Professional Footballers Australia CEO John Didulica has branded the new $346 million A-League TV deal as a disappointment that could impact the game’s growth for the next decade.
The new TV rights deal sees Foxtel remain as the primary broadcaster of the competition for the next six years, showing all matches live as they have since the league’s inception.
The one free-to-air match currently shown by SBS will be changed to the premier Saturday night slot, with no broadcast deal yet to be finalised with any FTA network.
Didulica says with the rising quality of local football being evidenced in growing attendance and TV audience figures, the fact that Optus paid more per year for their English Premier League coverage than Foxtel now have for the A-League is a stinging blow.
“It’s a bit of a cultural cringe to say that it’s not an elite competition,” Didulica said on SEN Breakfast.
“We’re seeing TV ratings for games far outstripping the English Premier League audiences and I suppose that feeds into why we are so underwhelmed at the A-League deal.
“Optus paid for 66 million dollars a year for the rights to the English Premier League on an app, whereas our deal is hovering around 50 million dollars for the entire A-League.
“The quality of the game has never been in question. Over the past six years, the exponential growth year on year has been superb… Ange Postecoglou will talk until he is blue in the face about the quality of competition we have here in Australia.”
The PFA boss says that the touted expansion plans for the A-League from 2018 onwards may be impacted by the underwhelming deal.
“We had a lot of people looking to build new franchises in the future based on what would be a mega TV deal,” Didulica said.
“It’s probably not met market expectations on some levels so it will be interesting to see, for all those people who are gung-ho about being part of the A-League, will continue to do so.
“Expansion is really relevant because it will drive the football footprint across Australia.”
Didulica says that the PFA are waiting on the announcement of the free to air rights deal before confirming just how much the A-League salary cap will increase, but expects it to fall around $3 million in total, a ‘god step forward’ from the previous $2.6 million cap.
However he says that it does not hold up well to the amount of money being poured into rival competitions in Asia.
“The challenge we have as a competition is most of those guys are on one and two-year deals,” Didulica said.
“So you might come into the competition, earn your 80 to 90 grand but then you could be spat out pretty quickly.
“It just doesn’t compete well globally. Players in the Middle East and China are averaging salaries around US$450,000 to $500,000 a season.
“It’s very difficult to convince guys to come to the A-League and help clubs build squads over a long period of time because of these short term deals.”