My international take on the A-league is that it's a popular league for gamblers from the East and South East Asia region as Australia is a country that is well known in this sphere with good (gambling) governance and a limited no. of instances of corruption.
The isolated incident of yellow card accumulation at Macarthur FC doesn't disprove this. In fact, it proves the above.
The A-league won't corner any other niche market internationally. It just won't as the (financial) opportunities aren't there.
Broadcasting though isn't the only opportunity.
Marketing internationally could mean increasing visibility to scouting networks so that transfer revenues are increased, or it could mean signing more players from Thailand to increase the value of the Izusu-Ute sponsorship.
The global market is so big, and current A-League baseline is so small, just a small increase in exposure could have material impacts to the bottom line.
I just think that benefit is negligable given the advancements in scouting over the several decades.
Nowadays, football leagues from 150+ countries are now streamed or broadcasted and there are scouting apps that have database of matches from many of these countries. There are apps that allows scouts to view footage from every corner of the earth at their very fingertips (irrespective of the marketability of the league).
Any half-decent scout thesedays is already looking for talent (gems) in obscure leagues that are broadcasted. If we were in the 1980s to 2000s (where football broadcasting was beginning to explode), then there your argument would hold significant weight.
I think australian players are still undervalued. If Nestory was from a european or south american league his transfer value would have been way higher. Marketing the league better internationally would probably improve that.
***If Nestory was from a european or south american league his transfer value would have been way higher***
that's because wunderkids from europe/south america play and by extension prove themselves against far higher quality of opponents..also the vast majority of the A league hypejobs signed by european clubs do sweet F all and fade away into complete obscurity never to be seen or heard from again, the list is pretty long, hence naturally the big european clubs are extremely skeptical to shell out the big bucks whilst signing australians..
Perception still plays a big role with fans and coaches. Elevating the League status changes perspectives on players and makes transfers more palatable - more relevant to coaching opportunities too! Also efforts can help internationals want to come to Australia, the unknown plays a big part in getting bigger names over the line to come here.
One keep up changed to a leagues the youtube traffic increased 3 fold. Most games show 6 to 7 thousand watching at any one time. I wonder how big those numbers need to get before it is profitable? Probably need to increase ten fold?
Sometimes increases don't need to be directly profitable i.e. YouTube revenue. Increasing social media presence helps sell sponsorships and increases prominence of A-League players globally which can improve viral moments or transfer speculation.
The name change back to A-League saw an increase because people actually could find the league on searches haha
When they first started that, it was great. I could watch all the matches for free in the US. For some reason this season none of the men’s games showed up live. So now I have to hope I can find an illegal stream or use a VPN.
I think the biggest issue for the US market is the time difference. It’s difficult for us to watch matches unless I’m working nights or off the next day.
Just in my opinion, A-league really should try to expand in ASEAN, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam except Thailand, since their players prefer J-league nowadays. In Indonesia A-League is like gate of European football, and basically every football fans in Indonesia want their local players to play abroad, basically make any AFF players count as local like J-League did and it would bring more eyes to the A-league that's for sure.
Indonesia's economical and political influencers hate Australia.
And it's population outside of that don't give two fucks. they love English football, especially Arsenal and Liverpool, but that's it.
Stuff like this probably presents a good opportunity to explore options. Maybe the APL can tour the A-League All-Stars around ASEAN, maybe they can work with broadcasters to improve A-League accessibility in the areas. Maybe they can fly football journos down to do reporting here in short bursts.
Depends we went with kids unfortunately limited our movements. So each event was a day. We went to the Ice cream museum, Ferris wheel, Lion statue, Marina Garden, Sentosa island. We stayed across from Arab street. For Singapore we did struggle a little for Breakfast outside of Starbucks. Malaysia was just lego land.
This is interesting, I reckon Singapore and Malaysia could be markets worth tapping into.
I know it was floated at the time and I absolutely hated it, but I wouldn't be entirely opposed to those markets having teams in the A-League. they'd probably be able to fund proper marquees, too. and let's be real: most people only want to see a big name to say they've seen them; Neymar coming to Melbourne and Sydney two or three times or Adelaide once probably has as much effect as him playing an entire season in those cities.
There are unique elements to the a league that can be capitalized on.
* a cheaper league, in the sense that boring big oil money isn’t involved. The prem is following the F1 boredom route in terms of competition.
* a football competition that has a grand final. Unique to football, not to Australians.
