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PFA Boss wants coopetition

Quicky

Quicky

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Oct 17, 2024
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There was an article on Football360 recently that stuck with me for how bad the idea was.

It was an article written by the PFA Boss who wanted a coopetition model for Australian football.

In simple terms this means a closed league with no pro-rel. The difference from the current status quo is it includes a shared revenue model (an equalisation fund) where the richer clubs pay into a central revenue pool that props up the poor clubs.

It's basically a plagiarism of the AFL model that has allowed them to fund the expansion teams in NSW and QLD. The main motivation of the expansion clubs was to increase TV revenue essentially.

It's main selling point is keeping every club theoretically competitive in the league each year.

I hate this on so many levels I don't know where to start:
> The lame amalgam of cooperation and competition
> The adoption of a rival codes business model, when they do it better
> Discarding the things that makes football unique
> No pro-rel
> Doubling down on a system that ostracises half the football community, with no consideration of how to repair that
> The stifling of innovation you create evidenced in salary capped AFL football departments.

You could go on.

What are your thoughts?

Article for reference: https://football360.com.au/a-league-news-pfa-proposal/
 
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I get why the PFA boss wants this. He's burned by what happened to WU. It gets threatened with many other clubs it seems every other year. He doesn't want to see what the WU players went through again.

But this seems like such a lazy approach to fix it that misses so much. And only considers the AL players not all the other players in the game.
 
Quicky said:
There was an article on Football360 recently that stuck with me for how bad the idea was.

It was an article written by the PFA Boss who wanted a coopetition model for Australian football.

In simple terms this means a closed league with no pro-rel. The difference from the current status quo is it includes a shared revenue model (an equalisation fund) where the richer clubs pay into a central revenue pool that props up the poor clubs.

It's basically a plagiarism of the AFL model that has allowed them to fund the expansion teams in NSW and QLD. The main motivation of the expansion clubs was to increase TV revenue essentially.

It's main selling point is keeping every club theoretically competitive in the league each year.

I hate this on so many levels I don't know where to start:
> The lame amalgam of cooperation and competition
> The adoption of a rival codes business model, when they do it better
> Discarding the things that makes football unique
> No pro-rel
> Doubling down on a system that ostracises half the football community, with no consideration of how to repair that
> The stifling of innovation you create evieldenced in salary capped AFL football departments.

You could go on.

What are your thoughts?

Article for reference: https://football360.com.au/a-league-news-pfa-proposal/
Click to expand...
Nah, fuck that. We need pro/rel. The rest of the world (except a few countries like the US) has pro/rel and it distinguishes us from different codes (technically other European sports do have pro/rel but in Australia it’s a soccer thing).

I remember Alex Brosque saying this on the We are Sydney podcast on Sydney FC’s YouTube channel. We’re lagging behind without it, it makes football different, etc. But he also made an incredibly good point: crowds. If you’re a Mariners or Nix or Wanderers fan and you know you won’t make finals, why pay money to go to games? Why should the players even try at all other than to avoid the wooden spoon? If you add relegation, that makes it interesting, since clubs will have to try their absolute best and fans will need to be fully behind the club in order to avoid getting relegated.
 
Well for many years people said that the AL should separate from FA (or FAA or whatever) - the clubs have skin in the game, they know what the fans want, etc, etc, etc. Look at the AL now. Pro/Rel is a point of difference! So? In Australia, no competition in any code has survived pro/rel. Just as a reminder - the Victorian Football Association had pro/rel in Melbourne, just Melbourne. And they are defunct.
Maybe the point of difference is that, we as a nation are different.
 
WhatAmIWatching said:
Well for many years people said that the AL should separate from FA (or FAA or whatever) - the clubs have skin in the game, they know what the fans want, etc, etc, etc. Look at the AL now. Pro/Rel is a point of difference! So? In Australia, no competition in any code has survived pro/rel. Just as a reminder - the Victorian Football Association had pro/rel in Melbourne, just Melbourne. And they are defunct.
Maybe the point of difference is that, we as a nation are different.
Click to expand...
But football has p and r in victoria?

The economics of the two sports are vastly different. If afl cant have p and r in vic and football does, then a lack of pand r in the national afl comp becomes meaningless when discussing whats best for football
 
meh.......
PFA in the end worry about $$$$$ more than the game itself the big picture - only the AL.
It is not in 2lanes competition wise its a closed shop league.
The funds the APL broker is spread across ALL the franchise's am I wrong ?
From the article :
The PFA believes the league’s best path forward is to adopt policies in line with the best practice in other closed leagues.


