And so, six months after they began, the first "unbundled" A-Leagues seasons have come to an end.
Not with a bang, mind you, but with an exhausted whimper after one of the most difficult years for Australian football in recent memory.
It was certainly not the debut season that the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), which now owns and operates the A-League Men and A-League Women, had hoped for after they formally separated from Football Australia in December 2020.
Transitioning to an independent model of league ownership is a complex process at the best of times, let alone while trying to navigate a pandemic that buffeted clubs financially, logistically, and even existentially.
But, as the saying goes, every challenge is an opportunity in disguise, and this tumultuous first campaign at the helm has no doubt provided many lessons for the ownership group now responsible for taking the A-Leagues into its next era.
So what can the APL learn from their first season in charge?
ABC put a call out to A-Leagues fans on social media and asked their thoughts on the top 3-5 issues they felt ought to be addressed ahead of next season. Over 200 accounts responded. Below is a snapshot of the major themes, some data, and some suggestions provided by the community.
What went right?
Despite the many hurdles, there were a number of positives to emerge from the APL's first season in charge.
Data gathered by Australia's player's union (the PFA), which will be published in their annual season reports, showed that the 2021/22 A-League Men season had the second-highest amount of financial investment in men's squads in the competition's history.
It also has the lowest percentage of players coming off-contract, indicating clubs are both spending money and retaining players for longer periods to create stability and continuity into next season.
Further, the ALM appears to be embracing its role as a platform for developing young, local talent. 45 per cent of all contracted players were aged 23 or younger, while the ALM led the Asian Football Confederation for highest percentage of match minutes played by men under the age of 21 over the past two campaigns.
Central Coast Mariners were ranked globally for the number of club-trained and academy graduates receiving playing time, while many Aussies who moved to clubs overseas (most of whom were under 25) generated almost $3.5 million in transfer fees during the season.
In the women's competition, the positives are also financial.
Total player payments increased by 20 per cent to $3.98 million, with clubs averaging roughly $400,000 on their ALW squads: the highest investment in the women's league in its history.
The introduction of Wellington Phoenix as the league's 10th team was one of the season's feel-good stories, unlocking a brand new fanbase and introducing some exciting new faces and styles of football to the landscape.
The ALW has also embraced its youth development identity, with almost 60 per cent of match minutes played by women aged between 18 and 24.
Just over 70 per cent of players indicated a desire to return to the league next season (which will be a big one — for reasons we'll get into below).
A number of these players also received debut call-ups to the Matildas, while the majority will likely feature in the Young Matildas squad at the Under-20 Women's World Cup in August.
The two finals series were arguably successful, too, with Western United claiming their first men's championship after an unlikely win over premiers Melbourne City, while Melbourne Victory bounced back from a heavily disrupted season to snatch the ALW championship title from premiers Sydney FC.
In addition to the on-field positives, the APL also secured a number of major partnerships with organisations including Network 10/Viacom CBS, SilverLake private equity, ISUZU UTE, and Liberty: partners whose investments have been critical in keeping the leagues financially afloat.
Now, the A-Leagues will enter the long dark night of their off-seasons, giving the APL plenty of time to reflect on their first campaign at the steering wheel of their proverbial car, and find ways to address some of the major issues that the community itself has identified.
1. Broadcasting
Much was made of the new, five-year broadcast deal struck with Network 10 and Paramount+ last year after the slow decline of the leagues' relationship with Fox Sports.
In a reported $200 million deal, the top-flight competitions will now be shown on a combination of free-to-air television and streaming platforms until at least 2026.
The first season's arrangement saw one men's game broadcast on Saturdays in prime-time on Channel 10, while one women's game was broadcast every Sunday afternoon on subsidiary channel 10Bold. All other games were then played on streaming service Paramount+.
There's little doubt that the move to Ten was an upgrade from the latter Fox Sports years, particularly in terms of broadcast quality, talent, and opportunities for discussion and analysis. Mercifully, Tuba Guy was nowhere to be found.
