Former EPL boss Richard Scudamore’s ideas on how to improve the A-League
The Sydney Kings just set an NBL crowd record off the back of big names Andrew Bogut and LaMelo Ball, but the former EPL boss advising the A-League says marquees aren’t the answer.
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There’s no magic bullet and marquees are not the answer, says the man who turned the English Premier League into a global sporting giant.
But Richard Scudamore believes “to my core” that home-grown talent and boutique stadia can propel professional football forward in Australia’s over-crowded sporting landscape.
The NBL lives by a different theory.
On Sunday the local derby between Sydney and Illawarra set a new record crowd of 17,513 at Qudos Bank Arena, surpassing the crowd from a double-header at the same venue 20 years earlier.
It came off the back of Sydney Kings marquee man Andrew Bogut and NBA-bound teenager LaMelo Ball, who is with the Hawks in Australia as part of a Next Stars program where players hone their talent before stepping up into the American league.
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Scudamore is adamant the A-League should go a different way, claiming it can create “alchemy”, a strong sentiment from a man who had been in the country little more than 24 hours.
But then, this is the businessman who turned England’s top flight into the world’s most-watched league and a multi-billion dollar giant on the back of lucrative global broadcast deals.
A whistle-stop four-day visit to Sydney marks the start of official duties for the recently retired Premier League CEO and executive chairman, now on the A-League payroll to help revolutionise a competition on the nose with both the public and broadcasters.
Any preconceptions that Scudamore is the panacea for several years of declining ratings and crowds were erased on Friday as soon as he proclaimed “there is no one solution, no magic bullet you can just fire and it all suddenly unlocks.”
There was also an unwillingness to predict future audiences or revenues.
The clubs and boss Greg O’Rourke are already making use of unfettered access to their new high-profile special adviser, described by one senior club figure as “the ringmaster of the whole show” as the A-League steps into the uncertain realm of independence from Football Federation Australia.
But as he sat with media in Sydney, there was also an enthusiasm indicative of somebody who’s only very recently picked up the Rubik's cube that is Australian football, and hasn’t yet reached the tricky bit that’s gone unsolved for decades.
In that vein, Scudamore was certain the country’s largest participation sport would eventually convert into healthy A-League attendances - if investment was shrewd and the right “levers pulled”.
But the 60-year-old, who brings invaluable expertise as ex-chairman of the World Leagues Forum, also stressed he was not under the false impression the EPL model is one size fits all.
“I don’t come here with this myopic view that England is how it is,” Scudamore said.
“I also don’t come here with a complete ignorance as to how Australia is.
“Where I think I can add value is that I’ve seen every single model there is to see where football sits within the pecking order of each country.
“Of course, one is not naive to the barriers and competitive landscape, but ultimately I believe to my core that football will find its place in sports-mad Australia.
Scudamore is not a proponent of the marquee concept, reasoning Alessandro Del Piero moments are too fleeting to support sustainable growth.
Instead, he was remarkably on message with the A-League’s independent blueprint that champions home-grown heroes, citing Leicester City's EPL title-winning season as an example of how relatively unknown players such as Riyad Mahrez and N'Golo Kante can become famous overnight.
“Australian teams don’t need a whole load of globally recognised superstars,” he said.
“They need to build fanbases who latch onto a club and build their own marquee players within that club.
“You’re far better off building a club-based culture. Players come and go, the club is an essential unit.”
Smaller venues and “intensity” of play would also drive atmosphere and, in turn, attendances and broadcast value.
In keeping with his reputation as a consummate diplomat who kept the EPL’s wealthy owners in harmony for two decades, Scudamore said a large part of the FFA divorce process would involve “corralling the club owners to some sort of common purpose”.
He’s read the clubs’ “impressive” strategy documents twice, and on Thursday spent a full day with O’Rourke and chaired a conference call with club CEOs, but did not plan to meet with host broadcaster Fox Sports before flying out on Monday.
On Saturday he headed to Gosford for Central Coast’s home game against Adelaide, and on Sunday will attend the Big Blue double-header at Jubilee Stadium.
Scudamore’s thoughts on ...
SALARY CAP
“You’ve got to make sure the economics of your system are tolerable. There’s a much bigger wrapper, which is sustainability ... and you can’t have a system that puts competitive balance out of kilter and financial stability at risk for all the clubs in that league. Whether it’s salary caps or financial rules or whatever, there’s got to be some sort of system. You’ve seen clubs go, and it’s not good.”
SQUAD QUOTAS
“I’ve never really believed in all these artificial systems of quotas and everything else … because everything has an equal and opposite effect. My fundamental view is the freer you are to recruit who you want to recruit on the basis you want to recruit them, the better. I do understand there have to be some interim constraints.”
FOREIGNERS VERSUS YOUTH
“You’ve got to put on the best possible football competition you can. If currently that means it’s foreign players, then foreign players it is. But at the same time you have to build huge investments in youth development and bring quality players through, because ultimately that’s got to be the future.
“What you really want is your own players playing against the best foreign players you can afford to have and that’s the way they develop.”
PROMOTION-RELEGATION
“Certainly the promotion and relegation issue is a long way off from being strategically discussed, because I think there’s other things you’ve got to do (first), and it can only happen if you’ve got a proper pyramid.”
CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE
I’m excited by it globally ... How that content gets delivered, distributed and monetised is a challenge and of course there are various models ... the one thing about the younger generation, they are engaging more via devices than my generation ever did."
Originally published as Former EPL boss Richard Scudamore’s ideas on how to improve the A-League