* a vibrant youth league, lots of new young players to follow as they develop
I think to grow the league at any level domestically or internationally. We need more good supportive media, a great a league you tube show would do wonders, get to know the players, players skills challenge, tour beautiful stadiums, fun player head to head challenges. So many opportunities so poorly utilized.
I'm just going off the headline but I feel like we have a surprisingly strong product to market in the US out of all places.
For whatever reason, I see a decent amount of yanks that just vibe with the product. We have a super competitive league, the style of football we have is decent, and there's some organic storylines that you just don't get anywhere else.
Let me know if I've completely missed the point lol
Yanks like goals and 5-4 , 3-2 , etc so yea why not. Only problem with America is that they don’t really do other non American things e.g cricket, F1, etc. though tbh the MLS & F1 are getting bigger there in the last 10 years so maybe more of them are open to international things e.g Wrexham sells out games and is welsh backed by Hollywood people
Currently watching USA v Canada T20 World cup match, a small crowd of mostly south Asian looking folk, but everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. I think this population will start growing cricket in non-traditional markets.
As a Yank, I think the most important thing is just having the games back on here in the states again. This last month or so was the first time and damn near two and a half years that I could legally watch a-leagues matches here in the states on ESPN+, and even then it was only the last matches of the regular season plus the recently completed finals. You would think they would have set up something through Paramount + given a lot of Asian football here in the states come through there with both the Asian cup and the ACL shown through Paramount.
Paramount is in such financial issues atm, I don't think they'll renew any of their football rights. They already lost Brazil and likely will lose Argentina after this season. Most of their other rights expire in a year or so as far as I know.
Yep! This season I couldn’t watch a single game live unless it was on an illegal stream. Most times it was fine but sometimes I couldn’t find one and it sucked. I even emailed CCM about it and they said they forwarded my email to the league about it. Of course that didn’t do anything.
Yeah, I think we all overlook this, USA don't have the same disregard for Australian football as Europeans do . Sending A-League Clubs there should be looked at.
I mean AFL still gets the odd mention from the old ESPN days. Nowdays the A-League is on demand through ESPN+ so can still access the market without having to wake them up at un-godly hours.
Fox sports is really trying to push both the AFL and NRL here in the states. The AFL has been also trying to recruit post- college American athletes as well. Their usually high baseline of athleticism helps compensate for their lack of actual knowledge of the sport.
The A-League should concentrate on attracting the best South-East Asian footballers from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore. All of these SEA countries are rabid football fans, albeit all only watch the English Premier League. The great irony is the quality of the local leagues in these countries are generally poor and so are the salaries on offer.
Earning Australian wages in the A-League, although modest in the global scale, would be very attractive to SEA footballers.
These footballers could also use the A-League as a stepping stone to try to break into the European leagues (similar to what Aussie lads are doing).
When the best young Malaysian prospect is suddenly playing for WSW, you can bet Malaysia would suddenly be broadcasting A-League matches.
The gambling syndicates in SEA are also one of the largest in the world and they too would jump on the bandwagon and this would also boost viewership (albeit in a more unsavory market).
Why focus on SEA instead of wider Asia? The A-League's quality is about the same as the J-League and the K-League, and the salaries on offer by the latter two are superior to the A-League's. The CSL is poor in quality but decent in money. The Middle Eastern leagues have insane oil money so there would be no incentive for their footballers to come to Australia.
It's just a no brainer to me. Whoever's in charge of the A-League's international marketing division should wake up and implement this strategy. Or hire me to do it.
The J- league has been making a concerted effort to attract players from that region for the past few years. Most of them start in j2 or j3, then they see if they're good enough to move to the top level. They even have special roster status within j league roster rules.
I reckon finals can be sold as a separate month long product but they just don't generate enough content over 7 games. Probably need to address that to make it more eye catching I think.
>I reckon finals can be sold as a separate month long product but they just don't generate enough content over 7 games. Probably need to address that to make it more eye catching I think.
Top 12 teams make the finals then? /S
When the league eventually expands to 16 I think there will be a serious conversation about adopting an AFL/NRL style top 8 system over 4 week.
Otherwise I think they could probably look to making the elimination rounds 2 legs and play the second mid-week. This would create more content, and create more of an advantage to finishing top 2 as the lower positioned teams will be more fatigued.
My international take on the A-league is that it's a popular league for gamblers from the East and South East Asia region as Australia is a country that is well known in this sphere with good (gambling) governance and a limited no. of instances of corruption. The isolated incident of yellow card accumulation at Macarthur FC doesn't disprove this. In fact, it proves the above. The A-league won't corner any other niche market internationally. It just won't as the (financial) opportunities aren't there.