But the pandemic made it difficult for Ten to plan ahead and gather momentum both with marketing and broadcasting, with over half of all the games rescheduled at late notice. In a competition already struggling for viewers, the lack of certainty around fixtures — and therefore less advertisement across the network — saw terrestrial viewership numbers fell to concerningly low levels.
Pandemic aside, though, there were a few major broadcasting issues that almost every fan who responded to ABC's call-out identified.
One of the biggest remains that the platform has no pause, fast-forward or rewind functions, so fans who missed kick-offs, goals, or any other action during play had to wait for replays, half-time recaps, or for the highlights/mini-match packages uploaded hours later.
Paramount+ wasn't the only place where fans missed out on game-play. Channel 10's commercial requirements also meant that games were often interrupted for full-screen advertisements.
And while they tried to find pockets of time in which these ads could occur (such as drinks breaks and after goals), the fast-paced nature of the game meant that some crucial moments — such as Adelaide United's goal in their elimination final against Central Coast in early May — were missed entirely.
Fans who responded to the ABC's call-out listed the need to improve both Channel 10 and Paramount's offerings as their top complaint, with APL chief executive Danny Townsend repeatedly taking to Twitter over the season to reassure the community that the above problems will be addressed.
Upgrading Paramount's software to be at least in line with other sports streaming services such as Kayo, Stan and Optus Sport — all of which allow fans to navigate games as they wish, in addition to offering other kinds of content on easy-to-navigate platforms — ought to be the minimum expectation, particularly if there are subscription fees involved.
Other suggestions have been to introduce a picture-in-picture advertising format instead of cutting away entirely from a match, so that key moments are not missed by poorly timed ad breaks, while improvements to the overall product on the main broadcaster could include the addition of 'magazine' panel shows, documentary features, classic match replays, and innovative engagement with the E-League — all of which would create ongoing awareness of and interest in the competitions, especially during the off-season.
2. Match-day experiences
Broadcasting isn't the only way the A-Leagues has struggled to engage with fans this season, though.
Although stadium attendance remains a difficult way to measure interest in the leagues given the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, even die-hard fans who have shown up to support their clubs continue to experience unnecessary and heavy-handed security and policing, dampening active support and creating less engaging atmospheres both inside grounds and on television.
While the APL themselves are not directly responsible for stadium security, many fans feel the game has not done enough to protect its core active fanbase. Each club's active group is the heartbeat of the game-day experience, importing the colour and noise of overseas football culture through flags, banners, chants and choreographed tifos into an Australian setting.
Fans who responded to ABC's call-out said over-policing — arguably fuelled by stereotypes of hooliganism that continue to define Australian football supporters — remains an ongoing issue, especially when viewed in comparison to other codes such as the NRL and AFL, where fan violence also occurs but is rarely accompanied by the same level of over-zealous security.
Greater cooperation and understanding of football culture between the league, clubs, active fans and stadium security is necessary to revive the passionate atmospheres that have largely been lost over the past few seasons.
These atmospheres not only makes game days a memorable experience for attendees, but also translate into an enthralling television experience for the casual viewer (especially those more inclined to watch European or South American football, where such displays and atmospheres are part and parcel of the sport). It is one of the strongest drawcards for casual fans to attend future games in person.
The cost of memberships and tickets also remains a disincentive for many fans. Expansion club Macarthur FC was criticised this season for charging up to $50 for a single adult ticket (and a whopping $450 for an active pass), while family tickets can cost almost triple that — an especially confusing decision given their need to build a local fanbase from scratch.
The inconsistency of information for membership-buying fans regarding access to A-League Women's games is more problematic, with multiple A-Leagues clubs not specifying exactly what certain memberships provide or whether purchasing certain types of ticket packages or memberships includes access to the women's league.
Some club websites don't provide information about women's-specific memberships at all, while tickets to women's games are often buried within purchasing platforms or, in the case of many double-headers, hidden beneath information on men's games; a counter-productive step when trying to grow a fledging women's fanbase.
Making tickets and memberships both cheaper and easier to find is one small but important way of making a fan's game-day experience easier. Providing free tickets to children under 12, bundling in memberships with local grassroots registration, and creating more enticing, community-specific merchandise are some ways clubs can more deeply connect with their catchments.
