It is true that the pitch was subject to a deluge of rain immediately before Friday’s fixture against Western Sydney, which was delayed by nearly an hour as a result. Players accept that such events are beyond anyone’s control and welcome the APL’s decision to delay the match in the interests of their safety. 

But the downpour on Friday was not the catalyst for the state of the playing surface. The PFA’s post-match pitch ratings, supplied by players and exclusively shared in this PFA Post, reveal that the pitch was just as bad the week before, when Brisbane hosted a Sunday double header against Perth Glory men and Adelaide United women. Players from all three visiting teams in the past two rounds have given the pitch the lowest possible overall score of 1/5.

The PFA accepts that pitch quality is not under the direct control of the APL and Brisbane Roar and that the club and league has taken steps to address the situation since becoming aware of the state of the playing surface ahead of the Wanderers match. 

The issue of poor surfaces is not contained to Brisbane. Newcastle’s McDonald Jones Stadium received an overall score of 2/5 following the Jets’ ALM match against Melbourne City on Sunday.

If all parties agree that a quality playing surface is a precondition to the best possible product, all football stakeholders should be aligned in pursuit of solutions, for the benefit of all. A safe workplace is paramount to ensure players do not suffer an otherwise avoidable injury.

It is impossible to ascribe any one injury to a single factor, but it does bear mentioning that four players have come off injured across the two ALM matches at Suncorp.

With the condition of the playing surfaces at Suncorp and McDonald Jones Stadium well below what is deemed acceptable to the players, swift action needs to be taken before the next fixtures at these venues, which are scheduled for December 21 and 16 respectively, or else alternative arrangements should be made.

Whilst this challenge is not new, the latest episode is also a symptom of medium- and long-term challenges facing the A-Leagues.  

Pitch ratings put player criticism of Suncorp in context

The PFA has been collecting post-match pitch ratings from A-League Men and Women players for 14 years and ten years respectively. After each match, the PFA surveys at least one player from the away side about the quality of the surface, the atmosphere, the match officiating, performance standards (for ALW players), and any extreme weather. 

The pitch is rated in terms of pace, hardness, smoothness, and overall quality. 

The visiting players from both Perth Glory Men and Adelaide United Women rated the Suncorp pitch for the double header on the 26^th of November as a 1/5 (the minimum score) for both overall quality and smoothness. The pitch was deemed too hard and too fast by both respondents. 

The respondent from Western Sydney Wanderers gave Friday’s pitch the same four ratings: 1/5 for overall quality and smoothness, and too hard and too fast.

Whilst the players are rightfully demanding in relation to the quality of playing surfaces, they do not give out harsh scores lightly. It was the first ALM pitch to receive a 1/5 rating this season and the second for ALW. Ballymore Stadium received the same score from Brisbane’s women’s match against Western United a week earlier, highlighting the challenge posed in seeking a suitable playing surface in Brisbane.

Under new management, the Roar have made improvements on and off the pitch, and to their credit, continue to engage with the PFA and other stakeholders regarding the playing surface.

In 2022-23, only five 1/5 overall ratings were awarded across both A-Leagues competitions. These were City Vista Reserve (twice), Cromer Park, WIN Stadium, and Central Energy Trust Arena. 

With respect to those venues, Suncorp Stadium is much better resourced and usually does not score so low. Last season it was rated twice, with scores of 3/5 and 4/5 for overall quality, although both times the players said it was too hard. It has held one other fixture this season, Roar’s Round 2 ALM clash with Sydney FC on 27 October, and it received a perfect score on all four metrics. 

So, what happened? 

Multi-use venues not the sole factor

One factor of blame has been the Paul McCartney and Mötley Crüe concerts held at the stadium on the 1^st and 8^thof November respectively. However, the evidence suggests that these alone should not have created such a stark problem. 

The Mötley Crüe concert was 18 days before the A-Leagues double header on November 26^th, which is a longer turnaround than several other post-concert matches at A-Leagues venues during this and last season. The table below shows that other venues have managed to recover their surfaces far more effectively, in less time: 

Allianz Stadium before Paul McCartney’s concert in October. Photo via X

Still, multi-use is an issue that the PFA will be monitoring closely. There are several more concerts scheduled at A-League venues this summer. The Foo Fighters are on a one-band mission to perturb A-League groundskeepers with shows at HBF Park, Coopers Stadium, AAMI Park (x2), Suncorp Stadium, and Sky Stadium. Some of these are less than two weeks before the next A-League fixtures. Newcastle’s McDonald Jones Stadium will host P!nk 11 days before the Jets’ ALM fixture with Macarthur FC in February. 

Newcastle’s Supercross events jump the shark

Concerts are only one type of non-football event our venues host. Dirt bikes and monster truck events involve the dumping of thousands of tonnes of dirt onto the (covered) playing surface. The Supercross event at McDonald Jones Stadium on the 11^th of November caused the men’s F3 derby fixture on the 25^th of November to be switched to Gosford, with the decision made on the 17^th.

The club returned to the venue on Sunday, 22 days after the Supercross event, and was scored by the visiting player as 2/5 overall, 1/5 for smoothness, and too hard and too slow. The player commented that the “grass was newly laid and therefore negatively affected the surface consistency”. In the Jets’ last match before the Supercross, the pitch was rated 3/5 for overall and smoothness, too soft and too slow.

McDonald Jones is set to host the ‘Freestyle Kings’ Moto X event on 9 March 2024, just six days before the Jets men host Adelaide United. It’s unclear how six days will be sufficient recovery time in March when two weeks was not enough in November, and the pitch was still struggling after three weeks.

McDonald Jones Stadium on 11 November 2023. Photo: Josh Lynch via Newcastle Weekly

Weather to blame?

Back to Suncorp, and another possible factor. Brisbane had slightly more rain this November (100.4mm) than the long-term average (93.7mm). Between the Mötley Crüe concert and the double header matches, there was one particularly wet day on the 21^st (33.0mm) and 61.2mm of rainfall in total. 

In Sydney, where Allianz Stadium recovered well from the Robbie Williams concert only nine days before the Sydney derby on Saturday, November 25, there was 32.2mm of rain between events including 14.8mm on the day before the match, plus another 6.0 on match day.

Sydney FC’s ALM match on Saturday against Perth Glory was delayed at half-time by thunderstorms which involved a significant downpour. But the Allianz pitch was rated 4/5 overall and for smoothness, with pace and hardness also deemed ‘about right’ by the player surveyed.

So, while it was a wet few weeks in Brisbane last month, it was not outside the bounds of normality nor beyond the capacity for other venues to manage. 

The PFA understands that Suncorp Stadium has also cited a lack of sunshine as hindering its recovery. It’s true that this November’s daily average of 7.2 hours is slightly less than the long-term November average of between eight and nine hours a day. 

The PFA does not have a deep enough expertise in groundskeeping to understand how the above factors might interact with others such as grass seasonality. However, the evidence does not seem to suggest that Suncorp was subject to unmanageable external factors in the month that it degraded from five stars to one.  

Brisbane was indeed smashed by significant rain in the week (and hours) before the Wanderers game, but the degradation had already occurred. 

Heat policy as a template for progress

Given that the player feedback for some pitches was so damning, but the matches received the green light to proceed, there is clearly a gap between what different stakeholders deem as acceptable playing conditions.

A similar dynamic has existed at times with regards to extreme heat. It is a challenging task to draw the line at an acceptable level for all parties and even different players may disagree about where the limit should be.

To take the subjectivity out of the equation, the league has a clear heat policy which is bargained with players. The methodology for assessing conditions is objective and pre-agreed. To APL’s credit, it has consulted with the PFA on the issue and adjusted this season’s schedule to remove early afternoon kick-offs during the summer months altogether.

A similar approach could be taken regarding playing surfaces, to give players understanding and comfort around the process by which pitches are signed off for play.

Positive examples of mitigation

Last week, Melbourne City announced its AFC Champions League fixture against Zheijiang Professional FC on the 12^th of December would be played at Princes Park (Ikon Park) to allow AAMI Park time to recover from other events. The Foo Fighters played two shows there on the 4^th and 6^th of December. 

While the A-Leagues draw can work around such concerts, which are planned long in advance, the AFC draw is done closer to the season and such clashes may be unavoidable. 

AAMI Park will already be under pressure to deliver a pitch that can withstand four A-Leagues matches across the weekend of December 15-17.  

The decision to shift the Champions League fixture appears to be the well-thought-out product of proactive consultation and fans have been given maximum notice of the change. 

The aforementioned decision by the league and clubs involved to flip the men’s F3 derby hosting duties this season is another positive example of mitigation. It is not ideal for supporters to have to change plans, and the best solution is to avoid the situation in the first place, but rearranging matches is better than the alternative of compromising player safety and the football product. 

The long-term view: time for renewed strategic focus on venues

Of course, the panacea to this issue is for all A-League clubs to have their own exclusive, bespoke, fit-for-purpose home venues. 

