Steven Lowy plots reform goals for game in flux

FFA chair Steven Lowy is fighting on a series of fronts to ­retain control of the adminis­trative clout of the game.

Football Federation Australia chairman Steven Lowy. Picture: Hollie Adams

Steven Lowy hung up his football playing boots four years ago, surrendering to a string of injuries that ended a long playing career with Hakoah club in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

But his absence from the game has been far shorter than the ­decades-long hiatus his father Frank enforced after a searing ­experience with the same club when he was trying to help build a national competition in the 1970s.

And if recent developments in the national competition are anything to go by, the son’s experience threatens to be no less interesting.

Steven Lowy, who was installed as chairman of the ­governing body Football Federation Australia at the end of 2015, is fighting on a series of fronts to ­retain control of the purse strings and the adminis­trative clout of the game against a concerted push by the A-League club bosses for more money and a bigger say in how the game is run in Australia.

And if that’s not enough, the 54-year-old Westfield co-chief executive is juggling demands from the inter­national governing body, FIFA, to open up board representation with his own ambition to set a stamp on the game by developing an operating model to grow revenue and support. If he gets his way, Lowy hopes his term as FFA chairman will be marked by a bigger and more commercially successful A-League, national teams that can progress beyond the group stage into the finals of the quadrennial World Cup, and the “grassroots’’ develops stronger links through to the commercial and national teams.

All this comes at a delicate time for the sport, according to Lowy. Junior national teams — a vital feeder to the Matildas and Socceroos, are failing to qualify for international tournaments; complaints are growing that the 10-team A-League format is stale, too small and too reliant on local derbies and a lack of free-to-air television exposure is stifling the exposure and growth of the game: in its ninth year, the W-League final between Melbourne City and Perth Glory last weekend drew about 4000 spectators and average ratings of 51,000, both figures less than half that for games in the second round of the new AFL women’s league.

And all the while, the local league competes to develop, attract and retain the best players — not to mention fans — against the big money competition in ­Europe, South America and, increasingly, the Asian region.

“I regard the game as in a fragile condition at the moment,’’ Lowy tells The Weekend Aust­ralian. “It is in a fragile position politically and a fragile position with the fundamentals structure of the game.’’

But on the plus side, “the opportunity is amazing”. Soccer participation is estimated at almost 1.2 million people — a figure unrivalled by even the giant AFL and NRL winter codes — with 499,361 registered players and nearly 700,000 other participants including school, social and futsal (indoor football) competitions. Converting that base into more and bigger A-League clubs and stronger international teams remains the driving ambition of the FFA and Lowy believes that of all the codes, football has the most upside. It has the smallest revenue base of the main football codes and little free-to-air TV exposure.

Average A-League match attendances of more than 12,000 per game already ranks 16th in the world for professional codes and would get a huge boost if it could get lift the percentage of registered players professing support for one of the professional clubs from 25 per cent to the comparable AFL figure of 75 per cent.

But it won’t happen without significant changes to the structure that Steven inherited from his father Frank, who gets the credit for turning soccer into a growing mainstream game.

“That (current structure of the FFA) was right for the time and it had enormous success; with the A-League, with the Socceroos, with the Asian Cup, with getting into Asia and really properly corporatising the game to attract public and private capital to the game. But it is time to take a fresh look at the governance of the game, because like all successful organisations you need to evolve and be relevant, and to ensure that your game and your product has an environment to grow and thrive.’’

Still, tonight’s cross-city clash between relative newcomers Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC at ANZ Stadium in Homebush is expected to attract more than 50,000 fans — a figure and fixture that seemed a distant dream in the earliest days of the national league.

I­n the sleek offices high above Westfield’s flagship shopping centre on Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall, Lowy has been juggling preparations for the company’s interim results next week with a series of intense meetings with parts of the soccer family. On Tuesday it was the state associations that have nine of the 10 votes on the FFA board, on Wednesday the A-League club presidents and yesterday the Professional Foot­ballers Association.