Finally, genuine engagement with the vibrant, multicultural patchwork of Australian football fans must be a cornerstone of the APL's ongoing community outreach.
While the A-League's creation in 2004 was founded, in part, on "de-ethnicising" the competition in order to appeal to mainstream (white) Australia, the consequence has been that the emotional bedrock of the game — a club's connection with the cultural and class identity of its specific community — has withered.
In other words, by trying to appeal to everybody, the A-League has ended up appealing to nobody; at least, not the kinds of football fans seen elsewhere in the world, and even many in Australia who support overseas clubs without paying attention to the domestic leagues.
Embracing the unique cultures of the communities that sit within club catchments can take many forms: partnering with local vendors to serve culturally specific food and drinks in stadiums; incorporating the area's migrant and First Nations footballing history through cooperative fan displays and on-screen entertainment; creating digital content and merchandise that celebrates the flag colours, music, and languages of particular communities; and further involving fans in clubs' decision-making.
These initiatives would not only be a more accurate reflection of football's multi-faceted fanbase, but also a more genuine way of getting people to care about A-Leagues clubs that, for most of their history, have separated themselves from the multicultural roots of the game and treated fans as customers of a service instead of members of a communal project.
3. Scheduling and calendar alignment
Another major theme that emerged from fan feedback on social media was the unfriendly and inconsistent fixture list.
It must be emphasised that the past two seasons of the A-Leagues have been heavily disrupted by the pandemic, which has thrown many sporting calendars out of whack. It is highly unlikely that the A-Leagues fixture list will be as badly disrupted as we move into the endemic stage of COVID-19, meaning more predictability and stability is on the horizon for fans in regards to when games are scheduled.
But pandemic aside, there are arguably a few ways the APL can adjust the schedules to better engage with fans. The first concerns kick-off times, with a number of fans expressing frustration that games were scheduled on days and times — such as mid-week fixtures, Fridays at 5:00pm for the ALW, or Sundays at 7:45pm for ALM — that were unfriendly to young people, workers, and families, even before the pandemic.
Simultaneous kick-offs was another (if smaller) concern of fans who responded to ABC's call-out, with many feeling that they were unable to stay across the rest of the league due to missing games that were played at the same time.
From a wider perspective, the time of the year the A-Leagues take place has also come into question. One long-running suggestion is the leagues kick off a few months earlier, which would allow greater movement between the A-Leagues and lower divisions (creating the environment for promotion and relegation to be introduced).
Further, a move into the winter months also means players and fans (particularly those in the ALW, whose games more often start earlier in the day) will no longer have to battle the increasingly extreme temperatures of Australian summers, which affects the quality on the pitch as well as the experience in the stands.
Finding an ideal competition window and length should also take into consideration other competitions that Australian clubs want to be part of, including the revamped Australia Cup and the Asian Champions League. It would also better align with international transfer windows and allow for leagues to break during international games in order to galvanise support for domestic players representing the national teams.
Football Australia's Domestic Match Calendar provides a framework within which the A-Leagues can adjust in this sense, with several different arrangements possible, though all have pros and cons.
Unlike the previous two themes, scheduling is trickier and has the added complexity of negotiating with other competitions and stadium availability.
If the season were moved to winter to align with the rest of the pyramid, it would clash with matches played by the proposed National Second Division as well as the leagues below it, meaning a cohort of current fans will not be able to attend ALM/W games by virtue of being participating in their own.
Further, football must continue to negotiate with with other codes for pitch space, with most A-League clubs not owning their own stadiums.
Overlapping with winter seasons means facilities (as well as media and broadcast coverage) become even more difficult to secure, and as the leagues expand and more teams are added, the window of opportunity for matches to be played in shared stadiums and at appropriate times of day/year continues to shrink.
The challenge, then, is how best to strike that balance and where to fit the A-Leagues piece in the larger puzzle of the domestic match calendar so that the leagues and its community can flourish together. It may not mean a fully aligned pyramid, but one where the synergies and overlaps created are enough in the short-term to build the kind of interest and groundswell for further strategic moves in the future.