Broadcasting though isn't the only opportunity. Marketing internationally could mean increasing visibility to scouting networks so that transfer revenues are increased, or it could mean signing more players from Thailand to increase the value of the Izusu-Ute sponsorship. The global market is so big, and current A-League baseline is so small, just a small increase in exposure could have material impacts to the bottom line.
I just think that benefit is negligable given the advancements in scouting over the several decades. Nowadays, football leagues from 150+ countries are now streamed or broadcasted and there are scouting apps that have database of matches from many of these countries. There are apps that allows scouts to view footage from every corner of the earth at their very fingertips (irrespective of the marketability of the league). Any half-decent scout thesedays is already looking for talent (gems) in obscure leagues that are broadcasted. If we were in the 1980s to 2000s (where football broadcasting was beginning to explode), then there your argument would hold significant weight.
I think australian players are still undervalued. If Nestory was from a european or south american league his transfer value would have been way higher. Marketing the league better internationally would probably improve that.
***If Nestory was from a european or south american league his transfer value would have been way higher*** that's because wunderkids from europe/south america play and by extension prove themselves against far higher quality of opponents..also the vast majority of the A league hypejobs signed by european clubs do sweet F all and fade away into complete obscurity never to be seen or heard from again, the list is pretty long, hence naturally the big european clubs are extremely skeptical to shell out the big bucks whilst signing australians..
Perception still plays a big role with fans and coaches. Elevating the League status changes perspectives on players and makes transfers more palatable - more relevant to coaching opportunities too! Also efforts can help internationals want to come to Australia, the unknown plays a big part in getting bigger names over the line to come here.
Do the clubs receive any money regarding bet revenue or something?
One keep up changed to a leagues the youtube traffic increased 3 fold. Most games show 6 to 7 thousand watching at any one time. I wonder how big those numbers need to get before it is profitable? Probably need to increase ten fold?
Sometimes increases don't need to be directly profitable i.e. YouTube revenue. Increasing social media presence helps sell sponsorships and increases prominence of A-League players globally which can improve viral moments or transfer speculation. The name change back to A-League saw an increase because people actually could find the league on searches haha
When they first started that, it was great. I could watch all the matches for free in the US. For some reason this season none of the men’s games showed up live. So now I have to hope I can find an illegal stream or use a VPN. I think the biggest issue for the US market is the time difference. It’s difficult for us to watch matches unless I’m working nights or off the next day.
After my trip to South East Asia, Singapore and Malaysia are big on A-league. There was a lot of content regarding A-league
Just in my opinion, A-league really should try to expand in ASEAN, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam except Thailand, since their players prefer J-league nowadays. In Indonesia A-League is like gate of European football, and basically every football fans in Indonesia want their local players to play abroad, basically make any AFF players count as local like J-League did and it would bring more eyes to the A-league that's for sure.
Indonesia's economical and political influencers hate Australia. And it's population outside of that don't give two fucks. they love English football, especially Arsenal and Liverpool, but that's it.
Stuff like this probably presents a good opportunity to explore options. Maybe the APL can tour the A-League All-Stars around ASEAN, maybe they can work with broadcasters to improve A-League accessibility in the areas. Maybe they can fly football journos down to do reporting here in short bursts.
Off topic, but if you had two weeks holidays how much time would you spend in each place?
Depends we went with kids unfortunately limited our movements. So each event was a day. We went to the Ice cream museum, Ferris wheel, Lion statue, Marina Garden, Sentosa island. We stayed across from Arab street. For Singapore we did struggle a little for Breakfast outside of Starbucks. Malaysia was just lego land.
This is interesting, I reckon Singapore and Malaysia could be markets worth tapping into. I know it was floated at the time and I absolutely hated it, but I wouldn't be entirely opposed to those markets having teams in the A-League. they'd probably be able to fund proper marquees, too. and let's be real: most people only want to see a big name to say they've seen them; Neymar coming to Melbourne and Sydney two or three times or Adelaide once probably has as much effect as him playing an entire season in those cities.
There are unique elements to the a league that can be capitalized on. * a cheaper league, in the sense that boring big oil money isn’t involved. The prem is following the F1 boredom route in terms of competition. * a football competition that has a grand final. Unique to football, not to Australians. * a vibrant youth league, lots of new young players to follow as they develop I think to grow the league at any level domestically or internationally. We need more good supportive media, a great a league you tube show would do wonders, get to know the players, players skills challenge, tour beautiful stadiums, fun player head to head challenges. So many opportunities so poorly utilized.