Armed with directions from the Switzerland-based global gov­erning body, FIFA, for FFA to increase board numbers, give clubs a vote and broaden representation at the board, club bosses have played particularly tough. An inconclusive three-hour meeting with club presidents on Wednesday was followed by demands for another meeting the following day. Hopeful reports then emerged that the FFA had caved into demands for an independent league, only for them to be firmly denied the following day.

Constitutional reform is a dry as dust subject for most football fans. But it is what flows from it that excites the passion — how many teams in the national club competition and how much money they get, the resources devoted to national teams and development squads and the cost of and resources devoted to running the game at the community level.

Lowy says he understands the clubs’ demands and he is prepared to give some ground. They generate 80 per cent of the revenue in the game via sponsorship, gate receipts, membership and broadcast rights, but get just a fraction of that back from the FFA.

“Clearly the commercial engine room of the game and clearly there is a lot of noise in the market that those clubs would like a ­greater say. But they would also like a greater share of the revenue of the game”. he says. “There is nothing wrong with that, they are commercial entities and they are entitled to think like that. But ... the FFA is the governing body of the game and we have to think about the interests of the whole of the game. It is important that the board of the FFA is independent.”

Lowy wants time to develop a new commercial model for the game that would give the clubs a greater say in running the A-League and says rather than ­sharing resources with the FFA, the A-League could have its own management and staff. One option might be to make the clubs shareholders in the league, rather than licensees.

But he is adamant that for the good of the game the FFA must retain control of the purse strings. Australian soccer is not yet ready to move to a British-style system. The English Premier League turned over £3.5 billion ($5.7bn) last year, compared to about £400 million for the Football ­Association that looks after the FA Cup and the national team. The FFA generated a little over $100m in revenue last year.

The AFL’s latest accounts show it generated $500m in revenue in 2015 while the NRL reached $354m in 2015.

“We are very conscious of (the clubs) having much greater involvement, but (the FFA) keeping ultimate decision-making of the distribution of funds. We have to govern the game for the for the whole country,’’ Lowy says.

He notes that few of the 92 professional clubs in the EPL make money, but still have owners who are comfortable investing because they see the growth of the asset.

“So you need a capital base of club owners that can have some losses, manageable losses, but over time they are building a bigger asset,” he says.

“We want to restructure the A-League so that it incentivises the new owners to invest in their club, invest in their membership and teams to ultimately grow an asset But for that to happen we feel we need to evolve the model so that they have greater ownership and a greater role in the ­running of it.”

In the congress vote, the clubs are likely to get some of what they want. A report in The Australian this week suggested the clubs could get as many as three board seats. But because the congress has to expand to a possible 17 ­directors to accommodate rep­resentatives from groups such as the professional players, the women’s league, referees and ­futsal, the percentage increase will be far less. The model floated by the FFA but not yet finalised could see the clubs’ percentage representation increase from 10 per cent to 17.5 per cent. They were reported to be seeking a 40 per cent share, more than double what’s on offer.

With the FFA soon to declare the annual distributions to the clubs and conclude free-to-air and international broadcast deals that could bump up FFA revenue by $20m to $120m, the push for board seats has added urgency.

The constitutional reform is also likely to add complexity to Lowy’s tenure.

Accounts of his father Frank’s terms running the FFA from 2005 to 2015 invariably note the role of a supportive board. Armed with the Crawford report of 2003, the support of the federal government and a handpicked board,

Frank Lowy was able to remove the politics that had blighted the development of the game and drive it towards commercial, on field and international success. When Steven succeeded him at the end of 2015, he was elected unopposed.

Lowy insists that the directors are and must remain independent. Under the rules they can’t have any affiliation with any of the constituents for two years prior to joining. But the addition of a mooted seven new directors will add complexity to the already difficult job of balancing the competing interests of the soccer family.