Is the A-League prepared for sportswashing?

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Nathan Tinkler is an example of what the A-League wants to avoid. Image credit: Ben Rushton

This month, Newcastle United became the richest club in world football – due solely to majority ownership by the Saudi Arabian Foreign Wealth Fund. With Premier League clubs being used to rehabilitate reputations for foreign entities, could the same happen in the A-League?

World football has a problem with ‘sportswashing’ – which the Macmillan dictionary defines as “when a corrupt or tyrannical regime uses sport to enhance its reputation” – as exemplified by the purchase of Newcastle United by the investment arm of the Saudi Arabian government.

This same government assassinated journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Turkish consul in 2019, and now they have been allowed to purchase a football club in the world’s most-watched sporting league to rehabilitate their reputation on the world stage.

The World Cup in Qatar might be the biggest sportswashing event of all. The host nation of the 2022 tournament has a horrid reputation with human rights abuse, and over 6,500 migrant workers have died in the country since the World Cup was announced, with the total number likely significantly higher.

Countries like Australia will have no qualms sending their national teams – helping legitimise Qatar on the world stage and sportswashing away the human rights abuse and death toll that the event has created.

Australian football – and the A-League – will face a reckoning with sportswashing in the future, the question is how can it be combated?

Australian football has fought its fights against possibly malicious owners, both domestically and foreign. Clive Palmer and Nathan Tinkler promised the world, but left the Gold Coast without a club – and the Newcastle Jets penniless respectively.

Clive Palmer left Gold Coast United in ruin.

Foreign owners have also done their damage. On January 4, 2021, Martin Lee’s ownership of the Jets was terminated after he failed to inject any money into the club since October 2019, while also failing to pay any of the club’s debts.

ABC’s Four Corners revealed a director – Joko Driyono – for the company that owns the Brisbane Roar with the Bakrie family – was jailed for 18 months for match-fixing Indonesian football matches.

According to Indonesian business records, he remains the president director of Pelita Jaya Cronus, the holding company for Brisbane Roar.

Joko Driyono, director of Brisbane Roar’s holding company, spent 18 months in jail for match-fixing.

Does the ownership model of the A-League create accountability for owners, and do Australia’s corporate regulators do enough to ensure that malicious owners can’t drive clubs into the ground for personal profit or gain?

Take the Martin Lee example. Under the current franchise model of the A-League, he has no personal liability for the debt accrued by his ownership, and faced no repercussions for running the club into the ground before the A-League took back the license.

Former Newcastle Jets owner Martin Lee was forced to hand back the club’s license.

He simply abandoned the club after it was no longer of use to his business interests in Australia, and returned to his home country.

The A-League must avoid this as an example, while also ensuring that promises of rich domestic benefactors are balanced against the likelihood that it could be too good to be true.

The current franchise model does have its advantages, in regards to the Australian Professional Leagues having the power to take back the license of a runaway club like in the case of Clive Palmer’s Gold Coast United, or when an owner fails to inject money like Martin Lee.

Currently, the vast majority of NPL clubs are run by a board of directors who are personally liable if funds go missing, or the club goes into severe debt.

Melbourne Victory is the only publicly listed company in the A-League, and that ownership model brings responsibility to shareholders and liability for directors.

Foreign investment at the A-League is at an all-time high, with five of the 12 clubs being either foreign-owned or controlled.

One club, Adelaide United, has its ownership completely hidden from the public. The Australian footballing community currently has no idea who finances the only professional club in South Australia.

A transparent fit and fairness test must be implemented for A-League ownership, one that keeps potential malicious actors away from the game, while protecting fans and clubs.

One way to achieve this would be to ask corporate regulators to take a more hands-on approach with A-League entities during the purchasing of a license.

The downside of this approach would be that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is capable of auditing companies’ finances, but foreign entities like Martin Lee’s businesses and Pelita Jaya Cronus can easily circumvent scrutiny.

Personal liability for owners and directors would force them to create sustainable businesses. While it might scare away some bad investors, those with good intentions will embrace the concept of a more stable A-League.

Another way to combat sportswashing would be to introduce the truly membership-based model championed by clubs in Germany.

The 50+1 model means that the majority of the club must be owned by local fans of the clubs, and if this was pursued in the A-League it would grant huge protections against owners who don’t act in the best intentions for the club long-term.

The Australian Professional Leagues need to ensure that those who want to invest in Australian football are doing so for the right reasons, instead of purely personal gain.

A true fit and fairness test, one that examines whether the owner is financially, ethically, and morally capable of owning an A-League team (or second division team) with the utmost accountability will be one of the best investment’s the APL can make for Australian football.

Without it, it will be a wild wasteland of Palmers, Tinklers, and Lees for years to come.

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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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