APL must return A-Leagues to Football Australia and conduct urgent review into Ten-Paramount broadcast deal

Danny Townsend’s departure as chief executive is understood to be imminent. He has received a lucrative opportunity in the Middle East and has every right to take his career in whatever direction he wishes, especially after taking the fall for many over the controversial grand finals decision.

That said, the timing isn’t great. Much of the talk around the game at the moment is of clubs being broke, fans seething over that grand final call, the league facing a genuine existential crisis and the Ten/Paramount deal being nothing short of a disaster.

A new CEO cannot fix that.

The FA might.

Walking back the grand final decision with the NSW Government is one thing (and I’ll get to that later in this column), but the other issues mentioned are much more serious and, in the case of Ten/Paramount, have years left to run.

The A-League Women’s starts exactly one month from today and the Men’s a week later. We should be riding the Matildas’ and Socceroos’ wave and talking about exciting signings and big, forthcoming fixtures. But none of that is happening. The domestic game is as stuck as it’s ever been.

At a time when A-Leagues clubs are struggling mightily and the APL is set to lose its CEO, Football Australia is in about the best financial shape in its history. Two successful World Cups, one as co-hosts, has filled the coffers and prompted excited chatter about a grassroots boom.

But little, to none, of that is making its way to A-Leagues clubs. The revenue from Matildas’ and Socceroos’ success flows to the FA, and grassroots to the states. The FA has prioritised grassroots funding and national youth team preparations, while the clubs don’t see a cent under the current deal, which the clubs themselves were fully aware of when the breakaway occurred at the end of 2020.

Dividing the game’s governance structures has not worked and it’s clear the APL is not strong enough to grow the league on its own.

Consider this statement from Townsend little more than two years ago at the time the new broadcast deal was struck: “Fundamental to our strategy is a determination to ensure that we connect and engage with every Australian. This (Ten/Paramount) agreement starts that process by giving the game unprecedented reach and … will unlock what we believe is an audience the game has never managed to reach before.”

Clearly, this vision has not materialised.

Well connected people in the game talk openly about the league potentially falling over. How has it arrived at this point in just two seasons? The reported $200 million from Ten/Paramount is apparently quite a bit less than that due to performance metrics not being met and a decent chunk of the Silver Lake money has apparently been spent on a costly digital play that is not guaranteed a return.

But the league can’t die. The FA must not allow it to happen. For whatever its faults, the A-Leagues are the bridge between grassroots, where the numbers are massive, and the international teams, where the interest in Australia is unprecedented. Its success is vital for the health of the game and big decisions need to be made to restore it.

First among those is the broadcast decision. If it’s true that Ten/Paramount are not intending to resolve the major app issues that have blighted their first two seasons as rights holders, they are treating the fans with contempt. It’s little wonder so many of them have been unwilling to fork out for the product and walked away from the league as a result.

The FA’s deal with Ten/Paramount ends after 2024 and they are in market now, whereas the A-Leagues’ Paramount deal is heading into the third of a five-year deal. If the league is willing to walk away from its contract with the NSW government over the hosting of the grand finals, they should review the broadcast deal and, frankly, all the bad decisions and miscalculations they have made along the way.

The grand final decision was a bad one. Some of my best memories of football in Australia are the energy and passion of those season deciders in front of massive home crowds (the sea of orange at Suncorp is a highlight). To take that away was wrong and to try to position it as something other than a money grab was worse.

Townsend took the criticism, but he was far from the only one behind it with the APL board made up of powerful representatives from five clubs ratifying the deal before it was announced last December.

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I’m quite sure there would be more than a few club owners who would put their hand up now and admit the break away from the FA has been a mistake and that a return to the fold would be in everyone’s best interests. The disunity in football is its greatest problem and that has only been exacerbated by the APL’s split from the FA.

History tells us that revolutions fail all the time and we’ve reached a point where we can add the A-Leagues to that list. There’s no point doubling down on a bad decision.

It’s time to make the game whole again.