This is not attainable overnight, but it is disappointing that the game would be bogged down in a new low rather than at least outlining a plan towards the ideal. 

Football is becoming more bullish in its demand for fair government funding in comparison to other sports. That’s a good thing. Better yet will be aligning all stakeholders behind a common strategy to strengthen our case-making. 

Having achieved separation and survived the pandemic, the A-Leagues now enter a strategic phase where resolving these long-standing challenges and optimising the product is the key focus. 

Last month, the PFA released its 2022-23 A-League Men season report, which includes pitch ratings for all venues used across the previous season. Access the report here. Coopers Stadium in Adelaide was rated the best atmosphere in the league with an average score of 4.8 on a scale of one to five. It also had the best surface of all the league’s regular home grounds, with a score of 4.5 (Mars Stadium, where Western United hosted three matches, scored a perfect 5.0 for pitch quality).

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Last week, the 2022-23 A-League Women Report was released with a PFA Post flagging its key findings.

The 2022-23 season saw a record influx of transfer revenue for Australian clubs. PFA’s analysis of transfer fees, based on a range of public and private sources, estimates that A-League clubs received about $10m across the mid-season and off-season windows for 14 player sales.

This collective take is nearly double the previous high, $5.4m in 2017-18, and nearly triple the $3.4m received in 2021-22.

The $10m estimate does not include the value of any additional clauses such as a percentage of any future transfer fee, so the value of these transfers for clubs could be higher than the immediate cash component. However, it should also be noted that Football Australia receives 10% of any international transfer fees.

This result is a financial boon for the competition. Only time will tell if the quantum is a one-off spike or reflective of a new normal.

However, from a policy perspective, we do not have the luxury of waiting before drawing loose conclusions to inform actions today.

The first point to acknowledge is that this outcome was achieved under existing policy settings. It has been said that the league must adopt an internal transfer market for it to generate significant net transfer revenue. This evidence undercuts that argument.

Rather, an analysis of the players sold suggested that a range of interconnected factors have driven this outcome:

Younger players: In the Player Profiles section of the upcoming Report, the ALM’s trend towards youth is analysed. More opportunities for younger players mean more opportunities for breakthrough talents to earn overseas moves.

Longer contracts: In the Contracting Practices section of the upcoming Report, the trend towards more stable contracting is highlighted. Players must be under contract to command a transfer fee, so it follows that a greater share of players under contract means that an in-demand player is less likely to leave for free.

International success: The Socceroos’ best-ever Men’s World Cup result, the first Olympic Games qualification for the Olyroos since 2008, and Ange Postecoglou’s rapid ascent at Celtic may have directly and indirectly increased interest in ALM players. The selection of ALM players for Qatar obviously enhanced their individual profiles, but the success of Australian players and coaches on the global stage also reflects well on their countrymen more generally, and draws clubs’ attention to our competition as a source for talent. Hearts and Middlesbrough both had World Cup Socceroos on their books before dipping back into the A-League market which produced those players.

Players sold during 2022-23 season 

These factors arguably drove the record transfer receipts, but what drove these factors?

Aligned CBA framework: The agreement of the five-year 2021-2026 A-Leagues CBA has allowed clubs to plan for the longer-term, facilitating more multiyear deals which protect the value of players by providing certainty for clubs and players. The expansion of the Scholarship Player roster has enabled clubs to provide more opportunities to young players without stressing the salary cap.

Strategic clubs: Clubs are also getting better at executing on this front, including smarter recruitment and succession planning, more faith in youth, and leveraging international networks to find buyers.

Youth quality: Hopefully, the trends towards younger players and higher transfer receipts are indicative of a better class of Australian prospects coming through. If this does prove to be the case, it could be due to a combination of factors such as maturing club academies and revitalised youth national teams. Time will tell.

ALM expansion: Adding Western United and Macarthur over recent seasons had the effect of redistributing the senior talent pool, which forced clubs to provide more game time to emerging players.

Increased Youth National Team Activity: From the recent Marbella Week of Football, where the Young Socceroos defeated France, to the FPF Portugal Sub-18 tournament where they faced England, Portugal and Norway, the nation’s most talented young players are increasingly being tested against the world’s best.

To illustrate these points in combination, consider the example of Jordan Bos. He joined Melbourne City’s academy at age 13 in 2016. Midway through the 2020-21 season, City was able to offer him his first Scholarship deal.

Before the 2021-22 season, City released one of two senior left fullbacks, Ben Garuccio, to Western United, leaving Bos as the sole understudy to Scott Jamieson and extending Bos’ Scholarship contract for three years. During 2022-23, Bos was able to secure a first-team shirt and earn his record-breaking move.

Along the way, Bos represented Australia’s youth national teams, including at the 2022 U23 Asian Cup alongside Patrick Yazbek and Kusini Yengi, who also feature on the list.

A-League club academies have room for improvement, but it is impossible to judge their output within the benefit of time. Bos is among the first generation of players to emerge from this pathway having been in the system from a young age. Credit also goes to his club for managing his onramp into the first team, while making full use of the regulatory levers which were designed to support such a process.

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Several of the Report’s findings have already been detailed in recent PFA Posts: 

• What A-League Women can learn from Women’s Super League shared lessons from the rapid growth of England’s world-leading domestic competition that could inform Australian football’s attempt to seize the post-World Cup moment. 
• Getting over the hump: A-League Women’s path to professionalism outlined the increasing challenges faced by players in juggling part-time work commitments alongside football.

This PFA Post will highlight three of the other key points to emerge from the Report, all of which speak to an overarching theme of growth and potential in women’s football.

There is a sense of excitement and momentum ahead of the new season, which looks set to be the biggest and best yet on the back of a game-changing Women’s World Cup.

But it won’t just happen. The Report empowers decision-makers with evidence-based analysis to ensure that we maximise this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

Player feedback on integration of women’s teams shows room for improvement

Other than Canberra United, every ALW team is part of a broader club which also fields an A-League Men team. Throughout the 2022-23 season, the PFA received anecdotal feedback from players from several clubs raising concerns about how their team was treated within their club.

The PFA included a new battery of questions in its end of season player survey to assess this aspect across the board.

The Report reveals the results of this part of the survey, aggregated across the entire playing cohort. It shows that less than a third (31%) of players agreed that the women’s and men’s teams were well integrated at their club.

A majority of players disagreed that their women’s team has an equal say in club decisions (72%) or that the ALW team is a priority for club leadership (62%). Nearly three in four (72%) agreed there is unequal treatment on the basis of gender at their club, including 34% who strongly agreed.

The silver lining of this exercise was that player comments suggested that simple behaviours, attitudes, and elements of club culture go a long way. Therefore, many of the opportunities to do better do not require a financial component; club leaders can make progress immediately, if the willpower is there.

The responses to the six statements were combined into a ‘Club Integration Index’ for each club. The Report reveals these Index scores for each club on a deidentified basis to show that some clubs are doing better than others, while all have room to improve.

The PFA is sharing these and other survey results with all clubs and the APL to drive change in areas which players have highlighted. The 2022-23 findings provide a benchmark against which progress in 2023-24 will be measured.

World Cup windfall shows the importance of attracting and retaining talent

The Report features a special section on the A-League’s links to the Women’s World Cup.

Seventeen ALW players represented their countries at the tournament, not including those who had featured in the ALW on loan before returning to their parent clubs. A further four players from NSW state league clubs featured in the Philippines squad.

FIFA distributes funding to the clubs that help prepare the players for its big show. This Club Solidarity Fund was US$11.3m in 2023. Half of the Fund will go to the clubs which contract players at the time of the World Cup, and the other half will be split between the clubs which developed the players between the ages of 12 and 22.

In 2019, when the Fund totalled US$8.5m, Australian clubs took in US$269k, around half of which went to ALW clubs (US$137k).

The Report estimates that these figures will be significantly greater for 2023, although predicting specific figures is beyond its scope.

Such numbers represent a notable windfall in the context of the domestic women’s football economy – and it could be set to skyrocket in future. FIFA’s similar disbursement for the Men’s World Cup – the Club Benefits Programme – was worth US$209m in 2022 and rises to US$355m for the 2026 edition.

FIFA has promised to equalise World Cup Prize Money for men and women in the next cycle, and while it might not yet do the same for club disbursements, even closing the gap slightly would be a boon for leagues like ALW.

The Report flags this growing revenue stream as a great incentive for our clubs to develop, attract, and retain top class talent.

Also in the Women’s World Cup section, the Report borrows analysis from FIFPRO to identify that ALW risks falling short in the number of match minutes it provides. Looking at the domestic leagues of World Cup nations, only four of the 27 FIFPRO assessed guaranteed fewer matches to its players last season.

The ALW’s expansion to a full home-and-away season in 2023-24, with 22 rounds plus finals, is a positive step in this regard.

