What’s to stop the A League clubs breaking away from FFA and running the competition themselves. Plenty of precedence for that type of move in Aussie sport.
Where's the money gonna come from for that?
What's the incentive for Fox to break a deal with the FFA worth c. $350m, open themselves to legal action, and negotiate a new deal with a brand new group, whose very survival depends on Fox wanting to engage with them in the very first place? I'll tell you what it is - 0.
Especially in the current environment where Fox have told the NLWG that the they cannot operate on the assumption that the next TV deal for the league will be better than the current one, and that it may not even be as good as the current one. I imagine that the Fox stance is making the negotiations around the new league structure even more difficult than they originally would have been.
The FFA still has the Socceroos, and the World Cups and AFC Champs which will bring $$$ in. For Fox, there's a lot of other sport they can fill air time with for smaller production and broadcasting cost. As I've said, Fox have already said that the value of the A-league product has fallen dramatically for them, which has made a number of people across the ditch shark their pants.
And it's well and good saying there are others who cam take over from Fox - well, who are they? Why has no-one else in Australia even shown interest in pushing Fox out of the market? Because there is no-one else with enough clout to take on the production and rights costs, especially given the increasingly paltry return on the investment.
