Prophetic words from blahblah and shin from July 2019.Thats a really good point.
The real issue here is the broadcast money which is likely to collapse before the monetisation of other forms of viewership, particualrly streaming, is better understood. The FFA can see it looming and don't have the answers; hopefully an independent A-League will.
At some stage in the future the aleague will be totally online, the problem is the sports streaming realm is still at its teething stage. There are no clear leaders in the sports realm like we see with netflix and Amazon streaming services.
The greatest potential for success would be for the aleague to produce its own distribution by selling the rights to a season directly to the consumer. I imagine this could be equally dangerous given a lull in the league would result in a direct loss of income with subscriptions taking away any ability to plan for the longterm future.
Thankfully Foxtel have given us 18 months to test drive an online subscription model using the FFA Cup which definitely connects with all levels of football. If FFA can make a real go of that (keeping production costs down) then there's hope, I just can't see the dollars stacking up.
Does anyone know the Foxtel dollars involved? I though I saw it was a reduction from $57m to $32m for the next season. If so, that will mean clubs each having to cut say $1.5m in running costs. Presumably some admin staff, some support staff, smaller squads, and reduced player wages. Hopefully we'll avoid losing all our best players and dropping back to semi-professional status.