Improved contract stability is a welcome trend

The Report reveals that the percentage of players on multiyear contracts leapt from 2% in 2021-22 to 22% in 2022-23, according to data made available to the PFA.

The competition has historically been defined by single-season deals, but with the emergence from COVID-19 and the enactment of the 2021-2026 A-Leagues Collective Bargaining Agreement, clubs are starting to take a longer-term view.

The share of players in their first year at their current club did not change (60% in 2022-23 cf. 61% in 2021-22), so it doesn’t appear that clubs are necessarily building more stable squads than before. The difference, rather, could be that players who would previously have to wait for a new contract from their club each year are now benefitting from the security and certainty of a multiyear deal.

This development is welcome, but for the league to feature the best players and enable them to fully commit to football, it’s crucial that the contracts also cover all 12 months of the year while also offering a commensurate full-time wage. AFLW will hit both targets under its new CBA.

This week, ALW players continued to advocate the benefits of this shift, for players, clubs, and the league alike.

Brisbane Roar’s Chelsea Blissett said:

“Once the season is done … we don’t have the stability throughout the off-season, so a lot of us have to work. We don’t get paid in the off-season, and our wages aren’t that massive where we get to be completely comfortable in our lives.

“I think it’s just always the unknown of where I’m going to be next? Where am I going to move? Where am I living in six months? How long do I have to work? I feel like with the expansion of the league going further, and with more and more teams, then with 12-month contracts we won’t have to worry.

“I think that will increase the attractiveness of the league as well, and it will grow the league and give players confidence in the league, so they can solely focus on football.”

Sydney FC’s Cortnee Vine said that the shift to full-time professionalism was key to keeping more Matildas in the league:

“We need to make it full-time, we need to pay better and be more professional in this league. It’s getting there, but it still needs so much more work, and that’s why those girls have left, and stayed away because those leagues [overseas] are professional, they pay a lot more than this league, and I just think once we start fixing that they will start to come back.”

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The obvious place to channel the newfound fervour is the A-League Women (ALW) competition. The Matildas – always ahead of the curve – asked fans to get around the ALW in their pre-World Cup video. 

This call-to-action has become widespread and, encouragingly, there are reports of record demand for ALW memberships ahead of the new season starting in October. 

A thriving ALW will provide the high-quality careers our players deserve, a new asset for brands and broadcasters, and a pipeline for future World Cup stars. In a broader cultural sense, it can carry on the work of the World Cup of making women athletes more visible and inspiring girls across Australia and New Zealand. 

For governments, commercial partners, and the APL and clubs themselves, the question is how big this thing can get and how soon? 

A useful reference, and the focus of this PFA Post, is England’s Women’s Super League (WSL), which is a few years further down the road from where the ALW is now. It has been on a staggering growth trajectory and is now one of, if not the world’s leading women’s domestic leagues. 

Of course, there are differences in the English and Australian football landscapes, so progress will not be identical in both countries. But there are still valuable lessons to extract from the experience of a competition which developed the Lionesses team which ended the Matildas’ dream World Cup run. 

A short history: from full-time professionalism to four-fold growth 

The WSL was established in 2010, two years after the ALW. It underwent a series of format changes before the Football Association’s 2017 ‘Gameplan for Growth’ kickstarted the current era of rapid progress. 

The strategy document targeted a doubling of female participation, and doubling of attendances for the WSL and Lionesses matches, by 2020. It achieved all three goals (WSL attendances actually tripled by 2020). 

In 2018-19, the WSL took the bold step of going full-time professional. Clubs had to reapply for admission under strict new licensing requirements, which led to a controversial shake-up in the make-up of the league. Some longstanding clubs were replaced by others that were more willing or able to invest. 

The relaunched competition soon attracted ground-breaking investments from forward-thinking partners. In 2019, Barclays came on as naming-rights sponsor for more than £10m over three seasons, including £500k for prize money. The bank renewed the deal last year for another three seasons at a reported £30m. In 2021, the broadcast rights were sold to Sky Sports and BBC for £8m per season. One quarter of this revenue is distributed to the second tier Women’s Championship. 

Combined club revenues have grown from £8.5m in 2018 to £30.7m in 2022 (not including a couple of clubs which do not publish their revenues). Financial statements do not yet cover the 2022-23 season, but this growth is likely to have continued or accelerated off the back of the Lionesses’ home Euros win last year. Average attendances nearly tripled from 2021-22 to 2022-23, up from 1,923 to 5,616. Sky has said its TV audience grew by 70% this past season. 

One other way to measure the progress of the league is the perception of players, which the PFA has been tracking over time. In 2018-19, 22% of ALW players surveyed chose the WSL as their most preferred domestic league; in 2022-23, this was 62%.

Where to next for WSL? 

UK women’s football is not standing still. In July, the British government published the findings of an independent review into women’s football, titled Raising the Bar – Reframing the Opportunity in Women’s Football. Among its progressive and ambitious recommendations was for the women’s second tier – the Championship – to follow the WSL’s lead and provide full-time professionalism. 

The chair of the review, former England international Karen Carney, believes women’s football in the UK could be a billion-pound industry by 2033. 

Leading vs lagging investment 

The rapid progress described above is a lesson in ‘leading’ investment in women’s football. The Football Association, Barclays, the broadcasters, and clubs took a ‘build it and they will come’ approach, enhancing the product in the belief that fan interest would follow. 

This is key, because there is a tendency for investment in women’s football to ‘lag’ rather than ‘lead’. That is, it seems that the players always have to prove their worth first, before the money catches up. 

This ‘lag’ logic is flawed for two reasons. Firstly, it’s hard to think of an example when, with hindsight, a serious investment into women’s football hasn’t been (quickly) justified, such is the industry’s potential and demonstrated growth. Secondly, the investment in women’s potential becomes self-fulfilling, because better-resourced players will create a more compelling product. 

World Cup prize money is a classic example. FIFA has effectively said that players must fill the stadia and attract the eyeballs before they can be paid the same as men. As always, the women have now cleared this bar despite the relative lack of investment. If FIFA had levelled the playing field four, eight, or 12 years ago, we could have been here sooner. FIFA’s go-slow has denied itself the opportunity to create a commercial behemoth, while denying any outgoing players the equal treatment future generations might finally enjoy. 

By contrast, Barclays’ head of sponsorship partnerships, Katy Bowman, recently reflected on the brand’s decision to be an early adopter in 2019 and then triple down last year. 

“You’re still buying into what could be because it’s still not there yet. You’re buying into a promise of growth from a commercial standpoint, for sure. In terms of monetary, I don’t know how difficult that conversation was, but it was never about what return on investment this is going to be. It’s a bit of a no-brainer. We know it will grow and the ambition will be for it to grow. But we know we also need to help it. It’s a journey, so you get out what you put in.” 

This theme echoes through the Matildas’ recent journey. In 2019, the first gender-equal National Teams Collective Bargaining Agreement felt bold and progressive. Looking back now, it is unthinkable that the Matildas wouldn’t have been afforded the same world class standards as the Socceroos to maximise their nation-changing World Cup performances. And partly because of that leading investment in them, the Matildas are suddenly a commercial engine on par with the men’s team, delivering a swift and considerable return for Football Australia, brands, and broadcasters. 

The smart money bets on where women’s football will be in four years. 

The opportunity: players fully focused on football

Investment itself does not guarantee increased support. It’s what that investment enables. 

In the case of the WSL, the past five years represent a virtuous cycle of increased investment improving standards, improved standards attracting more fans, more fans begetting more investment, and so on. 

The sums were significant, but in terms of return on investment, relatively modest injections had transformative power. 

This is because the starting point was a league where players could not commit fully to their craft. The shift to full-time careers enabled players to quickly level up, producing a more compelling product. Subsequent increases to player payments, which have risen rapidly in line with club revenues, have attracted top global talent to the league and driven competitive tensions which incentivise success and further raise performance levels. 

This path lies in front of the ALW. Three in five of its players currently work a second job outside of football, and around half of those spend more than 20 hours a week in their other employment. The lesson from the WSL is that alleviating players of this burden will be a step-change towards fulfilling the competition’s potential for all stakeholders.  

Australian fans have voted with their feet and shown that they will watch high-level women’s football. It’s a no-brainer to ensure our A-League Women players can meet their newfound interest in our sport with the best possible versions of themselves. 

The challenge: without mega-clubs, all stakeholders must step up

The biggest difference between the WSL and the ALW is that the economic scale of the men’s game in England dwarfs that in Australia. 

Women’s football has the capacity to be a standalone enterprise, but it would be remiss to draw a comparison between the competitions without acknowledging the context in which the WSL has thrived. 

The reality is that WSL teams sit under club umbrellas of the world’s richest football brands, which have the capacity to invest in women’s football at a fraction of their overall budget. 

In 2021-22, Arsenal Women’s expenses were 1.6% of their men’s team budget, while Manchester United Women’s were 0.7%. The WSL clubs with men’s teams in England’s second tier, Reading and Birmingham, had slightly smaller gaps between their teams because their men’s costs were less exorbitant.  