This will require the clubs to change their mindset to one of ‘coopetition’ – a combination of cooperation and competition – where teams fight on the field but work together in the boardroom.

In bold - is that not how they operate since the APL commenced ?

Bringing up past failures is moot ala GC/Fury etc - that was when under the FFA/FA and yer they prob needed to fend for themselves more BUT wasn't the whole we got to take control all about the APL managing their own resource and broker deals so as they have control with their fellow Franchise owners on their board.

Their trouble is since the APL broke off it hasn't grown and revenue is down.
Failed KEEPUP etcetc so the PFA are offering solutions for just one small section of the football community and express's examples like AFL/BB/NFL etc - yer country that is built on closed leagues from their beginnings and a population of around 340M !

Yep the cap holds back the big players meaning rich franchise owners therefore OPEN competition - you can't keep rewarding bottom cellar clubs playing in the same comp again the following season when you have failed :)
Another club stepping up just may have more ambition and resource to compete.
 
Revenue sharing seems fine if it's just the league's broadcast and sponsorship dollars. If those are equally distributed then that's kinda expected and probably what we're doing already. But sharing ticket sales and transfer revenue is anti-sport. I'm not propping up another Western United scam.

If there's no relegation from the A-Leagues for a few years then that's expected too. But you need promotion. Promotion based on sporting merit AND criteria (which is also common around the world and in our own state leagues. I.e. facilities, women's and youth teams, full-time wages, there are also AFC requirements). It's not some alien concept. Some out there are advocating for league position pro/rel only, which is neglegent.

The salary cap currently doesn't do anything. The richest clubs aren't even maxing out their marquees slots. There will always be a cap floor, it's called the minimum wage 😅.
 
WhatAmIWatching said:
Well for many years people said that the AL should separate from FA (or FAA or whatever) - the clubs have skin in the game, they know what the fans want, etc, etc, etc. Look at the AL now. Pro/Rel is a point of difference! So? In Australia, no competition in any code has survived pro/rel. Just as a reminder - the Victorian Football Association had pro/rel in Melbourne, just Melbourne. And they are defunct.
Maybe the point of difference is that, we as a nation are different.
Click to expand...

a typical example why nothing here gets off the ground (football or is it soccer) - how can one entity/Fed Melb alone make a go of it IF everyone else is not IN.
Especially way back then.

One thing we are different in is that we keep trying to be a "commercial product" first before the main ducks are in line and keep trying to be something the game is not to the many many involved below the system.
Then we have supporters of AL looking at it from a "crowd" attendence perspective because the main codes with all the dough dwarf us easily and thats success.
We are not eggball code that can survive on only their top flight who might I add allows them to neglect their levels below because of the $'s.

On the other hand those who just want the closed shop go for your life - I think it will always be going up a creek without a paddle for the market isn't big enough let alone ogarlords interested wasting their time investing here for what ? peanuts ? pigeons ?
 
grazorblade said:
I like the luxury tax but disagree with the rest of his coopitition ideas haha
Click to expand...
I like the luxury tax proposal also but ideally the A-League should be following the baseball model as opposed to the NBL model which continually penalises clubs for overspending thereby acting as a deterrent, and revenue sharing should be equally distributed amongst all clubs rather than by market share.
 
WhatAmIWatching said:
Well for many years people said that the AL should separate from FA (or FAA or whatever) - the clubs have skin in the game, they know what the fans want, etc, etc, etc. Look at the AL now. Pro/Rel is a point of difference! So? In Australia, no competition in any code has survived pro/rel. Just as a reminder - the Victorian Football Association had pro/rel in Melbourne, just Melbourne. And they are defunct.
Maybe the point of difference is that, we as a nation are different.
Click to expand...
Sorry to disagree, In Victoria, we have had pro/rel for decades and are surviving quite well thank you... I believe most other Football federations around the country also have pro/rel? Its the APL that is defunct, nobody else at this stage.
 
A good example of why there needs to be a one unified voice within the sport, too many within have too much power in the direction in the game when it should come from one body making all the shots.

Again where are the leaders of the game here? They need to be leading the game instead of get too much noise from outside influencers thinking their voice is relevant.
 
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