4. Marquees and 'sugar-hit' events
At Western United's end-of-season event, APL chief executive Danny Townsend let slip that the A-Leagues have a list of marquee players they're aiming to target in the off-season: big-name players whose purpose is to attract the casual fan, generate hype in the A-Leagues, and ultimately put "bums on seats".
A variation of the marquee principle was seen in the A-Leagues All Stars match against Barcelona, which used the reputation of a big-name club to lure fans to the game, where they then caught a glimpse of what the A-League itself had to offer.
Marquees have provided shots-in-the-arm in the past: Alessandro Del Piero and Dwight Yorke at Sydney FC, Shinji Ono at Western Sydney, Tim Cahill at Melbourne City, and Sam Kerr at Perth all helped give the leagues publicity beyond the football sphere.
But by and large, players deemed marquees have mostly fallen flat, either not having a big enough name to cut through to casual fans or not producing performances on the pitch worthy of the extra money used to sign them.
They are, in theory, useful — but, as fans expressed to the ABC, they need to be chosen more strategically. If a marquee's job is to attract new fans to the league, their arrangement must be beyond the regular duties of a player: training, playing, the odd community appearance.
Some suggestions include greater media and fan engagement being built into future marquee players' contracts in exchange for being signed to a rare deal outside the salary cap, while sponsors and brands could be further activated to get the most out of these players' ambassadorial presence in both the men's and women's competitions.
Further, while star-studded international clubs have been visiting Australia since the 1970s, the leagues themselves have often struggled to turn the interest produced by those "sugar-hit" events into ongoing support for the local game.
Now that the APL has the data and contact details of each Barcelona attendee, for example, that could form the backbone of a targeted marketing push that puts A-Leagues content in the social media feeds and inboxes of casual fans, with discounted tickets and other package deals aimed at attracting them to the leagues.
But the onus should not be on marquees or big events to maintain interest in the local game. As former Premier League boss Richard Scudamore said when he consulted with the competition back in 2019, successful leagues are built on an "alchemy" of homegrown talent, exciting football, smaller stadiums, and engaging crowds. If the marquees and Barcelonas open the door for new fans, Australia's own should be enough to make them stay.
5.Supercharge the A-League Women
With the 2023 Women's World Cup just 13 months away, the upcoming A-League Women's season is one of the most important in the league's 14-year history.
Not only will the ALW provide the biggest platform for emerging Matildas vying for a spot in the final 23-player squad, but the timing of the league over the summer means it will be the last full domestic competition that fans, media, and sponsors will be exposed to before the tournament kicks off in July.
That's why the APL must super-charge the league that, over the past five years, has stagnated while other women's competitions around the world have galloped ahead.
As a recent FIFPro study found, the ALW lags behind when it comes to providing players with high-quality match minutes — something that Football Australia have also highlighted in their Performance Gap report as being detrimental to the development of Matildas.
Currently, the ALW has the equal-fewest teams (10), the fewest regular-season games (14), and the longest average off-season for players across all the major women's leagues surveyed — structural shortcomings that multiple players have cited as a major reason for them taking their careers overseas (with all the sponsorship and marketing potential they have, too).
While the inclusion of Wellington Phoenix and the addition of an extra finals round last season did provide extra playing time for select teams, the overwhelming sentiment from fans is that the ALW season must be expanded to at least a full home-and-away schedule as soon as possible.
With Western United announcing their women's team in early May, taking the competition to 11 teams, a full regular season means the ALW would expand to 22 rounds — a length on par with some of the world's best including leagues in England, France, Italy, and Germany.
But an extended league must also be accompanied by full-time professionalism for players, allowing them to focus on their football exclusively without juggling other work in order to make ends meet.
With the ALW collective bargaining agreement ensuring players' wages continue to rise, and in light of the PFA's findings that clubs continue to invest in the league, the financial groundwork has been laid for the APL to be more ambitious than ever before, safe in the knowledge that the interest generated by next year's World Cup will deliver an unprecedented return on their initial investment.
Making the ALW a full-time professional league that lasts at least six months would not only provide local players with the environment to reach their performance peaks ahead of the tournament, but it would also take the end of the season closer to the World Cup's start, meaning players will be coming off a full season of match fitness (and thus give the Matildas an even stronger squad) by the time the opening whistle blows.
