A-League clubs will receive just $530,000 from the Australian Professional Leagues for the 2024/25 season, a reduction of almost $1.5million from the campaign just gone and a yawning gap from the $3million a season allocated under the competitions financial high point of 2018.
APL Independent chair Stephen Conroy’s announcement lands as a final blow to a season of administrative disaster for the A-Leagues, highlighted by the closure and mass redundancies of digital arm KeepUp, and an ailing broadcast deal with Paramount/Network10 that have reaped metrics so low, penalties have been applied.
Three-and-a-half years on from the unbundling of the A-League from Football Australia into the care of the then-newly formed APL, midway through the financial destitution of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been little to suggest the move has been justified.
‘I don’t think anyone’s saying these cuts are the wrong decision, they’re obviously necessary. Unfortunately, they again raise questions of the whole independence move, which has been just a complete disaster for our game’, Daniel Garb told Box2Box.
‘Can it be rectified? Can they hand it back? People who made this decision told us we had to go down this path, that the only way the A-League was going to grow was to go independent of Football Australia. In theory there were plenty of positives, but so far we’re yet to see any.
Under the new structure clubs will need to self-fund $1.7million per season to reach the competitions salary cap floor of $2.25million. Conroy assured the media no club signalled immediate distress at the announcement of the cuts, but the decision leaves very little room for further error as the second incarnation of the APL’s board, led by Conroy and Commissioner Nick Garcia, looks to build the Leagues once more.
So far backwards has the game careered under its current management that cries for the good old days are mounting. Whether Football Australia has the intention or interest, or even an obligation, to again manage the competition in future is up for debate. With each further dose of bad news, it seems increasingly practical.
‘$530,000 is bargain basement. They’ve gone back to ground zero. I don’t think anyone is necessarily criticising the decisions made over the past few months… but if they don’t get it right, don’t build slowly in the correct manner and it gets worse, I don’t see how there isn’t a scenario where it’s given back to Football Australia.
‘That would be such a shame for everyone, because it would have been avoidable. To have had $25million spent on a digital strategy that went up in smoke, redundancies made, the Grand Final decision sold to Sydney and then reversed; it just has not worked out at all, and it’s sent the game backwards. It’s a sad situation.’
‘We again hark back to the day in August 2018, I was in the room, when [then Football Australia chairman] Stephen Lowy said ‘be careful what you wish for’. This is not about the Lowys, that was about Football Australia’s position at the time. Unfortunately, that quote is ringing in our ears.’