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Phoenix Ownership - Rob says FTFFA (Part 2)

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Posted January 21, 2016 18:48 · last edited March 18, 2021 07:34

The other red herring here is the argument that our metrics are bad compared to other clubs in the first fudgeing place. Look at those tv ratings up there - us away to Newcastle only got 5% less viewers than Victory vs Brisbane, and 10% less than Perth vs City. I don't know how those numbers are measured or whether that includes NZ tv audiences as well, but I'd guess that given the margin of error in sampling we might have even got better ratings than MV v BR. I also don't know if those tv ratings included NZ, but I'm guessing they probably didn't. 

In attendance too we are a long way from worse - this season is a bit hard to measure because of the boycott skewing things but  last year we were 2nd to last on average - 300 behind Newcastle but 1100 ahead of CCM. None of the other teams had their worst home attendance when they were hosting us either. Our largest crowd last year was better than the largest of 3 other teams and our smallest was was larger than the smallest crowd that 5 other teams managed. I know that this has all been said before but I think it's worth repeating.

Even the whole "FFA are subsidising New Zealand football by millions a year" doesn't stand up when you look at it. Take salary cap payments, they're $2.6m and every team gets them. You get to spend it on 22 players, 5 of which can be foreigners. If the Nix got replaced by an Aussie franchise, 5 of their players would still be foreign. 

Doing really basic assumptions that every player gets paid the same (clearly they don't, but just for argument's sake) then that's $118,000 per player, or $590,000 for the 5 foreigners in the squad. We have 7 players with Aussie passports in our squad so they could play for any A League club without counting as foreign. That's another $827,000. Over $1.4m of our cap is then being spent on imports or Aussies.

So only our kiwi players are subsidised in this argument, and that's less than half our squad - $1,180,000. It's that figure which would otherwise be going to Aussie players if we were replaced by an Aussie franchise - not the whole $2,600,000, which seems to be what the FFA claims. And of course that's not accounting for the fact that foreign players probably take up proportionally more of the salary cap than their local counterparts. Without knowing exactly what each player earns I can't break it down more than that. And it's also ignoring the fact that we earn at least some of that money through our share of the broadcast deal - it's not just taken from Socceroos and derby games and given to every A League club.

Nope, the whole thing is simply because the FFA bosses want to be able to drop a club at some point if some rich investors turn up waving cash around for  a new franchise, and because we are not based in Australia like the other clubs it's easier for them to beat us with the metrics stick and impose all sorts of stupid conditions on us. That's it. There's no other explanation as far as I'm concerned. It's stupid business because you could be getting rid of a stable, sustainable, well-run club for another Clive Palmer style shambles, but no one ever thought that the FFA were smart.

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Unknown editor edited March 18, 2021 07:34

The other red herring here is the argument that our metrics are bad compared to other clubs in the first fudgeing place. Look at those tv ratings up there - us away to Newcastle only got 5% less viewers than Victory vs Brisbane, and 10% less than Perth vs City. I don't know how those numbers are measured or whether that includes NZ tv audiences as well, but I'd guess that given the margin of error in sampling we might have even got better ratings than MV v BR. I also don't know if those tv ratings included NZ, but I'm guessing they probably didn't. 

In attendance too we are a long way from worse - this season is a bit hard to measure because of the boycott skewing things but  last year we were 2nd to last on average - 300 behind Newcastle but 1100 ahead of CCM. None of the other teams had their worst home attendance when they were hosting us either. Our largest crowd last year was better than the largest of 3 other teams and our smallest was was larger than the smallest crowd that 5 other teams managed. I know that this has all been said before but I think it's worth repeating.

Even the whole "FFA are subsidising New Zealand football by millions a year" doesn't stand up when you look at it. Take salary cap payments, they're $2.6m and every team gets them. You get to spend it on 22 players, 5 of which can be foreigners. If the Nix got replaced by an Aussie franchise, 5 of their players would still be foreign. 

Doing really basic assumptions that every player gets paid the same (clearly they don't, but just for argument's sake) then that's $118,000 per player, or $590,000 for the 5 foreigners in the squad. We have 7 players with Aussie passports in our squad so they could play for any A League club without counting as foreign. That's another $827,000. Over $1.4m of our cap is then being spent on imports or Aussies.

So only our kiwi players are subsidised in this argument, and that's less than half our squad - $1,180,000. It's that figure which would otherwise be going to Aussie players if we were replaced by an Aussie franchise - not the whole $2,600,000, which seems to be what the FFA claims. And of course that's not accounting for the fact that foreign players probably take up proportionally more of the salary cap than their local counterparts. Without knowing exactly what each player earns I can't break it down more than that. And it's also ignoring the fact that we earn at least some of that money through our share of the broadcast deal - it's not just taken from Socceroos and derby games and given to every A League club.

Nope, the whole thing is simply because the FFA bosses want to be able to drop a club at some point if some rich investors turn up waving cash around for  a new franchise, and because we are not based in Australia like the other clubs it's easier for them to beat us with the metrics stick and impose all sorts of stupid conditions on us. That's it. There's no other explanation as far as I'm concerned. It's stupid business because you could be getting rid of a stable, sustainable, well-run club for another Clive Palmer style shambles, but no one ever thought that the FFA were smart.

ConanTroutman edited January 21, 2016 18:51

The other red herring here is the argument that our metrics are bad compared to other clubs in the first fudgeing place. Look at those tv ratings up there - us away to Newcastle only got 5% less viewers than Victory vs Brisbane, and 10% less than Perth vs City. I don't know how those numbers are measured or whether that includes NZ tv audiences as well, but I'd guess that given the margin of error in sampling we might have even got better ratings than MV v BR. I also don't know if those tv ratings included NZ, but I'm guessing they probably didn't. 

In attendance too we are a long way from worse - this season is a bit hard to measure because of the boycott skewing things but  last year we were 2nd to last on average - 300 behind Newcastle but 1100 ahead of CCM. None of the other teams had their worst home attendance when they were hosting us either. Our largest crowd last year was better than the largest of 3 other teams and our smallest was was larger than the smallest crowd that 5 other teams managed. I know that this has all been said before but I think it's worth repeating.

Even the whole "FFA are subsidising New Zealand football by millions a year" doesn't stand up when you look at it. Take salary cap payments, they're $2.6m and every team gets them. You get to spend it on 22 players, 5 of which can be foreigners. If the Nix got replaced by an Aussie franchise, 5 of their players would still be foreign. 

Doing really basic assumptions that every player gets paid the same (clearly they don't, but just for argument's sake) then that's $118,000 per player, or $590,000 for the 5 foreigners in the squad. We have 7 players with Aussie passports in our squad so they could play for any A League club without counting as foreign. That's another $827,000. So only our kiwi players are subsidised in this argument, and that's less than half our squad - $1,180,000. It's that figure which would otherwise be going to Aussie players if we were replaced by an Aussie franchise - not the whole $2,600,000, which seems to be what the FFA claims. And of course that's not accounting for the fact that foreign players probably take up proportionally more of the salary cap than their local counterparts. And ignoring the fact that we earn at least some of that money through our share of the broadcast deal - it's not just taken from Socceroos and derby games and given to every A League club.

Nope, the whole thing is simply because the FFA bosses want to be able to drop a club at some point if some rich investors turn up waving cash around for  a new franchise, and because we are not based in Australia like the other clubs it's easier for them to beat us with the metrics stick and impose all sorts of stupid conditions on us. That's it. There's no other explanation as far as I'm concerned. It's stupid business because you could be getting rid of a stable, sustainable, well-run club for another Clive Palmer style shambles, but no one ever thought that the FFA were smart.