Football Australia CEO James Johnson on National Second Tier: “It needs to be complementary to the A-League and also the NPL”

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James Johnson
Image credit: Football Australia

Football Australia CEO James Johnson had a chat with Paramount+ commentator and the host of SEN’s The Global Game podcast, Simon Hill.

Johnson was a recent guest on the show to discuss the National Second Tier, as well as the reason for the lack of funding in football for the national team.

Over 400,000 people have engaged with the social media posts of Football Australia, which is not a surprising figure due to the build-up of the Expression of Interest (EOI) which has been a topic of many football fans and players alike in the broader local community. From everything that James Johnson has seen to date, there is exceptional interest for this to go ahead.

With the men’s national team achieving their best result on the world stage since 2006, narrowly missing out in a hard-fought battle against the eventual winners in Argentina, and also to add the women’s national team preparing for a historic FIFA Women’s World Cup campaign co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, the interest and the ever-growing engagement and success of football in Australia has been more prominent.

The recent split of the A-Leagues from Football Australia presents a special opportunity for the governing body to direct and invest resources into an excellent standard of measure for football development and performance that is capable of producing and improving the connection of various levels, pathways and participants throughout the Australian football ecosystem. For these goals to become attainable, the Board of Football Australia is confident that this is the right time to create a National Second Tier and set in motion a new and exciting future for the sport in the country.

From his appearance on The Global Game podcast, Johnson stated:

“We’ve really tried to steer away from it from becoming competition with the A-League, it’s actually the opposite and it needs to be complementary to the A-League and also the NPL and broader ecosystem and that’s why this competition is really fabricated on a winter competition, one that’s going to be focused on sporting merit.”

In regard to how the two competitions will align in the future for the second division, as stated by Johnson these discussions have occurred with the CEO of Australian Professional Leagues, Danny Townsend, who has been very supportive of this concept, and also the process to introduce an aligned transfer system. This will be beneficial for the younger group of players who are not getting minutes for an A-League club to be loaned out to a second-tier club to develop their skills.

However, James Johnson briefly mentioned why the Socceroos do not even get $1 from Sport Australia via The Global Game:

“At this point, the Socceroos do not get $1 from Sport Australia, because the way the funding model works for high-performance sports in Australia, which is decades old, is it focuses first of all on Olympic tournaments only, the men’s World Cup is not considered important for the purposes of high-performance funding and secondly your probability of meddling at the Olympics is that we’re probably not going to get a gold medal anytime soon.

“Our view is that this model needs to be flipped on its head and we need to look at more competitions like the men’s World Cup that brings 2 million people together in Australia, we need to look at our competitors because governments in China and Japan now are investing millions and millions of dollars in their national teams.”

Interested clubs would have need to registered for the EOI Response, with the next stage due on March 3.

To listen to the full podcast between Simon Hill and James Johnson, click here.

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Melbourne Victory partners with The Pass to expand fan experience

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Image Credit: Australian Professional Leagues

Melbourne Victory has added The Pass to its commercial portfolio, with the partnership designed to give supporters more ways to follow the club away from matchday.

The Pass becomes an ‘Associate Partner’ of Victory, while Hickens Hotel has been named the club’s ‘Official Away Game Venue Partner’. The arrangement will see the Russell Street venue host Victory watch parties and provide a dedicated gathering point for supporters during away fixtures.

The partnership also gives Victory supporters access to The Pass’ broader network of more than 200 venues around Australia, extending the relationship beyond a single location.

For Melbourne Victory, the deal forms part of a wider approach to creating commercial partnerships around the supporter experience rather than limiting sponsorship to traditional branding opportunities.

Hickens Hotel will host Victory fans for selected away matches, while The Pass will provide members with access to offers and experiences through its venue network.

The agreement also connects with Victory’s broader business community, with The Pass joining the club’s commercial network and creating potential opportunities for corporate engagement alongside its consumer-facing activity.

The partnership comes ahead of the 2026/27 A-League Men and Ninja A-League Women seasons, with Victory continuing to develop its commercial offering around both its membership base and matchday audience.

For The Pass, football provides a way to bring its network of hospitality venues into the supporter experience, giving fans a physical destination to watch matches when Victory is playing on the road.

The agreement reflects a broader trend across professional football, with clubs increasingly looking to partnerships that can provide tangible benefits to supporters while creating additional opportunities for commercial partners.

