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‘We’re a football business, not a media business’: A-Leagues bosses explain job cuts
By Emma Kemp
A-Leagues bosses have broken their silence on last month’s mass staff redundancies, taking responsibility for the lack of public communication and pledging to get back to basics by serving “core A-Leagues fans” while slowly building a financially sustainable organisation.
Three weeks after the Australian Professional Leagues made almost half of its 80-odd workforce redundant, new A-Leagues commissioner Nick Garcia and independent chair Stephen Conroy have outlined the latest vision for the future of the country’s top-flight domestic soccer competitions.
“The overarching point here is we’re a football business, not a media business,” Garcia told this masthead on Monday. “We exist to create a great competition that our clubs thrive in and fans love to watch. The first thing about the A-Leagues strategy is it leads with a football strategy, and that is about being really clear about the sort of league you are.
“In the men’s we’re a development league, first and foremost. In the women’s league we are potentially a destination league in Asia, but much more focused on retaining the great national team players rather than attracting international players. But over everything, we’re about developing stars of the future.
”That’s possible because seven years ago all the clubs implemented academy systems, and we’re seeing the crop of that come through right now. So Garang Kuol going to Newcastle United, [Nestory] Irankunda is going to Bayern Munich, and I think we’ve got some other exciting transfers coming up.“
Garcia believes the APL’s digital and content arm KeepUp, which featured content ranging from the domestic leagues to the European leagues and national teams, “did work, to a degree”. “I don’t think it was whether it worked,” he said. “I think, just at this time, it’s not commercially sustainable.”
A-Leagues commissioner Nick Garcia (right) with Bill Foley, the owner of the incoming Auckland franchise.Credit: Getty
Instead, the recently launched aleagues.com.au will focus on “talking to core A-Leagues fans, engaging them more and bringing them to our ecosystem”.
“That new digital strategy will be about converting people,” he said. “KeepUp was always about circling the global football economy, and it did that to a degree. But now we’ve got these fans who want to be talked to through an A-Leagues product, and we have engaged them throughout what we’re doing.”
Garcia said a 33 per cent increase in the average number of pages users clicked on during a single site session on aleagues.com.au proved fans were already responding.
Garcia conceded he “probably should have engaged the media sooner” after closing down KeepUp, which sat at the core of its strategy under previous chief executive Danny Townsend.
Stephen Conroy (right) in 2009 during his days as a minister in the Rudd government.Credit: Glen McCurtayne
But both he and Conroy were bullish about the financial feasibility of the organisation, having “realigned parts of our business” to stem the bleeding after the $140 million cash injection provided by US private equity firm Silver Lake was almost entirely spent on KeepUp, the upheaval associated with COVID-19, loans to clubs, taking over Perth Glory (not to mention the Newcastle Jets, now owned by a group of individual club owners) and underwriting distributions to struggling clubs.
They were equally adamant the $200 million, five-year broadcast deal with Network Ten and Paramount would not be abandoned until its expiration at the end of 2025-26, insisting the network was serving the leagues well despite criticism around its lack of promotion.
Conroy said the APL had put off making positive announcements around flagged new Glory and Jets ownership, and the addition of a Canberra team to join the already-announced Auckland team in an expanded 14-team league next season, in favour of first trying to “deal with some of the more negative perceptions that have been out there”.
The former federal minister referenced the NBL as an example of successfully finding its niche in a crowded Australian sporting landscape.
“Part of what Nick talks about is what Larry [Kestelman] has been able to successfully do - create local superstars picked up in the NBA draft,” Conroy said. “And we’re starting to see that [with transfers overseas].
“I think we can learn from what Larry’s done at NBL - it was a basket case and he turned it around. Every football fan understands that we’re the global biggest sport, so they want to see it as the biggest sport in Australia. So we’ve just got to be patient.”