The scale of fandom for the men’s teams is also relevant. Arsenal Women played three league matches at the Emirates Stadium in 2022-23, attracting more than 40,000 fans each time. This dragged their season average up from 3,544 in 2021-22 to 16,976 last season, more than any A-League Men’s team. This quantum leap would likely not have been possible without the pre-existing support for the Arsenal brand on the men’s side. 

However, these are differences in scale, not kind. Most ALW teams are also embedded in larger dual-team clubs with everything to gain from an explosion of interest in women’s football. We too have access to larger venues where appropriate and extant football, media, and commercial personnel and infrastructure to assist with rapid upscaling. There are no hard capacity limits. 

Arguably, the ALW presents a relatively greater opportunity for Australian clubs than English ones, because, with respect, our women’s teams are much closer to world football’s summit than our men’s. 

ALW clubs can point to the development of every Matilda in the squad which just finished fourth in the world. With the right investment, it can credibly offer fans the opportunity to buy in to the journeys of the next generation of world-beaters. Without the right investment, this narrative may be a mirage. 

Without global mega-clubs to fall back on, other stakeholders must lead the push in Australia. Government, commercial partners, and broadcasters share the power to drive our own transformative era, if they have the vision to see what’s possible. 

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The PFA and the players themselves have talked a lot about what this means for the progress of the team and women’s football more broadly.

For policymakers, another important thread is the team’s growth into a major economic engine for Australian football.

In 2020-21, the A-Leagues gained independence from Football Australia (FA), leaving a hole in the governing body’s business. The national teams are now FA’s key commercial assets. The Matildas’ increasing value, then, is as timely as it is impressive.

This PFA Post focuses on those achievements and the team’s growing importance to the Australian football economy.

How the national teams make money for the game

The main sources of recurring revenue the national teams generate for FA are broadcast, sponsorship, and match revenue. Merchandise sales are another, smaller, stream.

Then there are significant but non-recurring revenues such as tournament prize money and government grants.

The Matildas’ performance in each of these streams has grown significantly.

Broadcast: Before the World Cup, the Matildas held the record for the most-watched women’s team sports match in Australian history, set during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. That mark was cleared by their World Cup opener against Ireland and then smashed again by the 4-0 win over Canada.

Even without Optus’ viewing figures, which aren’t disclosed, the Canada match attracted 50% more viewers than the Socceroos’ primetime World Cup fixture against Tunisia last year. It also beat out the men’s Ashes finale on the same night.

It’s almost pointless quantifying these records at the time of writing, in between the group stage and knockout rounds of the World Cup, when new heights will likely be reached.

Sponsorship: FA’s Legacy ’23 pre-tournament update says it has achieved a 150% increase in sponsorship revenue from 2020 to 2023, which it attributes in large part to the growth of the Matildas’ brand.

Match revenue: The Matildas’ attendance record has been broken twice in the past month. First, 50,629 attended the warm-up match against France at Docklands, then 75,784 watched the World Cup opener against Ireland at Homebush. More on their attendances below.

Merchandise: Nike has reported that more official Matildas jerseys had been sold before the start of the Women’s World Cup than Socceroos jerseys sold since before the Men’s World Cup last year until now.

Not all of these achievements will land directly on FA’s bottom line. Ticket sales and broadcast rights for the World Cup are received by FIFA. As the Women’s World Cup grows, Australian football will benefit from increasing prize money, grants, and Club Benefits payments.

But more importantly, the takeaway is that the Matildas have arrived as a commercial asset on par with the Socceroos, allowing FA to rebuild its post-COVID, post-A-Leagues business around powerful dual economic engines. The next time FA sits down with prospective broadcasters or partners, these metrics will power a compelling story about this team’s reach and magnetism.

Next, we’ll show that this development is not solely due to the World Cup halo effect; the Matildas’ appeal has been on a strong upwards trajectory for a long time.

Attendances: average will have doubled or tripled after World Cup 

The Matildas’ average crowd has risen from 10,860 in 2016-2019 to nearly 19,852 in the last three years (including the France game, but prior to the World Cup).

This growth is despite a serious disadvantage compared to the men’s game: nearly all the Matildas’ home fixtures have been friendlies.

A review of the Socceroos’ home fixtures over the same period shows the importance of high-stakes World Cup qualifiers in drawing a big crowd.

Four of the five Socceroos matches to clear the 40,000 mark in that period were World Cup qualifiers, the exception being the Brazil friendly at the MCG in 2017. With respect, the likes of Honduras and Syria are unlikely to be major drawcards in their own rights. The jeopardy of competitive football is what heightens interest in those matches.

The PFA’s report on the Socceroos’ 2022 World Cup campaign flagged that the pandemic denied that team at least seven home matches, including the World Cup qualifying playoffs which had been the highest attended fixtures in the previous cycle. 

For women, the peak continental tournaments such as the AFC Asian Cup generally double as World Cup qualifiers. Only Europe holds separate, specific qualifiers like the men.

FIFPRO has recently released a report criticising this policy, calling for standalone qualifiers worldwide to drive women’s football development through more high-quality, high-stakes matches.

When considering both the trajectory of Matildas fandom and the importance of competitive stakes to Socceroos support, it’s clear that shifting to standalone Women’s World Cup qualifiers would give Australian football a whole new suite of valuable ‘content’ (as well as sporting benefits).

Nonetheless, even in the current paradigm, the Matildas have become box office.

Brand: Matildas join Socceroos as one of Australia’s most-loved teams

Both the PFA and FA have recently commissioned independent research into the national team brands, and both sets of findings reflect the same upwards trajectory as attendances, tracing back well before the Women’s World Cup.

FA released parts of its research from Futures Australia earlier this year. It showed that the Matildas had overtaken the Wallabies to become Australia’s fourth favourite national team, and predicted they would join the Socceroos in the top three after the Women’s World Cup.

The PFA’s research was conducted by Gemba before the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup. It found a similar ranking of national teams and similar trendlines. On Gemba’s ‘Asset Power’ metric, the Matildas were actually ranked second behind men’s cricket, having increased their score by 136% since 2015.

Evidently, the Matildas’ ascension is not just a World Cup-inspired flash in the pan, but a product of a long-established trend.

The bottom line: Matildas’ economic value must be recognised

The national teams currently contribute between one third and half of FA’s revenues. This doesn’t include indirect sources such as amateur player registration fees, which are projected to increase on the back of the national teams’ achievements.

Due to the Matildas’ growing popularity, this proportion will likely increase over the next four-year cycle. FA’s annual revenues should return to the nine-figure levels last seen when the A-Leagues were under its control.

In light of this growing importance of the national teams to the governing body’s business, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the structure of the players’ financial partnership with FA.

In the 2019-2023 National Teams Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), a gender-equal, revenue-share model was established for the first time. How it works is: all revenue the two national teams generate through the aforementioned categories is put into one big pool, of which a set percentage is allocated to player payments (revenue-share). Regardless of which team earned the revenue, the pool is distributed 50-50 across the two teams (gender equality).

Gender equality: Paying men and women equally is the right thing to do. Further, it creates a positive aura around the teams and the industry. But it also makes both teams invested in the success of the other. The market research reinforces this model; Gemba found that over half of Socceroos fans are also Matildas fans, and more than four-fifths of Matildas fans are also Socceroos fans. Futures Sport and Entertainment president Simon Wardle said Australian football would benefit from the “double whammy” of the Socceroos’ performance in Qatar and the anticipation of the home Women’s World Cup.

Revenue-share: This aspect of the CBA structure creates an interdependent relationship between the players and FA, incentivising both parties to work towards collective success. The players entrust FA with their collective image rights in the knowledge that maximising the rights’ value is in FA’s self-interest. FA knows players are bought in to a program in which they retain a share of upside they contribute to.

A precondition for the success of such a model must be that the players are paid a fair share of the revenue they generate. 

On a sliding scale, the lower the percentage share, the less the players’ incentive to grow the pie.

And there is a threshold below which the players’ participation is not economically justified. The reason is that by providing the governing body with their collective image rights, the players restrict themselves from doing individual commercial deals in the same product categories.

This occurs against a backdrop of a sports marketing industry shifting towards a more player-centric paradigm. As Futures president Simon Wardle explained:

“What we’re seeing from a lot of the research that Futures does is that ‘hero worship’ to that star player is becoming more and more of an important factor for fans engaging with sports. A lot of that is being driven by the fact that, especially when you look at those younger fans, the Gen Z fans, more of their consumption is through non-traditional [media], social, digital. They’re engaging with the players ahead of, or as well as, the teams.”

To illustrate the point, Sam Kerr (1.2m) and Ellie Carpenter (240k) have more Instagram followers than the official Matildas account (230k). The World Cup squad’s combined followship is 2.42m, more than ten times the team’s reach.

