Gold Coast United Chairman Danny Maher: “We are chomping at the bit to get back into the A-League”

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Danny Maher is the current Chairman of Gold Coast United FC and is leading the charge to bring a Gold Coast team back into the A-League.

In a wide-ranging chat with Soccerscene, Maher speaks openly about his involvement in the game, provides an update on Gold Coast’s bid for the A-League, the current on and off the field progress of Gold Coast United and his future ambitions for football in the city.

First of all, I’ll ask about your role in Gold Coast United – how did your involvement come about and what is your background in the game?

Danny Maher: There was a group of business people who got together to return A-League to the Gold Coast basically, but with a strong focus on reforming the elite pathways at the Gold Coast. We wanted to start by ensuring there was at least two top NPL clubs on the Gold Coast and provide some local interest in the game.

So, we reformed Gold Coast United, entering it into the National Premier Leagues (NPL). I am the Chairman of the club and I was obviously heading that reformation process. I’m also chairing the A-League bid for the city.

I’ve got kids that play the game, I played representative football and was one of those people who left the game as a teenager. I was president of Magic United prior to this, which has basically now turned into the Gold Coast Knights (the other NPL club in the city).

I’m very much using my background of being a tech entrepreneur and investor, looking at it as a long-term play, with a group of business people that are very interested in football.

Is there an update on Gold Coast’s A-League bid, are there any details you can reveal?

Danny Maher: I can. The A-League bid is separate from Gold Coast United and it’s an all of city bid supported by both NPL entities and the city itself. I chair an investment firm and that’s the lead entity for the bid. It’s backed majorly by a group of US business people including Jordan Gardner and Brett Johnson. They lead a US consortium that own football clubs around the world and would like to add the Gold Coast in to their portfolio of clubs.

If a Gold Coast bid were to be accepted in the A-League again, how would the team excel this time around?

Danny Maher: First of all, we need to determine the brand it would fall under and whether we would return to the Gold Coast United moniker. That will be up to the city, all the football clubs and participants, but ultimately the decision will be made by the owners and the APL.

One of the previous myths about the A-League and the Gold Coast is that United went under, but it actually didn’t. The license was removed by the FFA when Clive Palmer was butting heads with Frank Lowy, but the club didn’t fold.

We’ve got a situation at the Gold Coast where we have two excellent NPL clubs, the fastest growing population in Australia, the largest population without an A-League team, an empty $200 million stadium and an international football group that is backing the bid.

The AFL and NRL both have a professional team here and they are investing heavily in those sports in this area, but we are not asking for a dollar. We are just asking for permission to invest.

Would the consortium look to enter a national second division, or would it only consider an A-League expansion spot?

Danny Maher: The consortium for the A-League bid isn’t interested in joining a National Second Division at the moment, but the NPL clubs individually will look at that. For example, Gold Coast United, the NPL entity, may be interested in the second division and we are currently part of that group investigating the viability of a second division.

How is the Gold Coast United NPL club currently progressing on and off the pitch?

Danny Maher: It’s a really happy place. It’s the highest rated academy in Queensland, I believe. It’s the only academy in this region that has females and our senior women were the league champions last year. The men are going well, we don’t spend the amount of money some of the other clubs do as we are pursuing a long-term strategy with a youth policy. We’ve got a great facility that council has provided us down at Tallebudgera. It’s a really peaceful, scenic setting with six football fields and three of them operated by Gold Coast United. We have a really low turnover of players and its quite difficult to get in the academy.

We have good levels of sponsorship so we don’t use any junior fees to fund senior programs, so that’s great, and we focus strongly on the junior setup having to be self-sustaining.

One last one Danny, where do you want to see Gold Coast football with the NPL entities and the A-League bid moving forward in the next 5-10 years?

Danny Maher: We definitely would like to see sustainable NPL clubs that have good local competition and we want to see the football ecosystem connected. So, for example, clubs working together and not being sensitive about talented players moving to the correct pathway for them. We want to see committees, from the Gold Coast Knights and ourselves, collaborating together for the greater good of the game and leaving the competition to the fans, players and coaches.

Then ultimately, the A-League is an all of city entity so it doesn’t belong to any one club. It belongs to the city and all football fans in the region. We want to see the A-League team connected to all the NPL clubs and the NPL clubs connected to other clubs below them in their geography (which we are very close to reaching).

We are chomping at the bit to get back into the A-League for the city; we don’t talk about it a lot in public because we don’t need anything, everything is in place.

 

 

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Queensland Football Convention adds high-profile speakers to 2026 lineup

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Image Credit: Football Queensland

The 2026 Queensland Football Convention has expanded its speaker lineup. Robbie Kruse, Emma McKeon, Jon Moss and Tony Wilson are joining previously confirmed headliner Mark Bosnich. The four new additions will bring experience from football, elite sport, refereeing and high performance to the two-day convention at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre on the 10th and 11th of October.

Bosnich was announced in August as the event’s featured speaker. The former Socceroo and Premier League goalkeeper will take part in an exclusive Q&A covering his career, life in football and the pathways available to Australia’s next generation of players. Robbie Kruse adds another strong football voice to the program. Queensland’s most-capped Socceroo will share lessons from a career that took him from local football to the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Champions League. Now working in coaching and player development, Kruse will focus on pathways, talent development and the challenge of making the step into elite football.

McKeon – Australia’s most decorated Olympian – will bring a different perspective in exploring the principles behind high performance. Her session will cover teamwork, resilience, goal setting and the value of small improvements when competing at the highest level.

Former Premier League referee and current-Football Australia Head of Referees Jon Moss will also return, examining the relationship between coaches and match officials. He will focus on communication, mutual respect and collaboration, while also looking at the future of refereeing in Australia and the role coaches and clubs can play in supporting officials.

Tony Wilson, founder of Performance Lab, completes the newly announced group. As keynote speaker, Wilson will examine mindset, leadership, culture and resilience, drawing on his work with elite athletes, teams and organisations across Australia and the United States. The expanded program gives coaches, administrators and football professionals access to perspectives from across the sporting landscape.

The Queensland Football Convention will take place at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. The convention takes place from the 9th to the 11th of October.

To purchase tickets to the 2026 Queensland Football Convention, click the link here.

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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