Former A-Leagues CEO Danny Townsend has voiced his thoughts on the APL crisis
Former A-Leagues CEO Danny Townsend has explained the reason behind APL’s split from Football Australia and dubbed the current set-up “challenging”.
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Former A-Leagues chief executive Danny Townsend has explained the reason behind the APL’s split from Football Australia and described the current set-up as “complex” and “challenging” in the wake of a brutal redundancy process and restructure.
Earlier this month, the APL announced it would walk away from several key strategic pillars set under Townsend’s leadership. It is understood up to 50 per cent of staff were made redundant and digital content arm KeepUp – one of Townsend’s visions for the future growth of the league – was disbanded in a move to rein in costs.
Questions have been asked as to what has happened to the $140 million cash injection from private equity firm Silver Lake, who received a 33 per cent stake in the company in return in a deal struck on Townsend’s watch. It is understood the money has gone towards infrastructure and digital app development for KeepUp, to cover the mounting production costs associated with the league’s broadcast deal with Ten/Paramount and to propping up Perth Glory while they hunt for a new owner.
Townsend, who took on a new role as CEO of SJR Sports Investments in Saudi Arabia, was at the helm of the APL from December 2021. He had previously served as the chief executive of Sydney FC and was heavily involved in the A-Leagues unbundling from FA at the end of 2020.
His tenure as A Leagues boss was not without controversy, including the decision to sell grand final hosting rights to the New South Wales government – a move that led to club backlash and fan walkouts before being flipped in favour of the Unite Round.
Townsend, speaking on podcast The Groundsmen, outlined some of the issues facing the A Leagues and Australian football generally.
“It’s a challenging environment,” Townsend said. “A very complex stakeholder environment as well. We have so many foundational strengths as a sport, the participation base of football is the sum of all competing parts.
“So for that reason there is a sense of inevitability around where football will end up in Australia. Our job and what we were thinking was to accelerate that timeline essentially by the privatisation of the league.
“The current board have obviously gone and made some decisions in the last couple of weeks that I’m not across but it would appear they are winding back some investments that were made in content in particular from what I can tell which is obviously their call.
“Fundamentally when you have 12 different owners who own the league with 12 different opinions and philosophies it’s a challenging stakeholder environment and I think that is part of the challenge.”
Townsend also delved into why he had decided to take the job in Saudi Arabia.
“It was a bit of an interesting one,” he continued. “The uniqueness of this role was laid out, they were clear they wanted someone who was an operator in sports, they weren’t looking for a banker to lead this business.
“They were looking for someone who had worked in multi countries and on multi sports and the background of my time at Repucom was very much about that, we represented the biggest brands in world sports …
“My background was what they liked, it was unique I supposed to a degree and having worked in the Middle East before as well which was helpful, that was how it went. I went over there and had a look around and saw the strategy and the conviction and the capacity to do what they wanted.”
Townsend also revealed his process for deciding which sports the company should invest in on behalf of Saudi Arabia.
“Every sport is different but the challenges in every sport are someone similar but different,” Townsend said. “If you think about sports that have got governance challenges around their structure that are holding them back, that have potentially gone through the process of over complicating their propositions to their consumer.
“So when I look at the sports that we’re investing in or looking to invest in part of my processes to look at whether or not we think we can create something that’s going to be a more appealing proposition for the fan of that sport.
“Some of the sports today are just so complicated and young consumers couldn’t be bothered. They just move on because they don’t know where to watch it.
“There are a lot of sports that have drifted into a position that means their product is no longer appealing as it might have been when we grew up in a different environment.
“Sometimes you are going to have to be disruptive to grow and change. Fundamentally going in and taking something, reconfiguring and delivering what you hope will be a better product.”
Originally published as Former A-Leagues CEO Danny Townsend has voiced his thoughts on the APL crisis
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