There is an opportunity cost in the current CBA structure, particularly for the highest-profile players. For players to agree to limit their ability to freely monetise these platforms, the collective deal has to be sufficiently valuable.

The national teams CBA is due for renegotiation after the Women’s World Cup. When the 2019-2023 deal was bargained, the achievements outlined in this Post were unfulfilled potential. Now, the Matildas have proved their worth.

The post The PFA Post: The Matildas have arrived as FA’s second commercial engine appeared first on The PFA.

Their on-field contests will be underpinned by world class workplace standards won via off-field battles stretching back decades. 

On the eve of the tournament, it’s important to recognise and celebrate the contributions of players past and present in earning the rights and conditions which this generation of Matildas are benefiting from. 

The old saying goes that success has many fathers. That phrase is clearly outdated, but maybe it aptly captures the risk of others seeking to claim credit for progress which – to be clear – has been hard-won by players and their allies. 

The Matildas have gone from washing their own kits and being paid less than minimum wage to achieving parity with the Socceroos within a generation. Many in the current dressing room have seen this whole journey play out.  

They know nothing has been handed to them – they’ve had to earn every step. When they were told no, they organised and demanded outcomes. When they were told they asked too much, they proved they were worth more. 

With hindsight, no one would now argue that their progress has been anything other than timely, deserved, morally correct, and economically justified. Australian football should be grateful to those who led us to this potentially transformative moment. But those doubters certainly existed, including on the other side of the bargaining table. 

This PFA Post looks back at the players’ record of moving the ball forward through activism, sacrifice, and a raw determination to be treated with fairness and respect. 

World-leading gender equal CBA 

The landmark 2019-2023 National Teams Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) achieved gender equality between the Matildas and the Socceroos. 

Under the deal, both teams are afforded identical performance standards, such as staffing levels and the quality of travel, accommodation, and training facilities. Both teams are paid equally: a share of the revenue they each generate for Football Australia (FA) is centrally pooled then split 50-50 across the two teams. 

The one exception is prize money; the CBA guarantees each team the same minimum percentage of prize money from their respective tournaments, but FIFA and the AFC put much less money on the table for women to play for. More on that later. 

The CBA will be a competitive advantage for the Matildas at the World Cup. The team will enjoy the same guaranteed standards that provided the Socceroos with a world class platform in Qatar last year. The Socceroos lauded their camp environment and culture in the PFA’s report on the Socceroos’ 2022 World Cup campaign. 

Meanwhile, the vast majority of women’s national teams will come down under with no CBA in place. Some World Cup contenders prepare for the tournament amid public disputes over their conditions. Other nations, where collective bargaining is not yet entrenched, arrive in disarray due to missed payments and disappearing funds. 

History should show that FFA (as it was known at the time) was a willing partner in embedding gender equality into the CBA in 2019, but it was the players – from both national teams – who led the fight for this principle. 

‘Before 2007, we didn’t have a voice’ 

The 2019-2023 CBA was not born out of nothing. It was the fourth major agreement with FFA/FA which covered the Matildas, who first joined the PFA after the 2007 Women’s World Cup. 

Early gains were modest. One of the first asks was for FFA to do the team’s laundry. But with each deal, the players demanded the bar be raised further, gradually closing the gender gap on the way to 2019’s equality milestone. 

Cheryl Salisbury describes the players’ decision to join the PFA as a critical step:

“Back before 2007, we didn’t have a voice. We had no one to go into bat for us, unless it was the coach or the manager who was trying to get us new uniforms or uniforms that weren’t in men’s sizes or five times too big, those basic requirements that the blokes take for granted. These are the things we fought for, and some of those things we’re still fighting for today, we’ve just got a voice that can help us now.” 

Lydia Williams, who was in the 2007 World Cup squad, this week reflected on 2015 as an inflection point when, following her third World Cup, the team escalated its efforts to win a basic wage above the Australian legal minimum: 

“On the back of the tournament, there was the strike and the CBA agreement. That was a moment where we really believed in ourselves and that if we really invest in ourselves, we can really achieve something, and I think that was probably the start of where we are today.” 

In the lead up to the World Cup, overdue stories are being told about women’s football trailblazers in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. It’s clear this struggle started long before the PFA was involved. The common thread from those historic teams to the modern era of collective bargaining is a player-led push for change. The game is always better off when the players’ voice is heard.  

Collectively bargaining the right to parenthood 

Katrina Gorry’s young daughter Harper has been described as the Matildas’ secret weapon. But it was not so long ago that players like Katrina and another Matildas mum, Tameka Yallop, were forced to choose between football and parenthood. 

In 2013, Melissa Barbieri lost her Matildas contract when she decided to have a child. She was forced to sell her precious football memorabilia and rely on charity from male players to fund her playing return via the W-League.  

That same year, FFA allowed Matildas midfielder Heather Garriock to bring her 11-month-old daughter Kaizen on tour with a full-time carer – at her own expense. 

A carer was essential for Heather to meet her obligations as a player, but the costs were double her pay as a Matilda at the time. Fellow players, through the PFA, covered Heather’s expenses to bring her mother as Kaizen’s carer, but her experience was enough to force other players into an early retirement to start their families.  

The PFA filed a grievance at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which was rejected, but the players would not stop fighting until they received a fair policy. 

In 2015, the lack of support offered for current or prospective mothers was one of the key reasons the Matildas took industrial action during the CBA negotiation with FFA. The players’ asks were written off as too expensive. 

In 2019, the players were finally able to collectively bargain a world class policy: 12-months paid parental leave for a primary caregiver of any gender, additional support for those fostering or adopting, and carer provisions to allow for return-to-play. 

Like many of their victories, it’s a win for the players, but also for the sport. The provision pays itself back by keeping Australia’s best players on the pitch, maximising our chances of capitalising on this World Cup opportunity.  

The rapid progress of recent years has been a result of administrators recognising this positive sum nature of investment in women’s football. 

Katrina’s story of childbirth, as told through the PFA, symbolises the strength and determination of the team’s fight to create this awakening. 

World Cup prize money – the fight continues  

A recent PFA Post explained the Women’s World Cup prize money at length. Several points bear repeating in the context of this Post: 

• Prize money for the 2023 Women’s World Cup is 25% of that at the 2022 Men’s World Cup 
• FIFA has been dragged kicking and screaming – by players and player organisations – to increase Women’s World Cup prize money 
• FIFA frames itself as a champion for gender equal prize money being held back by external forces: this is incorrect 

There is no collective bargaining at the FIFA level (yet), so the players are limited to lobbying, consultation, and public pressure. Extensive efforts on these fronts have led to a welcome increase to prize money, but ultimately, FIFA has decided not to provide equality for the current generation of players, even though it can easily afford to do so. 

Mission incomplete 

Gender equality is not the endgame, but a bare minimum we should expect from our institutions in this era. 

Part of the next challenge is ensuring women’s voices are embedded in every aspect of their playing experience, from their workplace environment, to how they are commercialised, to their impact on society and the planet. 

Issues disproportionately impacting women players need to be accounted for, such as bespoke health and safety considerations and workplaces safe from bullying and harassment. 

Through collective bargaining at a domestic level, and, in future, internationally, women should not stop at gender equality, but work with men to ensure all players get a fair share of the revenues they generate. 

Many of these themes form the basis for the Matildas’ and Socceroos’ “Players’ Vision” for the next National Teams CBA, which is currently being negotiated. In addition, the Matildas have expressed a desire for the A-League Women to be enhanced in the wake of the World Cup, to improve the pathway for their successors. 

This World Cup can be both a celebration of gains made and a recognition there is more work to do.  

The lesson here is that progress in women’s football is not about a destination, but a principle: when players speak, the game should listen. 

The post 🔎 The PFA Post: Women’s football’s big moment is a story of player-driven progress appeared first on The PFA.

As the league develops, the demands on players are increasing, but the careers provided are not yet sufficient for most players to support themselves solely through football. 

This means many players are caught in a stressful tug-of-war between growing football commitments (which they embrace) and other work, which remains necessary until the competition can provide a full-time, year-round employment framework. 

The answer is certainly not to go backwards. The players have fought for the progress embodied by improved standards, increased payments, and more teams and matches. They welcome the greater expectations put on them as a result. 

The PFA also recognises that 12-month contracts for ALW players and staff are a priority goal for the Australian Professional Leagues (APL). 

So, while the survey findings highlight a negative side effect of that progress at this juncture in the competition’s development, the only remedy is to push through as quickly as possible to a milestone when players can afford to focus solely on football, should they choose to. 

The benefit to players will be relief from the tension they are currently reporting, and the benefit to the broader game from unlocking the potential of an uncompromised development environment may be even greater. 

Majority of players still need to work outside football 

Under the 2021-2026 A-Leagues Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the ALW minimum retainer was $20,608 in 2022-23, for a 29-week contract. Most players earned at or close to the minimum this past season. 

