NZFC a loss making exercise

It appears that everytime NZF tinker with the highest level of national football there are problems. The North Island and South Island leagues were short lived, the summer league went the same way. The NZ Community Trust sponsorship monies was around 1.5 million dollars and I guess this was gobbled up pretty quickly. Now that sponsorship has ended and with around 5 months until season 4 kicks off we are looking for a new sponsor. We are always reinventing the circle.

I'm sure that there are some clever people within the franchises that have the nous to do a better job and maybe its time that control of the NZFC was handed to the clubs.

I think a lot of money was paid to SKY TV to broadcast the highlights show and that is one of the problems. Any good businessman would suggest that the TV rights would be worth money to the game, not the otherway around. I mean there are a lot of people here that subscribe to SKY for the football alone. Surely they have some consumer power. What would SKY do if every person that subbed to SKY handed back there subscription because there was no local football on TV.

OK, many will argue that the local game doesn't come up to spec but its all we have and we've got to try and develop it the best we can, with the resources we have.

So do you reckon NZF can guide the NZFC into a quality competition? Or do you think the franchises would be able to do a better job. Discuss.

With the carrot of OCL dangling I think the issue is whether there will be enough of a spread of the cash. I can see a couple of superclubs (by NZ standards, probably both auckland based the way things are going) and the rest being also-rans, sort of a smaller version of the Scottish Premier League but without the bigotry or the porridge.

I think there needs to be a more even spread of the OCL/World Club Championship cash that comes in, and this money should fund the promtion of and playing of the league, at least until it can sustain itself. If it doesn't look self-funding in, say, five years, can it.

I'd also like to see it expanded to include a Fijian club and maybe a Tahitian club. we've got to build up the region, not just NZ.

But what happens next is that Waitakere will split the money so that NZF gets a chunk, the 7 other franchises check a piece and the balance is Waitaks. Last year the franchises picked up around $58,000 each from Auckland City's WCC appearance. Waitakere will also deduct any expenses incurred in getting to Japan.

 

I believe Auckland City may have picked up around a million so it could be that this time the payouts will be less. NZF will take a good slice of the $$.

 

Re the Phoenix paying a fee....I'd say that is where Terry's first million has gone. Someone more in the know may be able to extrapolate on this....

 

 

Major sponsorship is keyed in with television and until we get our NZFC product on regular TV it will be difficult to get new sponsors. Retaining current sponsors is proving just as difficult. And did you know we actually have to pay SKY to get it the NZFC on TV.In the first season of the NZFC Waikato FC had to pay $12,000 just to get the home games filmed and I know Manawatu was paying up over $15,000 to get their games done. It's not just a matter of going along to a sponsor and getting them to sign up. Far from it.

A lot of you really have no idea of the unseen costs that crop up. For example, Hawkes Bay United on one ocassion had a charter flight from Napier to Hamilton. Their plane broke down and a replacement had to be sent from Auckland to Napier. The delay cost Waikato FC because they had to pay Waikato Stadium staff for the extra hours that they had to work due to the flight delay. The game was broadcast live on Newstalk ZB and their man had to rip back to the station to reprogramme a few things til the revised kickoff was announced.

That happened a couple of times to Waikato and I bet the teams that were late didn't front up with the $$. Admittedly it may have not been the oppositions fault, but really they should have flown out at 10am rather than 1pm or so close to the scheduled kickoff time. There is quite a lot of bad organisation that needs sorting. 

With NZFC struggling for such a supporter will it ever be viable for SKY.  Motorcycling NZ found enough support(ads in and around the shows) to tempt TVNZ to broadcast programs but I also think the recording company was a fan. they also copyrighted all footage so others had to pay to use it. Football New Zealand must retain ownership of all footage.

With the U17's U20's and wimins teams all qualifying for the various World Cup tournaments, NZF will be mortgaged up to the hilt with arranging pre-tournament friendlies because they don't usually get the money from qualifying until a month or two after the actual event. So international football will take priority to the NZFC.

 

But my main comment was that the general football family which is where our elite players come from is on reducing spiral of funding and the goverment changes do not help this.

 

I guess that means movuing away from Oceania would mean less funding then...assuming we don't make the WC's??

 

Oh yeah...thanks.

Now to me that is 1] disprespectful of Auckland City and 2] showing little faith in our own NZFC competition. Regardless of what format the NZFC is run, be that franchise or going back to club-based, we have to make this competition work. I still think it is best played in summer and as my friend above says, the standard is getting better. In the 80's the national league standard was very good, but most teams were stacked with foreigners and we saw few kiwi players getting the opportunity. These days we've done a total reversal and we see kiwi talent being given a go. The imports are still there but check where they come from...Solomon Islands, Fiji and a few from the UK and other parts. We need to get our best young players in the NZFC otherwise we are kidding ourselves that we will get any better at a national level.

 

I think you will find that the OFC won't have a bar of it anyway. I don't know where Seatter is heading with his comments but someone needs to give the geezer some valium, calm him down and get him focussed on his proper job.

Gings, there is no way NZFC sides can start paying players the kind of coin you are mentioning. Firstly they would have to stop taking money from the charitable trusts because they don't support professional sports teams and secondly there ain't the crowds to make it sustainable.

All franchises would go broke in one season. There are players no doubt picking up 30K such as Menapi at Waitakere, but he will have a sponsor stumping up the reddies and that is the backdoor way we operate if we want to have the best players playing at our particular NZFC side.

Michael Utting for example signed for Waikato and to help negotiate the deal I bought him a second hand  Ford Falcon and someone else threw him some bucks. There are a number of variations of these under the table deals and this sort of thing goes on all the time.

The general rule of thumb is if an NZFC side is struggling, then I would say they aren't paying the money to get the best players in...

NZF resources are fair too thin and I would go along with the Otago United chairmans call for the NZFC to be administered independantly of NZF - but allowing them to be involved in some form - much like how the Premier League is run by a board of control under the auspices of the FA.

Sponsors will only come if TV is involved and right now, football would have to pay SKY TV to broadcast the games and the cost is prohibitive. So no TV, no sponsor, it is that simple.

 

 

I think Seatter is commenting on ACFC on a global scale, in which they clearly are "second rate". His comments could have ben a bit more diplomatic, granted, but he was justified in what he was saying. Whether what he suggests about Phoenix taking their place or not is justified is a different matter.

As for ACFC they are NZ's best and best-run club, but put alongside the clubs they met in the World Club Champs they appear to be out of their depth.

Now what would really work is for Phoenix to take over Wellington's NZFC franchise, or to grab another licence if any are ever made available, and to use the comp as a league for their reserves

 

One way to help make this happen is to get better turnout at the games. YF website is as good a venue as any to encourage turnout to the NZFC games.The franchises really don't have the cash to spend up large on match venue/ time promotions. Those that are passionate about NZFC (kiwi-Canary et.al) should be commended on their efforts in keeping the profile of the NZFC high.  

 

 I reckon that if we could double turnouts (maybe a tough ask) to around 1500-2000 per game, then TV coverage might just  become a dsitinct possibility. I know thia has been said before, but when we consider how many families are connected to football now, it is surprising that the turnout to the NZFC games is still not brilliant. Are the clubs making announcements to all junoirs about their local franchise upcomgin match? Are those who are making trips in to games advertising any free seats in their cars at the club?  Perhpas junior coaches could shedule in an NZFC game once in a while as training for the week?