Melbourne Victory chairman Anthony Di Pietro on how the club became the A-League’s biggest

IN near-five years as chairman Anthony Di Pietro has turned Melbourne Victory from a club losing $1.5m a year to a profitable, trophy-laden success machine.

Di Pietro

IN his near-five years as chairman Anthony Di Pietro has turned Melbourne Victory from a club losing $1.5m a year to now posting $1.5m profits.

His Victory side holds both the A-League and FFA Cup titles and has a league-high membership base of almost 27,000.

He’s the elected representative of the A-League clubs and many say he could one day ascend to the game’s top job in this country — chairman of Football Federation Australia.

Right now though, the A-League is at a “critical juncture” he says.

And with Steven Lowy recently taking the reins at FFA, Di Pietro tells MATT WINDLEY it is time for the game to take a good, hard look at itself.

THE A-League, in its 11th season, is “at a critical juncture”, Di Pietro said. “There’s a new chairman of the FFA, new directors, so there’s a whole new leadership.”.

“Now 10 years in, it’s time to review actively and it’s also time for recalibration.

“There’s an enormous growth opportunity that we need to challenge ourselves with, but it can’t be just the clubs or just the FFA, we need to work together as stakeholders.”

The A-League has endured a sluggish start despite the Socceroos Asian Cup success in January and huge crowds attending winter friendlies involving European clubs.

“It’s unsettled and it’s unsettled because of uncertainty,” Di Pietro said. “The Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations went on for far too long.

“There’s been uncertainty around the change of chairman and members of the board. And that’s not uncertainty in a negative or positive way, but it’s been a changeover period so the game has been in a little bit of a holding pattern.

“But there’s no excuses any more. The old chairman has retired, the new chairman and board is in. They must approach this with new energy, a new set of eyes and ears. It’s time now to deliver.”

BUMS ON SEATS

FOOTBALL is Australia’s most popular sport for kids aged 6-13 according to last month’s Roy Morgan poll, with 1,244,000 playing the game in some form between July 2014-June 2015 as opposed to 474,000 who played Aussie Rules.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released in February suggest more than 650,000 people played in organised football competitions in 2013-14 while Aussie Rules only lured 224,000.

But to compare average crowds, the A-League is bringing in 12,831 this season whereas the AFL’s 2015 home and away average was 32,242.

“At grassroots level football is the highest participated sport, yet statistics are saying that only 20 per cent of those people support an A-League club,” Di Pietro said.

“Of the other big codes, that figure is as high as 70 per cent.

“And this is the challenge that we have. What are the strategies to boost that 20 per cent figure?

“It’s not just the clubs, it has to be led from the front by the FFA.”

THE BROADCAST DEAL

THE A-League has to move away from SBS, Di Pietro said. And not when the current broadcast deal expires at the end of 2016-17 — it needs to happen ASAP.

The A-League need look no further than cricket’s Big Bash League for inspiration regarding the importance of securing the right commercial television deal.

The 2012-13 BBL averaged 230,000 a game on Fox Sports. The 2013-14 BBL averaged 910,000 a game on Channel 10.

To compare, the 2014-15 A-League season — with one game a week on SBS and all five live on Fox Sports — had an average TV audience of 99,311.

Di Pietro said the numbers are just a fraction of what they could be.

“We have to not to think of anything but getting maximum value from a dollar perspective,” he said.

“Then there’s the need to maximise exposure to a wider audience. Fox Sports have really carried this league, it’s been phenomenal what they’ve done, but they need a partner that can help grow their business.

“And with that free to air exposure, the critical part is what’s done with it other than just playing the games.

“What is done to give the game another foot in to mainstream where A-League players become household names?

“I think the great example has been the value proposition for Twenty20 cricket, where it went from in terms of TV audience to where it’s got to now.

“Channel 10 has done a great job of pumping it up in a positive way, they really underpinned that growth. It has a snowball effect and I think the snowball effect for the A-League can be significant.

“One thing I’m certain of is that if we get this mix right from now, Steven Lowy can lead this league to become the premier competition of the Asian confederation.”

Di Pietro said “we have to realise that young people are so interested in this game”, be it via the A-League, European clubs or FIFA video games. The opportunities are there.

“It’s just got to be taken by the bit now,” he said.

“What are the new arrangements going to be? To just say there’s two years left under the current (broadcast) arrangement is not good enough. The free-to-air component isn’t working and that’s no disrespect to who the partner is, but it isn’t working and they’re not investing.

“They’ve made it clear, to my understanding, that they want to exit and so when one party doesn’t want to party it’s time to change.

“Forget about the fact that there’s still another season, it’s got to be now.

“The next 12 months will determine the success of football in Australia for the next 10 years and broadcast rights is critical to that.”

THE A-LEAGUE MODEL

MELBOURNE Victory turned over $18.5m in the last financial year and generated a $1.5m profit.

FFA turned over $103m in the same 12 months but banked a profit of just $259,000.

“What the new board has the opportunity to do is say ‘where does all the revenue come from in football?’ How do you extract the best possible value and reduce all of the leakage?

“That may be a project that takes a number of years to implement, but you could plan for that now. There might be millions of dollars that could be unlocked in savings.”

The A-League salary cap of $2.6m is covered by an annual distribution from FFA to the clubs. But those distributions have to rise according to Di Pietro as clubs now also have added costs of running W-League teams as well as youth teams that play all-year round.

Many in the game are advocating an independent A-League run separately from FFA. But Di Pietro said he doesn’t feel now is the right time to implement such a change.

“We need to firstly deal with facts and understand what is the maximum value proposition we can get from the existing constitutional structure. This is step No.1.

“We have a head of A-League (Damien de Bohun), but we don’t have a dedicated P&L (profit and loss statement). So how, for example, do you measure the break-up of broadcast money?

“When we have a time of crisis like we’ve had this week, how do we ensure that the management isn’t overseas on other business or somewhere else, how do we ensure that we have dedicated A-League management in place that has the imprimatur to make decisions and that is dedicated in their minds with a strategy and a vision to run with and a model to work within.

“We can do all of that and we can work with that. I think that’s the opportunity that Steven has.”

VICTORY

AMIDST all of the uncertainty, Victory have gone from strength-to-strength. Di Pietro said the soul-searching undertaken by his club several years ago — and the work done since to improve — was proof that other clubs are capable of fixing any woes.

“If you have a very clear strategic plan you can do it,” he said.

“We set ours up when we were losing money, eating in to our capital base, not winning on the park. We thought, let’s sit back and look at what we want to do, who we want to be, let’s recalibrate.

“What we’ve demonstrated with these results is that it can be done. It’s no good getting out there and preaching what’s possible if you haven’t been able to do it yourself.”

THE NEW FFA CHAIRMAN

STEVEN Lowy, son of former FFA chairman Frank Lowy, was last month voted by the FFA board as his father’s successor. There has been great debate about the transparency of the election process, but Di Pietro said Lowy Jr has his full support.

“From our perspective there was no one that even raised their hand that came close to the credentials that Steven brought.

“We’ll work with Steven and his new team but we’ll also be challenging of the governing body. We recognise that he’s got a massive job to do. So we need to work together, not against each other.”

HIS FUTURE

MANY have tipped Di Pietro to one day take charge of FFA. But the 46-year-old seems to be sitting tight. For now.

“Victory has just started it’s real growth trajectory, so we see the hard work as really just beginning.

“We want to make this club an institution of Australian football and that is my priority at the moment.”

Originally published as Melbourne Victory chairman Anthony Di Pietro on how the club became the A-League’s biggest