At this remuneration, it is obvious why many players still need to take on other work to get by. This season, three in five ALW players worked outside football. This rose as high as 72% during the pandemic. 

Nearly half (46%) of those who worked this season put in more than 20 hours at their other job/s in the average week. 

In addition, 43% of the players who were working were also studying in some form. 

By contrast, only 15% of A-League Men players were doing some work outside of playing this season, and 93% of those worked less than ten hours per week. 

The problem: declining sense of balance despite (because of?) league evolution 

As the season has grown in length, the length of players’ contracts has grown accordingly, as the table below illustrates. 

It’s great that the ALW now provides an employment framework for more than half the year, but at the same time, we can acknowledge that the window for other meaningful opportunities has shrunk. 

For some players, this might mean it’s getting harder to find work secondments during the off-season. For others, other playing opportunities might be restricted.  

To that latter point, the PFA’s 2017-18 ALW Report (p14) highlighted the reciprocal dynamic between the ALW and the United States’ National Women’s Soccer League, with dozens of players able to build a full calendar of elite play across the two due to the “dovetailing” of the two leagues’ season windows at the time. As the report forewarned would be the case, fewer players now tread this path because this dynamic has devolved as both leagues independently expanded. 

The number of hours ALW players are supposed to commit to their clubs has remained static at the part-time rate of 20 per week. However, anecdotally, players are reporting that this is more commonly being exceeded.  

To round out the increasing demands on ALW players, it could be argued that as the standard of football increases, any given hour is progressively more taxing, although this can’t be quantified. 

What we can evidence is the degree to which players feel able to juggle football commitments with work, study, and life generally – because we’ve been asking them this question for the past six years. 

The survey reveals that since 2017-18, the share of players who are satisfied with their life balance has declined. 

It’s particularly useful when looking at the chart to compare the most recent two seasons (under the new CBA) to the two earliest seasons, in the pre-COVID normal. 

As demands on players increase in the ways described, evidently there is a side effect of more players feeling stretched thin. Nowadays, well more than half are either ‘not at all’ or only ‘slightly’ satisfied with their life balance. 

Drilling down into the results from this season, there is one factor that clearly correlates with life-balance satisfaction.

The relationship is clear: more hours worked outside football, less life-balance satisfaction. 

Importantly, this same relationship does not hold when looking at weekly hours of study. In fact, those studying less than 20 hours per week are actually more satisfied than those not studying at all: 

So, life-balance dissatisfaction is not about being busy per se, but about players being forced to spend time doing things they don’t want to do, like working. 

As we showed earlier, the share of players working has not risen over time, so the recent decrease in life-balance satisfaction across the playing cohort is probably more driven by what’s happening inside clubs. 

Survey comments paint a vivid picture of the unsustainable balancing act the players are having to perform to commit to football: 

• I don’t want to feel like I have to work between seasons (for example: most of us do not get paid in the off season). It is a lot to juggle, especially going away for national team camps and the immense amount of traveling. I feel this weight on my shoulders from my work obligations. 

• If my work and football commitments clash, I am expected by my coach to skip work (where I get paid more and am respected more), and I am expected by my boss to skip soccer, and neither care if you suffer financially or reputation wise for it. 

• I feel as though in the next year or two I will have to transition to working in my field (that I studied at uni) and playing at the same time as money from football isn’t sustainable – I am more than happy to do this but I do have concern that coaches may not understand/be happy about this decision. I think until our yearly salary is sustainable programs need to be run considering this. I’m very lucky to have a job and a boss that understands. Unfortunately it means that I make less money but it also means I can do both. 

• I work as a casual graduate architect. It’s very beneficial for the mental state while in season, at the same time I would’ve liked to have had more balance given football’s mental and physical demands. 

• Only able to work night shifts due to morning trainings so it’s very hard to get adequate sleep after a night shift. 
• Club needs to be more understanding of taking leave from work to travel to games and give more notice of if player is travelling or not  

Among the 40% of players who did not work outside football, there are more who probably need to earn more money but find the prospect simply unmanageable: 

• I just feel like there’s no time for anything else except football. Sometimes I feel tired and burnout enough playing the sport yet alone stressing out about outside commitments. Having to focus on life outside of football and money it has a real impact on mental health. 

In the discourse around Australian football’s talent development pathways, a lot of focus is put on the cost of elite programs which might price out some prospects that the game can’t afford to lose. But one comment showed that financial pressure could even block ALW players from fulfilling their potential: 

• It is difficult having to work an extra 40 hours a week just to get by, when many of my teammates don’t. This impacts my ability to perform, and takes away from what I am able to put into football, as well as takes away what I’m able to get out of it. It is difficult to compete with teammates who have the resources and ability to give 100% of their time and energy to football. 

Solutions: long-term goals and immediate actions 

Football is not the only sport facing this issue. The AFLPA has set a goal for full-time professionalism for AFLW players by 2026. 

The PFA also acknowledges that this shift won’t happen overnight. The 2021-2026 CBA represents significant progress, building towards a minimum salary of $26,500 in a 35-week contract in its final year (2025-26).  

The PFA and APL review the CBA each season to ensure it remains fit for purpose in the context of the rapid development of women’s football. These constructive discussions involve assessing the salary cap, an increase to which will enable more players in each squad to be paid at higher rates. The addition of new teams will afford more players these opportunities. 

Delivering full-time pro contracts is ultimately the right thing to do for women athletes, but it should also be seen as an investment, not a cost. Unlike AFLW clubs, ALW clubs can tap into revenue streams such as FIFA’s World Cup Club Benefits and the growing international women’s transfer market, if it houses players of sufficient quality. 

A similar frame should be applied to the inception of world class A-League Women academies, which would give Australian girls a pathway to fulfil their potential in the sport, and give Australian football a pipeline of valuable talent. 

Without these advancements, the competition risks falling behind. In 2019, Australia’s World Cup squad featured eight domestic-based players; in 2023, this has fallen to two. Meanwhile, the UK Women’s Super League tripled its revenues in the three years after going full-time pro in 2018-19. This provided a platform for the competition to capitalise on England’s successful hosting of the 2022 Women’s Euros: crowds tripled this season and Arsenal Women now attract more fans per game than any A-League Men team. 

In the immediate term, the survey reminds clubs that ALW players need to be supported in balancing their competing demands. 

The survey revealed that all but three ALW clubs mostly failed to provide players with the required two-month advance training schedule and seven days’ notice of any changes. This CBA provision applies to both the ALM and ALW, but it is arguably most important for the ALW given the need for many players to plan around other work commitments out of financial necessity. 

Three out of four (76%) ALW players across the league agreed that at their club, “Players’ lives away from football are supported”. But this fell to 63% among players who were working 21+ hours per week. 

Full-time professionalism is an important stretch goal, but there’s more clubs can do right now to ease the path there. 

The post 🔎 PFA Post: Getting over the hump: A-League Women’s path to professionalism appeared first on The PFA.

With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (WWC) around the corner, focus is once again falling on the Prize Money to be awarded to participating nations and players. WWC Prize Money is at the centre of an ongoing conversation about issues of fairness, equality, and accountability, but to have that conversation, basic facts must be established.

This PFA Post provides a state of play and corrects common misconceptions about the amounts and percentages of money that FIFA will distribute to its Member Associations (MAs) and the players.

Prize Money v Preparation Funding v Club Benefits

You might have seen different figures reported for the total WWC Prize Money on offer in 2023: for example, $110m and $152m.

That’s because other FIFA distributions are sometimes (wrongly) rolled in alongside Prize Money, creating the inflated figure.

That leads to the common mistake of comparing the WWC Prize Money to FIFA Men’s World Cup (MWC) Prize Money in a way that’s not like-for-like.

To explain, let’s define terms:

Prize Money: Payments to MAs based on the finishing positions of teams at the tournaments. Some of these payments are passed on to players (more on that later).

Preparation Funding: One-off payments from FIFA to the competing MAs paid out before the tournaments, to assist with their costs of participating.

Club Benefits: Payments from FIFA to the clubs of players who play at the tournament, theoretically intended to compensate the clubs for ‘preparing’ the stars of FIFA’s shows.

We’ve seen commentary where a figure of $152m ‘total Prize Money’ for the 2023 WWC is compared with the US$440m Prize Money distributed at the 2022 MWC. This is incorrect, because the $152m includes Preparation Funding and Club Benefits for the WWC, but the US$440m does not include those elements for the men in 2022.

If men’s Preparation Funding and Club Benefits were also included, the total disbursements for the 2022 MWC would be close to $700m.

So, it is accurate to say that FIFA is offering 25% of Men’s Prize Money for the WWC.

Where did this ‘misconception’ come from?

The top.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced the disbursements for the 2023 WWC at FIFA’s Congress in March 2023. He outlined a three-step strategy for increased investment in the WWC. Step two was the increase in payments for 2023. He said:

“Step two entails a significant increase in the total Prize Money envelope for the 2023 World Cup. It will be over three times more than in 2019 when I was already President. But it will be ten times more than in 2015, before I became President of FIFA. Ten times more. So we move from 15 million in 2015 to 150 million in 2023.”

