Don't the Nix have the most full time ALW staff of any club in the women's comp?
An extra $1M spend per club on their women's team, won't be easy.
Canberra United the only standalone women's pro club, had to get an ACT Govt bailout to survive.
The next A Leagues media rights deal, is going to be crucial to the health of both the ALM & ALW going forward.
Australia’s football players have called for a dramatic change to the A-League Women competition after the Asian Cup, demanding full-time professionalism to be implemented, with a league overseen by a gender balanced independent commission, which they estimate will require an additional $1 million investment in each A-League Women’s side.
In a report released on Wednesday by the Professional Footballers Australia, the organisation laid out its recommendations to ensure football in Australia seizes the generational opportunity presented by the women’s football movement that has swept Europe and North America, looking at the A-League Women as an opportunity and not a burden. It describes the sport’s approach to the A-League Women as “missing the potential phenomenon sitting under their nose”.
The report lashes the perceived shortcomings of the competition as it stands, headlined by a decline in crowds in 2024-2025, a talent exodus because of the semi-professional environment, a lack of fan engagement and visibility within that semi-professional environment with insufficient promotion, and a board at the helm of the APL that, they say, “do not appear to have a sufficient focus on women’s football”, while also falling short of a 40:40:20 gender commitment.
Referencing the tipping point faced by the Matildas in 2015 when they went on strike, this report suggests the league is now balancing on a similar ledger. “The players stood firm and within a decade, the Matildas would be generating tens of millions of dollars for the federation each year,” the report states. “In hindsight, professionalising the Matildas was an opportunity the game could not afford to miss.”
While noting that progress has been made since the last Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2017, the PFA adds: “Progress has been drastically outpaced by the rest of women’s football and by other domestic women’s sport.
“The result is the ALW has fallen backwards in relative terms.”
Echoing calls made in the annual reports undertaken by the players’ union each season, this report doubles down on the call for change in the governance model of the APL – based on the assessment that since separation from Football Australia, a litany of mistakes have the A-Leagues in a remedial position, with the A-League Women’s issues exacerbated. An independent board with increased football and women’s football expertise, it argues, will avoid decisions made in the self interest of clubs who are represented on the board, and is a need while the only “guardrail” stopping this is Football Australia.
The report also formally lays out an idea that has been mentioned with greater frequency in the last year: separating the two leagues. “As the ALW further matures, consideration must ultimately be given as to whether it is in the game’s long-term interests for the ALW and the ALM to be owned and run by the same entity,” the report states.
Within this, a new criteria is suggested to ensure quality control around the competition with a collaborative approach between the FA, APL and PFA – indicating that if the current clubs’ women’s programs don’t meet these benchmarks around the market, ownership and high performance, they aren’t the right teams.
