The A-League: Average Attendance is Down, Canberran Complaints Are Up

By: Daryl | September 29th, 2009

Not everyone is happy with the A-League right now. Attendances are down on last season, with average crowds of 6,200 for last week’s matches*. Football Federation boss Ben Buckley has tried to put a positive spin on those numbers, by (somewhat bizarrely) claiming it was all part of the plan:

“If you look at the crowd numbers overall they are up 12 per cent, we’ve got 12 per cent more people going to A-League matches than we did last year,” Buckley said.

“Yes, our average is down, but that was always to be expected based on the fact that we had two teams from relatively smaller cities coming into the competition.

“That’s not outside of our expectation. But part of our strategy in expansion is to broaden the reach of the game and we are certainly achieving that.”

Speaking of expansion, the recent announcement that Western Sydney will be granted the league’s 12th expansion license has not gone down at all well with a certain Canberra based A-League fan.

Canberra is the Australian capital, and was widely expected to be given the 12th license. Instead they get nothing, except maybe a role as front-runners for any future expansion license.

The other thing that’s ruffled a few feathers is that the West Sydney team doesn’t really have its act together, it won’t join the league until 2011. Which means the A-League’s 11th team Melbourne Heart will be the only addition in 2010, making the A-League an unbalanced league. Apparently the original plan had been to only expand in even numbers so as to avoid the need for bye weeks.

When asked if this unplanned uneven-ness was a step backwards for the A-League, Ben Buckley gave it the old positive spin trick:

“Quite the opposite, I think this is a gigantic leap forward,” he said.

“We are now committed to having a team, as we’ve said before, in the most populous football region in the country.

“Of course we will prefer to have gone next season, but I stress this team now has the opportunity to be successful in the long term.”

To use a very Australian reference, Buckley appears to be the Shane Warne of football administrators.

But in Double B’s defence, being CEO of the FFA is not an easy job. There’s crushing competition from rugby union, rugby league, cricket and – especially – Aussie Rules. He can’t please everyone, even though he’s clearly trying to with his optimistic PR.

If attendances are down, then maybe a team in an area like Western Sydney is a good idea. With the addition of Melbourne Heart in 2010 and the new Western Sydney team in 2011, the A-League will then have two teams in both Melbourne and Sydney. Rivalries are always good for football attendances, and usually for football leagues in general.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that the A-League should focus on quality instead of expansion, because it already loses too much talent to Europe. Expansion arguably waters down the league’s talent level, and unarguably lengthens the A-League season, therefore creating more unwinnable schedule clashes with more popular sports.

So it’s not an easy situation. But here’s the good news: The A-League is still in it’s infancy. Launched in 2005, it’s nearly a decade younger than Major League Soccer in the United States. I’d argue that it’s too early to be too harsh on the administration, and that the Socceroos participation in World Cup 2010 will provide soccer (and therefore the A-League) with a much needed publicity boost in Australia.

If there are any A-League fans reading The Offside, we’d love to hear what you think about all this. Is there anything the A-League can do right now that they’re not doing? Or is it just a case of slowly but surely waiting for the sport to grow?

For more on the A-League, visit A-League Offside where Kieran does a great job of keeping us up to date. If you’re interested in writing for one of our A-League team blogs, read The Offside blogger guidelines and then send us an email.

*hat tip to Davo for the correction there.