Phoenix Ownership - Rob says FTFFA (Part 2)

I'm happy with Tegal reporting in for Rob, thank you

Know News

Nah.  Don't know him.  He's a cod.

News Flash is the man.

I'd rather not see News flash

To Late - caught in the act at DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Naked News

Naked news by Blew 2. There is something not quite right with that but I have an open mind to what otherswish to do with their time.

Now that is licentious. Perfect fit for this thread.

why is the per capita basis even remotely relevant?

Perhaps we should move the Nix to a town of 2 people. That we if we get 1 of them going to a game, on a per capita basis that is an attendance of about 11.5m. Lets see them try to kick us out with those kind of per capita metrics.

In that case it's TV for NZ vs Aus so entirely relevant.

Crowdswise not so much.

if you start making statements like "the Phoenix are underperforming compared to the rest of the league" as the FFA have then per capita is relevant. 

If you say "the raw numbers of the Phoenix simply aren't good enough to sustain a team" then per capita isn't relevant, but you also then have to look at other teams getting similar metrics and ask why their numbers aren't being called into question. Plus they gave a licence to us knowing our population base and as a result had a good idea of what our crowd and tv figures would be. To change your mind on that a few years down the track is very unfair on fans and especially owners who have invested a lot of their own time and money into the club. 

FFA would be interested only in bottom line surely (in this argument).  The dollar value doesn't increase because there is a smaller population base and x amount of punters walk through the gate or watch on TV. I take your point on moving the goalposts but any business needs to have flexibility they can't be expected not to change as time and cirumstance change. Look I think FFA are wrong and have gone about all of this poorly, but the per capita thing is a red herring like Frankie says. (Don't do it....).

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.

            Adapted from FC United Manchester for The A-league

                                      The Little Club Waits

It says Fox Sports. NZ viewers would be on top. Advertiser go to FOX Sport and say we want a better deal because eg 40% less people watching. So FOX is under pressure, because no caring about Aussie football.

Per Capita is relevant in that its an apples to apples comparison for us to use to dispel when comments like not enough wellingtonians are turning up.

If the Nix moved to a town of 2 people the FFA (who would likely have to approve the move) would then bitch about how there aren't 10,000 people at the match.  In which case if everybody turned up in that town you still wouldn't meet the metrics, meaning the metrics themselves are completely unreasonable.

I also find it hard to see how this 'subsidising' argument holds water. I could give it a bit of credence if the A League was this cash cow and all of the owners were making money out of it - but they are not. The reality here is that a group of NZ owners are subsidising the A League by running a club and participating in a competition that is losing them money. If the EPL used a similar argument to FFA, then they would be throwing out every club in foreign ownership because they would be taking away money that should go to English people.

'If the EPL used a similar argument to FFA, then they would be throwing out every club in foreign ownership because they would be taking away money that should go to English people.'

Haven't I seen that argument somewhere - that the reason the England team sucks because the EPL is full of dastardly forrin players and money taking attention away from coal-face grassroots etc?

TVNZ's new "man channel" is apparently going to show sports - so maybe Sky might have some competition for the next round of TV rights bidding

Awesome.  Maybe they want some FTA content like Aus has.  So we might get a free football, rugby, and league match in a weekend kind of thing.

tvnz pop up channel showing football at the moment

update for hepatitis: no licence as yet. 

If a man channel means 'ironic' sexist bullshark, not even the Nix could get me to watch.

So you are so anti-demographic targeting that you wouldn't watch the nix on a channel dedicated to a demographic?

I like Boobs!

Look, if I were in the US and the Nix were on FOX News, no, I wouldn't watch (except on a dodgy stream) so as not to give that particular "targeting" any support.

so you're ok with products targeting demographics as long as that demographic isn't men? How odd. 

Or are you against targeting any demographic? In which case you'll be boycotting every product. 

Go back and read her post. 

If the idea of a channel for men is 'Blokesworld' lite then she says she doesn't want to watch it. Not controversial, except to willful misinterpretation.

yeah calling it that would be very lazy and limit potential viewership by putting some people off. You can target a demographic a lot more subtly than that. I interpreted her post differently to that anyway. 

But this is way off topic. Sorry mods. 

Hepatitis: as you can probably tell, we still don't have a licence and there is nothing new to report. 

I agree. I do not think I would watch it either. It would be like having Robbie Slater, Andy Harper and that godawful sideline commentator from Foxsports on our telly all the time, plus maybe a token blonde boganette egging them on.

when did I say she wasn't entitled to take that stance. She's entitled to do that, and I'm entitled to disagree in a reasonable way. I was even agreeing with her to a certain degree in that calling it "mans world" (or something to that effect) would be lazy and I can see how it would limit the audience and even put some people off. 

I also deliberately posed my first response in question form, because I wanted to understand her POV more clearly, I wasn't intending to be harsh. 

(Sorry again mods). 

Tegal do we have a licence/license/lisense yet?

This thread has certainly turned into shark infested waters....

..

Turned?  I thought it's been that since weren't given the licence.

For the record it could be on woman's day: the channel, if they were proping up the nix I'd support it.

I guess Rob won't be calling us today - it's a public holiday. Oh well... let's speculate!

This Is Rob

He is away from his desk today as it is Wellington Anniversary Day.

He will be back on deck tomorrow.

Rob also likes Boobs.

Rob is smart.

Be like Rob.

Wellington anniversary day, Tegal and Rob both away, missing my updates :-(