note fellas from the article :
The first is a bloating cost base, with employee and team benefit expenses increasing by over $13 million (including $810,000 paid to former director Jaclyn Lee-Joe "for services rendered in relation to the PlayFootball registration system"), an extra $3.4 million in marketing and media, and an additional $2.3 million on event hosting expenses, among other smaller increases across multiple line items.
The second factor, and more concerningly, is that just over $12 million of their total $15.3 million deficit were unbudgeted losses, with
roughly $9 million of those losses attributable -- once again -- to the writing-off of debts owed to them by the APL.
The APL's debts cover multiple areas, the largest of which is referee fees. As part of the separation agreement between the two bodies, Football Australia was responsible for managing all referees but the APL was required to pay for them including their salaries, match fees, travel, accommodation, and training support. In total,
referees cost the APL roughly $5 million per season, which multiple sources confirmed have not been paid for the past four seasons.
At the time of writing, then, Football Australia have forgiven $10.2 million in APL debts in the past two financial years, with millions more likely to be forgiven in future.
Exactly how this current and future APL debt forgiveness will be publicly explained or financially accounted for is unclear.
The biggest question in all this is:
why is Football Australia -- a national governing body whose own Congress reflects their many different stakeholder groups including state federations, the players' union, and a women's council -- giving money to a private organisation that they deliberately separated from five years ago?
If the APL is unable to pay its debts -- which the past two years of Football Australia's write-offs imply -- then there may be a bigger concern about the sustainability, even solvency, of the A-Leagues.
Why does Football Australia care about that? Well,
according to part 32.b(v) of their Constitution, Football Australia is not only the regulator of the A-Leagues, but the owner and licensee. This means that they may have greater legal powers when it comes to a potential extinction-level event for the domestic competitions.
Specifically, if the APL continues to not pay its debts, Football Australia may have the ability to retake ownership of the leagues, including all its associated commercial assets, totalling tens of millions of dollars.
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In the meantime the game below plods along as it has for 20+yrs........
Growing registrations at grass roots, the need to revamp so much keeps struggling.
In the meantime APL announce their renewed P+ 3yr extention.
Luv to know what payments they recieve per annun.
thesportsambassador.substack.com
