive to soccer). i used to be a volunteer lino for a women’s side (was dating a player at the time) and got mocked by the club president for it. three times. to my face. if funding was offered for women’s facilities, they’d be given over to the men the second the project was over.

the vic govt is rolling out legislation to very specifically counter this. fair access policy. look it up. they may as well explicitly say “soccer and vafa, this is directed at you”

right, so let’s fund something else.

do we straight up pay the women’s players to be professional? we used to do that for olympians and everyone fkng hated that, so we (sort of) don’t do it any more. do we subsidise rego fees? clubs use junior fees to pay their senior male players. it’s not even a secret. so guess where subsidies will go.

(again i’ll emphasise that none of what i’m talking about is exclusive to soccer)

so short of setting up a completely different administrative structure to govern the women’s game (which, imo, is impractical but not dumb), under the current environment any funding put into the women’s game will pretty much be redirected into the men’s game almost immediately. governments know this, which is why it isn’t happening.

if i were in charge of everything, what would i do?

  1. allow non-aleague clubs to receive transfer fees from o/s teams. there’s only a finite amount of money available in aus sport due to market saturation and small population. if more money is needed, it has to come from somewhere else. give clubs a alternative revenue stream to chase via player development.

  2. shift junior participation strategy to getting public schools playing soccer instead of footy/rugby. facilities is a capacity issue - not enough space. schools have the space. they also have a captive audience. soccer won’t do this because junior fees are too lucrative for clubs, plus the whole protectionist thing. footy has this audience through inertia - a bunch of se[redacted]enders made these initial links back in the 50s and 60s, and it’s just kinda there now. afl is too concerned with private schools that they wouldn’t even notice soccer swooping in. it would also remove a massive barrier to junior participation in lower-socioeconomic areas (rego fees)

  3. stop with the god damn schizophrenic fixturing of aleague women games. this goes for aflw too. teams play at 11:30am sunday one week, 5:30 saturday the next, then on thursday arvo for some reason. all at three different “home” venues. habitual attendance will only happen through regularity. vfl was 2:10pm saturday at a single home ground for decades, that’s why it has the market share it does now. as soon as potential fans have to do any work to find and attend a game, they’ll lose interest. but going to (for example) brunswick street oval every second sunday at 3pm? that’s a routine. crowds will build. crowds pay money. money pays players. players get better. i feel like i’m taking crazy pills.

so yeah, that’s where my heads at. if it wasn’t clear enough, i am in 100% unequivocal support of directing as many resources as possible to the women’s game. i just would like to see those resources remain in the women’s game.

-edit- number 4 is ban all mbas from operational roles in sport, but that’s a largely idealogical view

8 Likes
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You have made some valid points.
I mentioned last night that the SA Government has committed $18m over 3 years for women’s sport only with $10m of that going to soccer and the SA Football Federation is matching that dollar for dollar so Womens soccer in SA will get $20m in funding over the next 3 years.
The bulk of that money will be spent on infrastructure, we have plenty of grounds but many of them have no women’s changerooms so turning all these grounds into multi use facilities is a must. BTW this has been happening for about 6 years in SA at local football grounds and grants to clubs to build women’s changerooms have gone through the roof. I’m also led to believe that the state government is using money from a seperate pool to try and get some quality friendly’s and warmups for the Matilda’s in Adelaide.

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This isn’t just exclusive to soccer.

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yeah sorry i should have made that clear

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You’re not sorry.

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so with news that the melbourne rebels are dead, and club distributions from the a-league reportedly dropping from $2m to $500k per season, i bring you today’s discussion topic

what do super rugby and the a-league have in common?

while the reasons for the decline are separate, you can probably pinpoint the begin of the economic decline for both of these leagues to a common event

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just tell us old man

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Good discussion.

I think both are different.

I think A League is much more complex, ultimately it has lots of factions, groups and supporters with vastly opposing views and for whatever reason they haven’t been able to align on what’s best for the game and capitalise on its enormous grassroots strength. Unlike the NBL which has in recent times successfully rebuilt its league and is doing exceptionally well.

The Rebels… I don’t think they actually ever tried to immerse themselves in the Melbourne landscape and failed to engage with this market. As opposed to the Storm who’ve been outstanding by comparison. The Rebels are an elite brand and its efforts to engage and build its brand in the city of Melbourne were nearly non existent. Unlike ALeague which seems to be gripped by eternal warring factions, Rugby and the Rebels simply don’t invest in growing its brand, connecting with communities to the same degree as its competitors and simply hasn’t achieved a footprint in the hearts and minds of the Melbourne sports public.

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They invested heavily in the end product and not the grassroots?

3 Likes
100

terrific and accurate answer, but not the one i had in mind

think more about consumer behaviour and the accessibility of the end product