Early last week Football Federation Australia (FFA) announced the ‘Whole of Football Plan’ (WOFP), a vision shared by Frank Lowy and David Gallop in an effort to guide revenue, development and entice fans to the game.
In 2010, New Zealand released a similar strategy and both Germany and Japan have gone down a similar route to achieve enormous dividends, and of course we all know of the enterprising, systematic approach that China have embarked on.
The Australian version has one slight difference to the others, that is there is no mention of how it will be funded. The inference is that a greater proportion of interest in A-league clubs by the 435,728 registered players and the rest of the football community will bring a bountiful harvest.
The truth is that for the FFA to achieve their goal there is one thing standing in their way and no amount of ‘Football will become the most popular game in Australia’ rhetoric from Lowy and Gallop will change this.
That obstacle is AFL!
It is hoped by the FFA that 75% of juniors will follow a top tier A-league club and give AFL, with its current 804,480 club members in 2014, a run for the sporting fan dollar.
In 2014 AFL revenue increased by $12 million to $458 million, whose fan club numbers achieved a total of 804,480, a record established by clubs for the 14th successive year. The AFL is doing something right, their product is established and successful and directing these fans to the A-league will be no easy task.
As part of the Whole of Football plan the FFA hopes to increase its ‘football community’ to 15 million, or approximately 50 percent of the population by 2035, a worthwhile, but unrealistic goal even with the recent talk of the ‘football community which reflects the ever changing diversity of the Australian population’.
It is interesting to think that the correlation to diversity and ethnic roots is being used to entice fans to the game, when it was the ethnic links that was the cause of so much upheaval when David Hill took it out of the old National Soccer League (NSL).
The first four year strategy will be released later in 2015, and will include plans to expand Premier, A-League and school development pathways funded by yet to be announced new broadcast deals and increasing A-League club memberships.
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The lack of emphasis provided to youth development in Australia since the abandonment of the NSL has come back to haunt Australian football and it is admirable that the FFA want to reinvest in this, but where Germany, Japan, New Zealand and China had huge financial investment to implement their model, the FFA currently does not.
One must ask, is the ‘Whole of Football’ plan a realistic strategy? Or a marketing ploy developed by over paid FFA executives to justify their existence?
For the WOFP to be successful it will take more than the visions portrayed in its glossy pages, it will take a total change in Australian sporting culture, something that will take far more than 20 years to achieve.
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