A huge shake up awaits all A-League Men’s clubs with major changes to the salary cap and marquee signings
Significant changes by the Australian Professional Leagues are set to impact every single A-League Men’s club. ERIN SMITH reports.
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A-League clubs are in for a huge shake up with the Australian Professional Leagues (APL) putting in place a new $3 million salary cap and significantly limiting marquee players in a bid to improve financial sustainability.
New executive chair Stephen Conroy, speaking to media for the first time since taking on the role in February, said the move would hit every single club.
The changes will be introduced on a trial basis next season with a “soft salary cap” of $3.5 million and no penalties for breaching it.
From the 2026/27 season the cap will be $3 million with an allowance for one marquee player.
Conroy said there would be no exemptions.
The league’s soft $2.55 million salary cap has been in place since 2005. On top of that clubs can sign two marquee players and then have two designated players - their salaries sit outside the salary cap.
“We are looking at the profitability of each club, what we are seeing is frankly an unsustainable trend in terms of their performance, their profitability and their losses,” Conroy said.
“What we are seeing behind the scenes is that the level of financial stress the clubs are under is significant and it’s getting worse.”
A great deal of that financial stress is due to the APL cutting the central distribution fund this season to each club by about 75 per cent from $2 million to $530,000.
What the APL wants to avoid is having to take on the ownership and costs of another club as it was forced to do with Perth Glory last season before offloading it for an upfront fee of $1.
Melbourne Victory reported $9.87 million in losses in 2024.
Conroy said he goal was to have the APL breaking even and it was on track to do that this financial year.
“We have stabilised the APL centrally and what we’ve got to do now is work with the clubs through these measures to ensure that every club is stable,” Conroy said.
“We are concerned and we want everyone to remain viable.”
Conroy said the changes would hit every club hard but clubs had been accepting of the new regulations.
“I would struggle to find any club that is spending less than $3 million, the average spend is well in excess of that,” Conroy said.
“It is one of the reasons we are looking at this player’s arms race. This is going to impact on every club.”
Another change set to be introduced with the salary cap is a minimum number of youth players.
Conroy said from the 2026/27 season clubs would have to have a minimum of six Under-23s in every squad.
He doesn’t believe it will have an impact on the quality of the A-Leagues.
“If you look at the number of minutes that the kids are playing that is not tokenistic,” Conroy said.
“They have invested in their academies and the quality on the pitch by a large number of young players has been outstanding. We’ve got record interest and we will have record transfer fees this year as well. So they will still get the one marquee players, they can still buy players from overseas, they can still pay Australian players.
“We don’t believe there will be any reduction in quality on the pitch.”
Conroy said the salary cap changes would not flow onto the women’s league.
APL also held a meeting today to elect two new board members. Melbourne Victory chairman John Dovaston and Brisbane Roar CEO and Chairman Kaz Patafta were voted in. The remainder of the board was not up for election.
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