It was a pity when I read in December’s Spike Mag that the Men’s AVL competition didn’t go ahead last year. Furthermore, the meeting to talk about its future didn’t go ahead either. AVL wasn’t perfect. I always heard criticism about it. But I think everyone can agree that we need some sort of national competition at the senior level.
Women’s AVL this year had an interesting format – only one team per state. The principle is a bit like the State Seniors tournament they used to run. In fact, two of the teams in the women’s AVL were representative teams (QLD & WA).
The last State Seniors tournament was held in 1998. I just remember my coach, Rick telling me he saw it in Melbourne and had to travel back on the train after the Crows had beat the Bulldogs to make the grand final and there were a lot of drunk people on board. I think they used to run either or both AVL and State Seniors, but in the end they cut State Seniors in favour of a club-based format. Funny how things come full circle.
With my modest ability playing at a club that struggled to win a match, it’s no surprise I never played AVL. The closest I ever got was when my U21 state coach Mike Reu asked me (as a paying spectator) to do a line duty because someone hadn’t turned up.
I’m really digressing here because what I really wanted to write about is why a national league is important, and why it’s not doing what it ought to do.
Milk trickles down, not up
The elite competition of a sport should be the cash cow. A lightning rod that attracts the money that will trickle down and make the sport stronger. I was speaking to a couple of new volleyball parents recently and they were surprised how much it cost to put their kid through the sport. They were used to having their son play football and explained that a lot of the money made by the AFL trickles down to the grass roots (in grants I would presume) making participation much more affordable.
So I googled the AFL’s 2006 Annual Report to see for myself. It outlines a pretty ambitious plan for the next 5 years dubbed “Next Generation”. In short, they plan to spend just over a billion dollars on their operations over this time. In 2006, the AFL turned over $215M – one would presume most of that came from attendances, sponsorships, television rights and merchandising – all from the elite competitions. By the looks of the charts, about 70% of the revenue is spent on managing the AFL and disbursements to the clubs, so that leaves a margin of about 60M a year that this competition is creating! About half of that margin (15% of total expenditure) is invested in developing the game across the community. Imagine if our sport had 30M injected into it every year for development!
On the other hand, according to the AVF’s 2006-2007 report, they turned over 3.6M for the year. About 20% of that came from sponsorship, 15% from memberships and nearly half of that came from Government grants. It’s a very different picture
The sad fact is AVL and the State Leagues cost money. I don’t think anyone really makes any money out of them. It costs everyone (players, clubs, state associations etc) to be involved and you can’t point the finger at anyone making a lot of money out of this within our game. I wonder if from a sports administrator’s point of view life would be easier if we didn’t have these competitions at all? Why do we bother if it doesn’t make economic sense? Or maybe the real question is, how do we change a sacred cow into a cash cow?
Participation = Growth?
I read an article, or heard a commentator talk about Soccer in the US once. S/he said, if you had a look at what sport kids were playing most in a country, and thought it was indicative of what the most popular spectator sport there was, you’d think America’s national pastime was Soccer. But it’s not. It falls a distant god-knows-what behind Baseball, NFL, Basketball, Ice Hockey etc. We’ll see if Becks makes a difference there, but even Pele, Johann Cruijff, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer didn’t have much luck there. Hell, the league and teams they played for ceased to exist by 1985!
So we have a dilemma. Despite the unprecedented level of participation we’re experiencing in the sport in Australia, we still don’t have a professional national league. But that’s the wrong way to look at it, since we can’t expect an elite competition to grow from the ground up. It hasn’t worked so far. Maybe it’s the other way round. Financially, the money has to come from the top and trickle down, not from the bottom and push up.
Cracking the Footy Codes
It’s odd how the sports ahead of Volleyball in Australia, don’t have huge participation numbers that reflect their dominance. AFL is a sport played essentially in 3 states (with some obscure participation in the other states). Rugby League is pretty much NSW and QLD. Rugby Union has the people in those states that don’t follow Rugby League. Soccer and Basketball are the only sports up there that have participation across the board like Volleyball, but even they fall far behind the “Football Codes” and the money they generate.
So what have they got that we don’t? Honestly, I reckon it’s a great individual with vision, influence and gravitas. We talk about players and coaches who change their sport all the time. But there have been some great administrators who have completely transformed those sports too. Not to take away from the fine work I’m sure the people governing our sport here are doing, but the reality is they’re up against guys like Wayne Jackson, John O’Neill and David Gallop. Guys who have taken our football codes to the top (financially) and kept them there. And they’ve done it not by increasing participation in the sport, but in increasing the national interest.
John O’Neill
John O’Neill, has got to be the greatest sports administrator Australia has ever known as he has successfully transformed two sports; soccer and Rugby Union, creating sustainable professional leagues in both sports and getting their national teams to over-achieve on the world stage. Rugby Union transformed between the Wallabies’ World Cup wins in 1991 and 1999. In 1991, it was an amateur or semi-professional sport. Some of the Wallabies might have played in overseas leagues, but there were a fair number who supported themselves through other careers. By 1999, we had Murdoch’s Super 12 competition and a Wallabies side made up of full-time professional athletes based in Australia. Not bad considering it’s a sport that comes 2nd in a market of 2 states.
He then moved on to soccer, where a talented Socerros side had lousy luck in qualifying for the World Cup and the national league struggled. It would have been difficult and expensive to get him, but it helps having someone like Frank Lowy as your sport’s patron. Under O’Neill and Lowy, the Socceroos scored Guus Huddink and qualified for the world cup for the first time since 1974. We also got a new national competition that is a lot stronger than the last one and has a much higher profile. No longer is it an obscure sport with a predominantly ethnic stigma, but a sport embraced by the mainstream pushing itself to the status of the other football codes.
To get someone like John O’Neill to run volleyball here would truly transform the sport in this country. Someone who can get the partnerships right, corporate sponsorships and convince a media mogul why it’s worth putting volleyball on TV will help them get subscribers and advertising dollars. It’s hard since the people who can do that don’t exactly grow on trees.
I haven’t met the people who run our sport at the national level, but maybe that person is there now. Only time will tell. But we’ll know when AVL stops being a part of our game’s development and becomes part of the its profits. We might be waiting till the cows come home.