Brazil is coming. But what is the real price of bringing football’s giants to Australia?

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Image Credits: Shutterstock

There is something undeniably exciting about Brazil coming to Australia. The five-time World Cup winners will face the Socceroos twice in Queensland from Friday, with Townsville and Brisbane set to host the blockbuster fixtures.

For Australian football, these are the kind of games that should be anticipated, celebrated and capture the public’s attention. But they also raise questions: how much should Australian football pay to bring the world’s biggest nations here, and when does the bill become too big? 

The cost of bringing the big names

Australia has always paid up to bring big names down under. Last week’s NFL game in Melbourne, at a cost of between $10 and 15 million dollars to the Victorian Government, is just the latest example.

It could cost the same amount to bring Brazil to Queensland. A report in The Sydney Morning Herald last year revealed Brazil was reportedly seeking around $7.5 million per match to play in Australia. The fee is in line with other major international events; Western Australia reportedly faced a bill of around $12 million in taxpayer funding for the recent Perth Italian Football Festival.

I’m worried Football Australia won’t get return on investment to make this particular event worthwhile. The enormous fee to bring Brazil to Australia can’t immediately be justified as an investment in our footballing future. Instead, Football Queensland and the state government could have put these funds into grassroots facilities. Part of Football Queensland’s scrapped state headquarters investment plan was to spend $8.5 million to refurbish fields, lights, drains and irrigation at Mappas and Meakin parks. Instead of these plans to invest in the state’s youth players and academies, money has been spent on two international friendlies.

So ahead of the fixtures, the question remains: will these games inspire the future generation, and will participation grow? The NFL match was impossible to ignore: a sold-out MCG and a live audience of 2.1 million on free-to-air, not even including those watching on ESPN and Netflix. Football Australia is not simply buying 90 minutes of football; it is buying the attention that comes with Brazil. So let’s see if they can maximize returns. 

Ticketing Tells a Story

Ticket sales provide insight into the interest in the fixture. Brisbane has sold much quicker than Townsville, but neither have sold out as yet. The fact these games didn’t immediately sell out may be considered surprising as there is a genuine appetite in Australia for elite international football at the moment, evidenced by SBS’ World Cup viewership numbers of 17.1 million.

Brazil is bringing some of its brightest stars: Vinicius Junior, Raphinha, Bruno Guimaraes, Marquinhos and Endrick are among the headline names in their squad. The star power is there. So why haven’t these matches sold out? There’s a chance it comes down to the competition and the visibility of the event.

The viewing problem

The timing of this fixture could raise eyebrows amongst fans. As much as Australia and Brazil will draw huge crowds, both games fall on either side of the AFL Grand Final. The 2024 AFL Grand Final, which involved Queensland’s Brisbane Lions, drew over 4 million viewers on free-to-air. Brisbane, who have won the last two premierships, will feature once again on Grand Final day. Therefore, fans who could’ve attended may instead be making the trip to Melbourne.

Then comes the strangest part: one of the fixtures Australia will play will not even be available on free-to-air television. The Townsville match will be shown free on Network 10 and 10 Streaming, as well as Paramount+. The Brisbane match, however, will be available exclusively on Paramount+. That creates a disconnect. If governments and football administrators are spending millions to bring a global sporting brand to Australia, why should a large section of the Australian public need a subscription to watch the second match?

The Brisbane game is behind a paywall, limiting the national reach of the event. Reach is surely part of the justification for spending big on Brazil, it’s not just that 50,000 people get to sit inside Suncorp Stadium. It is that millions of Australians get exposed to the spectacle and if that audience is restricted, the value of this fixture is limited.

A solution could be to spend the money on advertising the match to the public to try to generate interest across streaming and free-to-air. With less than a week until the first game I don’t believe the advertising has done enough to generate enough interest to justify a $15 million price tag for the two game series. 

The Brazil friendlies will be spectacular. They should attract big crowds, create memories and give the Socceroos an excellent test against one of football’s most recognisable nations. But for the appropriate return, attention must be measured. Does this fixture carry on the Socceroos hype and keep the eyeballs of the general public on our sport? I’m not convinced. However, if these matches bring new fans to football, strengthen the national team and create lasting investment in the sport, the enormous price tag could still be justified. But if they simply produce two nights of football before the attention disappears, then Australian football has paid a premium for a very expensive show.

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