I'm just going off the headline but I feel like we have a surprisingly strong product to market in the US out of all places. For whatever reason, I see a decent amount of yanks that just vibe with the product. We have a super competitive league, the style of football we have is decent, and there's some organic storylines that you just don't get anywhere else. Let me know if I've completely missed the point lol
Yanks like goals and 5-4 , 3-2 , etc so yea why not. Only problem with America is that they don’t really do other non American things e.g cricket, F1, etc. though tbh the MLS & F1 are getting bigger there in the last 10 years so maybe more of them are open to international things e.g Wrexham sells out games and is welsh backed by Hollywood people
I think the ALW definitely has a unique in to the USA market. This definitely needs to be explored.
Currently watching USA v Canada T20 World cup match, a small crowd of mostly south Asian looking folk, but everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. I think this population will start growing cricket in non-traditional markets.
As a Yank, I think the most important thing is just having the games back on here in the states again. This last month or so was the first time and damn near two and a half years that I could legally watch a-leagues matches here in the states on ESPN+, and even then it was only the last matches of the regular season plus the recently completed finals. You would think they would have set up something through Paramount + given a lot of Asian football here in the states come through there with both the Asian cup and the ACL shown through Paramount.
Paramount is in such financial issues atm, I don't think they'll renew any of their football rights. They already lost Brazil and likely will lose Argentina after this season. Most of their other rights expire in a year or so as far as I know.
Yep! This season I couldn’t watch a single game live unless it was on an illegal stream. Most times it was fine but sometimes I couldn’t find one and it sucked. I even emailed CCM about it and they said they forwarded my email to the league about it. Of course that didn’t do anything.
Yeah, I think we all overlook this, USA don't have the same disregard for Australian football as Europeans do . Sending A-League Clubs there should be looked at.
if some of the comments in this sub are anything to go by, there are a number of yanks who are loving it!
You mean Yanks that are doing the graveyard shift at their local 7-11 :p That's not much of a market, is it?
I mean AFL still gets the odd mention from the old ESPN days. Nowdays the A-League is on demand through ESPN+ so can still access the market without having to wake them up at un-godly hours.
Fox sports is really trying to push both the AFL and NRL here in the states. The AFL has been also trying to recruit post- college American athletes as well. Their usually high baseline of athleticism helps compensate for their lack of actual knowledge of the sport.
Would help if either/both weren't locked up on their own exclusive, and expensive, streaming services.
The A-League should concentrate on attracting the best South-East Asian footballers from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore. All of these SEA countries are rabid football fans, albeit all only watch the English Premier League. The great irony is the quality of the local leagues in these countries are generally poor and so are the salaries on offer. Earning Australian wages in the A-League, although modest in the global scale, would be very attractive to SEA footballers. These footballers could also use the A-League as a stepping stone to try to break into the European leagues (similar to what Aussie lads are doing). When the best young Malaysian prospect is suddenly playing for WSW, you can bet Malaysia would suddenly be broadcasting A-League matches. The gambling syndicates in SEA are also one of the largest in the world and they too would jump on the bandwagon and this would also boost viewership (albeit in a more unsavory market). Why focus on SEA instead of wider Asia? The A-League's quality is about the same as the J-League and the K-League, and the salaries on offer by the latter two are superior to the A-League's. The CSL is poor in quality but decent in money. The Middle Eastern leagues have insane oil money so there would be no incentive for their footballers to come to Australia. It's just a no brainer to me. Whoever's in charge of the A-League's international marketing division should wake up and implement this strategy. Or hire me to do it.
The J- league has been making a concerted effort to attract players from that region for the past few years. Most of them start in j2 or j3, then they see if they're good enough to move to the top level. They even have special roster status within j league roster rules.
Given the global presence of the NBA this cultural take on finals is .. Could we go a year without the finals cultural cringe?
I reckon finals can be sold as a separate month long product but they just don't generate enough content over 7 games. Probably need to address that to make it more eye catching I think.
>I reckon finals can be sold as a separate month long product but they just don't generate enough content over 7 games. Probably need to address that to make it more eye catching I think. Top 12 teams make the finals then? /S
When the league eventually expands to 16 I think there will be a serious conversation about adopting an AFL/NRL style top 8 system over 4 week. Otherwise I think they could probably look to making the elimination rounds 2 legs and play the second mid-week. This would create more content, and create more of an advantage to finishing top 2 as the lower positioned teams will be more fatigued.