A-League: Challenging days ahead for Stephen Lowy and David Gallop as football faces fresh battle
THE A-League’s conversion to a summer sport was, without doubt, a masterstroke. Faced with a future of eternal comparisons with the big kahunas of league and AFL, soccer had finally found a niche in the wider Australian sporting fraternity.
It worked for a few years too. If you didn’t love it in winter, you liked it enough in summer. It filled a void in the long empty months of October and November and, even when the Test cricket came along, 90 minutes of soccer was a nice addition to those balmy months.
Fringe soccer fans started watching and going to games. The acclaim was widespread and the World Game looked like it had a competition which would draw fans who’d spent their lives waking up 3am to watch their game in the northern hemisphere.
The exodus of the best Australian players to Europe was replaced by marquee players with genuine claims to champion status and a competition that drew big crowds with much improved television ratings.
In 2015, however, most of the problems which led to the creation of the A-league have returned. Crowds are barely holding their own, the marquee players have all but gone and the television ratings are so dismal that even the code’s free-to-air broadcaster has shoved the competition to its second channel.
Ratings comparisons with the Women’s Big Bash League published this week reveal a huge boost for women’s sport but a diabolical state of affairs for soccer.
The new WBBL is outrating the A-league with such compelling numbers that new chairman Stephen Lowy and CEO David Gallop are now faced with a crisis that is far more threatening than walkouts at grounds and badly behaved fans.
In short, the code cannot continue to exist unless a free- to- air broadcaster saves it. The “passion” for soccer which comes to the fore in loud and often ugly ways whenever someone on the outside dares place it under scrutiny is sadly lacking when it comes to sitting down and finding SBS2 to watch a match.
Pay TV figures are not much better and pale when compared with the juggernauts of AFL, the NRL and now the monster that is the men’s Big Bash League. Fox Sports tries its guts out to attract viewers with panel shows, pre- and post-match shows, but soccer does not drive subscriptions like the other three codes.
Even rugby union is on an upward trajectory compared with the A-League, with a new TV rights deal that will ensure it keeps its head above water for at least another five years.
So what happened?
Basically, a perfect storm formed over several seasons that has led to the current crisis. Marquee players became too expensive for most teams. Like it or not, your 50/50 viewer is not going to turn on to watch a bunch of youthful, enthusiastic players or ageing Socceroos. There is something compelling about Sydney FC with Alessandro Del Piero which disappears when he does.
The Western Sydney Wanderers saved the A-League’s bacon until their stocks fell and they started to struggle. Crowds are down on the dizzy heights of 2013. Their fortunes parallel that of the entire competition with ratings failing to go near six figures on SBS2.
That brings us to TV. When the broadcaster which has prided itself on its embrace of soccer in Australia decides to drop it to a channel few people can find on their remotes, you know there is trouble afoot.
Throw in Channel 10’s Big Bash League, breaking all records in both the men and the women’s form of the game and the A-League is facing almost insurmountable issues.
There is no football code in this most competitive of sporting markets that can sustain second-rate coverage on a minor free to air channel and survive. Pay TV is there to consolidate your affection, to give you the frills, to appeal to the diehard with blanket coverage. The bread and butter of any footy is the three or four matches free to air each weekend. Seven and Nine promote the backside off their footy coverage and the ratings reflect that.
Lowy and Gallop have three years to wait for the next World Cup so they cannot rely on the international brand to save the domestic competition. These are challenging days minus the charisma of Frank Lowy and any sign of a white knight broadcaster.
If you love your game, watch it. Only the fans can save the A-League from extinction by picking up the remote and finding Channel 142.