In 2015, there were no Club Benefits or Preparation Funding for the WWC. The Prize Money component ($15m) was the extent of FIFA’s disbursements at that tournament. It is true that FIFA, under Infantino, introduced those former elements in 2019, but a cynic might say that the misleading “total Prize Money envelope” language is designed to inflate the increase witnessed under Infantino’s reign from about 7x to the 10x he repeated for emphasis.

FIFA’s web article (in which Infantino’s speech is embedded) does make clear the different components of the disbursements for 2023, but Infantino’s rhetorical spin has evidently passed through to many media reports on the issue. FIFA hasn’t rushed to correct the record.

Not quite ‘equal conditions and services’

The first part of Infantino’s trident of reforms was to do with the off-field environment afforded to participating teams. He said:

“Step one will be equal conditions and services for all men and women playing at a FIFA World Cup.”

This is a reference to FIFA’s decision to cover costs for the same class of travel and accommodation and the same level of staffing for the teams at the 2023 WWC as was afforded to men’s teams at Qatar 2022. This is a welcome development.

But eagle-eyed readers might have noticed in the first table in this Post that Preparation Funding for the 2023 WWC was $31m, less than two thirds of the $48m for 2022 MWC. These totals are split equally across the 32 participating nations at each tournament. Football Australia (FA), for example, received $1.5m to ‘prepare’ the Socceroos for Qatar, and $969k to do likewise for the Matildas in 2023.

This ongoing inequality contradicts Infantino’s claim of “equal conditions”, and also implies, incorrectly, that elite women players require or deserve lesser standards than men to perform at tournaments of identical scale and formats.

The hedge-lined road to equal pay

The third element of Infantino’s speech regarded the “journey” to equal World Cup Prize Money in the 2026-2027 cycle.

This outcome has been widely reported as a fait accompli. However, there is nothing in writing to confirm this will definitely happen.

Can we take them at their word? Well, looking carefully at FIFA’s language, there appears to be an element of hedging around this commitment.

Infantino said at the Congress:

“Our ambition would be, of course, to be able to have equality in payments for the 2026 Men’s and the 2027 Women’s World Cups. This is the objective that we set for ourselves.”

Infantino’s “to be able to” is a caveat related to the commercial performance of the WWC. Infantino spent the rest of his speech urging sponsors and broadcasters to massively increase their offers for WWC rights in part to enable FIFA to afford equal pay.

FIFA’s Secretary General Fatma Samoura made this point more explicitly in May:

“Without the sponsors, without broadcasters, there is very little we can do to match all the requirements and also [pursue] equal pay and treat men and women equally. We need them.”

The reality is FIFA can easily afford to equalise Prize Money right now. After a profitable 2019-2022 cycle, despite the pandemic, FIFA has almost $4 billion sitting idle as reserves. A tenth of that would more than cover the gender gap in 2022-2023.

Perhaps FIFA’s language is an empty threat: a strategic attempt to wedge sponsors and broadcasters by painting equality as contingent on their investments, even though FIFA intends to do the right thing regardless. Perhaps not.

FIFA would certainly catch a lot of blowback if it walked back what is being treated by many as a concrete promise. But public condemnation has not always regulated its decision-making and the absence of a written agreement means progress remains at the whim of FIFA.

FIFA’s new Player Prize Money share: a floor, not a ceiling

Historically, for both Men’s and Women’s World Cups, FIFA has paid Prize Money directly to MAs. There was no guarantee that the players themselves would receive a cent of the rewards their performances had earned.

In countries with effective player representation (such as Australia and the United States), players collectively bargain the share of Prize Money that is passed through from the federation.

In countries without developed player representation, the share might have been agreed informally or just decided unilaterally by the federation. As recently as last year, the fight for a fair share has led to industrial action. In extreme cases, the federation has sought to hold out on paying anything at all.

These scenarios highlight the importance of collective bargaining. But in recognition of the lack of an effective player voice among some competing nations, FIFPRO demanded that FIFA guarantee a substantial share of Prize Money go to players directly. FIFA conceded this point, informing the 32 competing nations on 6^th June 2023 of the percentage which players should receive.

However, FIFA’s circular did not acknowledge the impact of collective bargaining agreements which guarantee superior shares to players than what FIFA has outlined. As such, this point has been lost in some reporting.

FIFA’s prescribed player share scales up as the tournament progresses. It said players should receive about 30% for a Group Stage elimination, rising to around 60% for the final four.

But the United States Women’s National Team has agreed with US Soccer that the players will receive 90% of any FIFA Prize Money (they split this share equally with their men’s team and vice versa). This should clearly supersede FIFA’s new policy, which becomes a minimum rather than a mandate.

Australia is slightly different in that the 2019-2023 National Teams Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) says the Matildas and Socceroos should receive 40% of World Cup Group Stage Prize Money and 50% of any additional Prize Money earned by progressing further in their respective tournaments. FIFA’s prescribed player shares undercut the CBA for some outcomes and improve on the CBA for others. The PFA is currently working through this aspect with FA.

Media reports which simply map FIFA’s prescribed player payments onto every team at the tournament, with no mention of collective bargaining, miss the mark.

Fairly defining Prize Money

FIFA’s circular indicated that MAs will receive a “tournament funding allocation … on the basis of team performance”. It said this should be split between two purposes:

1. an allocation dedicated to the PMA [Participating Member Association) for national team tournament costs and football development investment

2. an allocation dedicated to player prize money

For the avoidance of any doubt, it should be clear for ongoing discourse around World Cup Prize Money that the total package, and not just the latter component, constitutes ‘Prize Money’ in the accepted sense.

That’s clearly FIFA’s intention. If you add up the payments FIFA has prescribed for its MAs and players (x23) for each finishing position, the total is $110m, the collective Prize Money pool it has trumpeted since March.

The share of the overall prize pool which goes to each finishing position, when the MA and player components are added, is exactly 25% of the equivalent finishing position at the 2022 MWC.

FIFA’s proposal

The players’ role and ‘the FIFA problem’

In the rush to benchmark women’s Prize Money against the men’s, it should not be forgotten that the men’s Prize Money has been unilaterally decided by FIFA with no stakeholder consultation and no transparency as to how it decides the figures.

While the Prize Money has surely increased over time, that doesn’t mean it represents a fair share of the increasingly massive commercial value the players generate on behalf of the world game.

By contrast, through collective bargaining, Australia’s National Teams players have a revenue-share model with FA which ensures they receive a set proportion of the revenues they contribute to.

For FIFA’s President and Council Members, the only calculation is a political one: can they redistribute enough of FIFA’s wealth to get re-elected when the MAs occasionally vote (players, fans, and other stakeholders don’t get a formal say).

In the PFA’s upcoming report on the Socceroos’ 2022 World Cup campaign, we call this ‘the FIFA problem’, but the issue of unaccountable global sporting bodies is gaining increased focus across the board, most recently in golf.

The significantly improved conditions for the 2023 WWC do represent a breakthrough in this regard; FIFA did eventually accede to FIFPRO’s demand to be heard on behalf of the tournament’s players, and some of its positions were taken up.

There was no formal mechanism which brought FIFA to the table or made it give ground, rather it was public pressure and fear of player backlash which likely forced its hand. This pressure was built over time by a determination of players to be treated with fairness and respect, most notably through the PFA’s and Matildas’ Our Goal is Now campaign for equal World Cup Prize Money in 2019.

The ironic thing is that even with FIFA’s guaranteed share of 44.5% of WWC Prize Money going to players, the majority of the benefit from increased Prize Money will flow to MAs which have done little, at least publicly, to contribute to the uplift.

Whilst true equality was not achieved for this World Cup, to the extent that it was a victory, it was a victory achieved by players. FIFA’s glossy pronouncements should not disguise this fact.

The post 🔎 PFA Post: Women’s World Cup Prize Money Explained appeared first on The PFA.

Topics will include the players’ experiences in camp, the impact of the tournament on the Australian football economy, scheduling and workload, the pandemic’s impact on the qualifying campaign, and the players’ attitudes towards emerging issues, captured through an exclusive post-tournament survey. Some of the survey results are included towards the end of this article. 

The report’s analysis of the squad selected for the tournament finds that this was the second youngest Australian squad by average age and second least experienced by average caps across our run of World Cup Finals appearances starting in 2006. 

The youngest and least experienced squad was Ange Postecoglou’s 2014 Brazil cohort (counting all players, whether they made an appearance or not). 

This finding contradicts a prediction made by Football Australia’s Performance Gap report, published two years before the tournament, which anticipated that Australia would have “one of its oldest squads at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022”. 

Based on Socceroos match minutes at the time, the report said: “There will be a limited number of 24–29-year-old players in the player pool available for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.” 

