Why the marketing of soccer in Australia is going "downhill "
popularity of the sport in the future.
The below quote will back the theory that TV channel producers aren’t prepared to support soccer on TV as they feel its not popular enough to be a success
"We are not prepared to devote that sort of money and resources to a national soccer team when there doesn’t appear to be any light at the end of the tunnel in terms of pay-TV coverage and major corporate support." Fitzgerald says
Quote from (Daily Telegraph - Mirror Australian Telegraph Publications) Wednesday 4th
2. Lack of sponsorship to support the soccer market
Soccer clubs in Australia are having a huge downfall with sponsorship. An excellent example of this would be the fight to try save the Melbourne based team, the Carlton Blues.
”Carlton is one of the more cosmopolitan teams of the league; it's not tied to any particular ethnic group and has aimed to establish a broad appeal. It wins games, holds a respectable fifth place on the ladder and yet it hasn't been able to pay its players now for six weeks”.
The soccer club was relying on a transfer from an international player Simon Colosimo to Sunderland in the English Premier League. A fee of more than Ј1 million sterling would have taken care of Carlton's crisis but the deal fell through.
(ABC NEWSPAPER) Web page 3 in bibliography
All in all, transfers are an unreliable source of funding for Australia's National Soccer League teams but there seem to be few other funding options. Lack of available sponsorship is effectively caused by lack of media and TV coverage, if the sport isn’t going to promoted and seen on TV in prime time big companies will never want to take part in supporting soccer teams as they will get little or nothing out of it return
In July 1998 Australia applied for the opportunity to host the world cup finals. If a privilege such as this were to be given to Australia and they were aloud to host the world cup finals the sponsorship, TV coverage of soccer would boom and you would find that soccer teams in Australia would find it much easier to find sponsorship.
What can be said is that the NSL, as we know it, has no future. Australia's oldest national sporting competition is showing its age. The bubble economy that raised hopes around the turn of the century has burst. Full-time football has gone, taking six-figure salaries for coaches and players with it. Without a solid foundation, a genuine pro league was always going to be a mirage.
Newspaper article “Power for sale” By Dean Ritchie
27nov02
3. Not enough Fan support
Having a large number of fans for any particular team is almost impossible for Australian soccer teams. Due to the lack of TV and media coverage soccer teams have trouble getting a crowd to support them. An average Australian soccer game pulls in a cheerless 5200 fans. If you compare fan support of soccer to another sport, Football for example which has a [next page]