Additionally, season extension would give the APL greater opportunities to market and promote the women's game and establish multiple other income channels, while also giving clubs the opportunity to compete in other competitions, including the proposed women's Australia Cup and mooted Women's Asian Champions League, with all the additional revenue streams these new spaces can generate.
It's critical that the 2022/23 ALW season is used as a promotional tool for the tournament, squeezing every last drop out of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to accelerate the women's game — and therefore football more broadly — into mainstream consciousness.
6. Marketing and media
The final major issue most fans highlighted in the feedback was the lack of marketing and advertisement of the A-Leagues across multiple platforms.
Again, the pandemic's reshuffling of over half the league's fixtures made a sustained marketing campaign from major sponsors like Network Ten and Paramount+ difficult to do; running television or social media campaigns for games that have been moved more often than they've stayed true to the original schedule is, understandably, not an appropriate use of resources.
But the leagues have arguably marketed themselves better this season than in years past, embracing cross-promotional opportunities offered by Ten with pundits and players appearing on programs like MasterChef, The Cheap Seats, and Have You Been Paying Attention?, targeted advertisements across digital platforms, physical posters and billboards in major cities, and leaning into online and youth culture by employing savvier digital content creators and collaborating with popular social media and musical artists.
But there are other ways in which the leagues could better market themselves to current and prospective fans.
For example, many have cited problems identifying and navigating the league's new website, KeepUp, which the APL has reportedly poured a significant amount of its new revenue into.
Indeed, some fans said they didn't know KeepUp was the A-Leagues' website at all, with simple Google results for "A-League" displaying multiple alternative websites, suggesting the APL's marketing of its new branding and search engine optimisation needs improvement.
The website and accompanying app are also not particularly clear or user-friendly: it forces users to log in, scroll, and navigate multiple drop-down menus to access information that is usually a Google away; live match centres lack the statistics and up-to-date details offered by past iterations such as MyFootball Live; there is little to no coverage of other competitions like the E-League or National Premier Leagues (where many club academies play); there's no fan-based interactive content such as Fantasy Leagues; and the platform's busy interface offers a vast array of non-Australian football content that arguably muddies the portal's main focus, which one imagines should be on the local game and homegrown players.
It is also yet to migrate much of the historical match data and videos from its previous version — particularly for the women's league — which makes it difficult for fans and media to access information in order to better understand how clubs and players have developed over the seasons.
What will be interesting is how the APL's media arms — Ten, Paramount and KeepUp — will keep fans interested in football now that its two major domestic leagues have wrapped up.
With only international games on the horizon, as well as lower-tier competitions, there is a window for them to develop other kinds of content that delves into the Australian game, such as video and written profiles of local clubs and programs; broadcasting classic matches; deep-dive documentaries into forgotten histories of the sport; simulcasting E-League tournaments or hosting Football Manager/FIFA live-streams between A-Leagues players; football-themed panels and game shows; and regular check-ins with Australian players, coaches, and other staff overseas.
The APL's move away from Fox Sports and its associated News Corp mastheads has not helped in terms of strengthening mainstream media coverage, though their partnership with AAP ensured that every game this past season was covered by a wires service available to all outlets.
Strengthening the digital media presence of football across Ten and Paramount through more regular, up-to-date, engaging, and user-friendly content should be part of their larger push into non-newspaper mainstream media, trying to utilise every possible free-to-air platform and digital space, as well as maximising the reach of every brand partner, to help promote the leagues and the game as a whole.
The above six points were the major themes to emerge from the ABC's fan call-out, though plenty of others — such as sustainable and research-based club expansion; alternative ownership models; adjustments to the salary cap and domestic transfer fees; a national second division; removal of VAR; stadium size and accessibility; and creating youth player requirements — were also mentioned.
The 2021/22 season was filled with mixed results for the APL, but with ongoing communication and collaboration with football's primary stakeholders — the fans and players — it's hoped that the vision promised by clubs when they embarked on this independent path will soon begin to materialise.