Looking at the actual minutes earned at the World Cup in Qatar, there is some hint of a relative lack of players in their late twenties, but this was offset by the emergence of several 24-year-olds who played key roles at the tournament.  

The 24-year-olds who featured were Harry Souttar (360 minutes), Kye Rowles (360), Riley McGree (265), and Keanu Baccus (114). Nathaniel Atkinson was the 23-year-old, and at 18, Garang Kuol became the youngest player to feature in the Men’s World Cup knockout stages since Pelé in 1958. 

This outcome prompts a revisit of recent research and discourse around the development of elite Australian men’s players. 

In 2017, the PFA released its Player Pathway Study, a comprehensive audit of the careers of professional Australian footballers. Like FA’s Performance Gap report, it used match minutes as the primary unit of analysis. Among other things, it showed that Australians’ representation in the ‘Big 5’ European leagues has collapsed since the mid-2000s. 

In 2019, the PFA released Culture Amplifies Talent, an unprecedented study into the developmental histories of Australia’s ‘Golden Generation’ of men’s players undertaken in conjunction with expert researchers at Victoria University. 

This piece of work turned the problem on its head by focusing on what happened in our best players’ lives long before they reached the professional game. Instead of assuming that match minutes produce talented senior players, it questioned whether sufficiently talented youth players would demand match minutes. 

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. Senior match minutes for young players are both an important input into player development and an output of an effective talent production line. 

The implication for policymakers is that both ends of the problem require attention.  

With regards to our professional competition, there are some positive signs that current settings are functional. Other than Souttar, all those breakthrough players aged 24 and under who played World Cup minutes developed in the A-League. 

In a broader sense, since The Performance Gap was released, the age profile of the A-League Men has drastically shifted towards younger players. This trend was evident in the PFA’s 2021-22 A-League Men Report, which showed that the share of match minutes going to over 30s nearly halved from 2017 to 2022. This season’s report is due out later in the year. 

One of the drivers of this shift has been clubs taking advantage of expanded Scholarship Player provisions in the 2021-26 A-Leagues Collective Bargaining Agreement. 

There is more work to do. An intention of the expanded Scholarship roster was that a parallel youth or reserve league would be re-established to ensure this larger cohort of young players would get a substantial dose of competitive football while they waited for first team opportunities. This competition is still in development. 

Further, as both the PFA’s and FA’s research highlighted, the A-League itself is smaller and shorter than competitor leagues, so its imminent expansion will be another positive step. 

However, the importance of homegrown players to our World Cup performance shows that, at the very least, there is nothing in the A-League’s current guise which precludes good players from coming through. 

Under the existing model, clubs are massively incentivised to invest in attracting and developing the best players. The upcoming Socceroos report estimates that A-League clubs will collectively receive almost US$2m in Club Benefits from FIFA for preparing players for the World Cup. This will be followed by an expected record-setting window of outbound transfers, following from Kuol’s move to Newcastle United in January. 

This is why the PFA has questioned the introduction of further regulations purportedly intended to add to this incentive, which in reality will only move money around within the Australian football economy, while adding administrative burden to clubs and restricting the movement of players. 

If we are failing to achieve a net increase to the game’s revenue by exploiting external opportunities such as FIFA’s Club Benefits and international transfers, we need to go back to Culture Amplifies Talent and the talent pipeline. 

The backstories of some of this season’s breakthrough prospects are dripping with elements the study found to be critically important to the development of our best ever players, such as family influence, deepfelt passion, unstructured practice, and an enabling home environment. 

Take the story of the Kuol brothers, raising their mum’s ire by coming home from club football and continuing to play in the backyard past dinner time.  

Consider Jordan Bos’ backyard training regime (set up by dad, of course), where he honed his trademark ball-shifting and striking skills. 

Count the number of Australian prospects who are the sons of professional players, led by newly capped Socceroo Alex Robertson. It’s a statistical impossibility, unless there is a causal relationship between dad’s influence at home and their development. 

For the upcoming Socceroos World Cup report, we asked the squad who first got them involved in the game: 59% said it was their father. The second-highest answer was their mother, at 41%. 

We also asked the World Cup Socceroos how high they prioritise different actions the sport could take to develop the next generation of Socceroos and Matildas. Their top answers all related to children’s connection to the sport. Their lower prioritised options – while still important – focused on the professional game. 

Our emerging crop of talents shows two things: that the ‘secret sauce’ factors identified in Culture Amplifies Talent are as relevant as ever, and that the A-League is providing a platform for good-enough players to shine and progress. 

The policy discussion should focus on creative solutions to bottle and replicate that secret sauce, such as ensuring our next wave of migrant communities become connected to the sport locally, giving parents resources to model an enabling home environment, and providing children in an increasingly urbanised population access to spaces for free practice with siblings and friends.

About the PFA Post 

In line with the PFA’s commitment to providing policy leadership to ensure Australian football is the best governed football nation in the world, is internationally competitive on and off the field and is a central part of Australian culture, ‘The PFA Post’ analyses issues impacting Australian football. 

The post 🔎 PFA Post: PFA’s World Cup analysis changes development narrative appeared first on The PFA.

A-League Men on track for highest scoring season on record? 

This season could be one of the highest-scoring seasons in competition history if the scoring trends of the first six rounds continue for the remainder of the season. 

With 107 goals scored in 34 matches – at a rate of 3.15 per match – the A-League ranks as one of the highest scoring leagues against global comparators, behind only the German Bundesliga (3.19), prior to the FIFA World Cup Qatar break. 

America’s MLS (2.96), France’s Ligue 1 (2.96), England’s Premier League (2.87), Italy’s Serie A (2.58), Spain’s La Liga (2.54) and Japan’s J-League (2.51), rank behind the A-League Men in terms of GPG.

Goals Per Game (GPG) – A-League Men vs. Global Leagues

*Seasons recently concluded. All other leagues are observing a break for the FIFA World Cup 2022 until recommencing in December 2022 

Over the course of the remaining fixtures, that figure may well level out.  

However, if it continues at the current rate – or increases – it will surpass the highest GPG season recorded in 2015/16. 

Free-scoring Melbourne City FC finished that campaign with the highest goal tally, with 63 goals in 27 games (2.3 GPG), while the overall league GPG average was 3.12 for that season.  

In the PFA’s Annual A-League Men report, through both a technical analysis and player feedback, the PFA attempted to define the competition’s playing style, with a transitional game reflected via the anecdotal assessment and data.  

Open, high-scoring and unpredictable matches indicate that transitional style is prevalent again this season. 

Age profile consistent with previous campaigns 

In terms of the opportunity for emerging players, 77 players under the age of 23 have made appearances during the first six rounds. That represents 32% of the 238 players to have received an appearance so far this season. 

Perth Glory (11) and Central Coast Mariners (10) have provided the highest number of U23 players with appearances, followed by Adelaide United (9) and Newcastle Jets (8).

The Mariners have the lowest average age of players fielded this campaign, with an average age of just 23.2. Teenagers such as Garang Kuol (18), Nectarios Triantis (19), Jacob Farrell (19) and a handful of young players in their early 20s drive the average age of Nick Montgomery’s squad down in comparison to their opponents. 

The next average youngest team, in terms of appearances, is Wellington Phoenix (25) followed by Adelaide United (25.2). The oldest is Western United, with an average age of fielded players at 29.1.

The A-League Men average age of fielded teams is 26.1.

When you drill down into the match minutes played by various age groups, the data illustrate that there is a healthy spread of minutes available to players U23.  

Players aged 24 are the group that currently occupies the largest amount of match minutes, with a cumulative amount of 6011 total minutes played by that cohort. 

Players aged between 16 and 24 have played 23,153 of a total 67,320 (34%) minutes.

The top five age groups with the most match minutes are 24 (6011), 28 (5528), 31 (5260), 21 (4626) and 30 (4400), indicating a relatively even spread of match minutes across emerging and experienced players.

Central Coast Stadium and Coopers Stadium lead pitch ratings

Across the first six rounds, the PFA measured pitch quality and atmosphere, via post-match surveys conducted by players. 

Although it hosted just one fixture, Coopers Stadium received the second highest pitch quality (4 out of 5) and highest atmosphere rating (5 out of 5), for the Round 6 match between Adelaide United and Melbourne Victory.

Central Coast Stadium ranked highest with 5/5 for pitch quality, followed both McDonald Jones Stadium (4.5/5) and Moreton Daily Stadium (4.5/5) which received high pitch quality ratings, although were rated as having lower than average atmosphere. 

Please note that these ratings are objective and based on player feedback and experiences. 

About the PFA Post 

In line with the PFA’s commitment to providing policy leadership to ensure Australian football is the best governed football nation in the world, is internationally competitive on and off the field and is a central part of Australian culture, ‘The PFA Post’ analyses issues impacting Australian football. 

The post 🔎 PFA Post: A-League Men – FIFA World Cup Break Analysis appeared first on The PFA.