One of the A-League bosses is James Rushton, the former boss of DAZN...
Maybe, just maybe, this is a covert operation by the APL to grab the AFL by the balls and bury it away from FTA! Revenge a quarter of a century in the making!
I jest. But seriously, 4D chess move. Expensive chess, but how much would it be worth to us!
Just found this old article from the final NSL deal:
Seven deal would ruin NSL, says Schwab
October 25, 2002 — 10.00am
If Soccer Australia signed a new deal with the Seven network in a bid to stave off financial ruin, the sport could kiss goodbye to a reformed national league and forget about the Socceroos qualifying for the next World Cup, one of soccer's key powerbrokers warned yesterday.
With a highly contentious Soccer Australia annual meeting due to be held tomorrow and chairman Ian Knop desperately trying to shore up support to sign off on the Seven proposal, the players' union made its opposition clear yesterday.
"If the deal is signed, it will have three impacts on the game," players' association boss Brendan Schwab said.
"The existing NSL will be bankrupted. Soccer Australia will be unable to finance the competition beyond this season, which means the obligations will fall to the clubs, who will be unable to generate revenue without a media platform to move the game forward.
"It will defeat the prospect of developing a new and commercially viable national league because it will deny that competition the opportunity to exploit the national media market that exists.
"It will also destroy Australia's ability to adequately prepare for and qualify for the 2006 World Cup finals - Channel Seven will have more say over who and where Australia plays than the national coach."
The contentious deal - under which Seven wants to focus solely on the Socceroos and forget about the national league in return for an $8 million payment for the next eight years - would set the game's development back at least a decade, John Poulakakis, the chairman of the Professional Footballers Association advisory board, added.
Seven holds the television rights but, since the collapse of its pay-TV arm C7, has not showed any domestic soccer on television. Soccer Australia gets $2.3 million a year from the station but, pending a renegotiation of the deal, Seven has withheld a recent payment.
Seven has reportedly offered an up-front payment of $3.5 million to ease the immediate financial pressure - which Knop and his supporters are keen to take.
Several of the game's important stakeholders argue that a reformed national league will be stillborn without television exposure and separating the Socceroos from the NSL devalues the latter.
www.theage.com.au
