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Honestly though, this whole thin seems to be because the FFA set it's own metric target to be 1 million A League members in 20 years. Having measurable goals is a good idea, but this seems to be an arbitrary metric being usedas a proxy measurement for community engagement. Memberships are a very poor way to measure that. They have just created a situation where they are incentivising behaviour to artificially inflate membership numbers, while effectively sending a message to the footballing public in centres with less than a million people that they have no place in the future of professional football in Australia. (
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Coming from a "predominant sport in the country" RL mentality Gallop might be trying to emulate the EPL idea that they have huge following outside of the "bums on seats" community. Thus, if Arsenal or ManUtd can have a fan base in HongKong or Wellington, similarly the A-League can be followed by people outside Sydney or Melbourne without the need for an actual local club in those smaller towns like Wellington. Gold Coast.
This is of course a fallacy but you can see how these things can be twisted to fit an unsuccessful role model.