Ok just a simple question Is Professional Football in Ireland sustainable?
How many clubs could the league support being full time.
Ok just a simple question Is Professional Football in Ireland sustainable?
How many clubs could the league support being full time.
No, not at the moment it isn't. Clubs should be working towards building up a fanbase that would make it sustainable but the interest in the Irish public for a full time league just isn't there, and won't be there for at the very least 10 years, if ever at all to be honest.
I believe if the top teams could get about 7500-10000 fans per game, I think then teams can turn professional. The income on a €15 ticket would be €112,500-€150,000 per home game, that makes it €1,800,000-€2,400,000 gate receipts for a season. That is really achievable considering the fan potential in the country.
I'd agree with this, but teams are so far away from this at the moment, it's not funny. It would be a very small league.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBoss
At current attendance levels, no.
Simple maths:
If England can just about sustain 96 (or 92, whatever) teams, with 56 million people
then our population could sustain 7 clubs
or almost 10 in an all-Ireland set-up
Sobering thought isn't it?
How many teams could get an average 7500 at games. Cant see Drogheda or even Dundalk for that matter getting that amount. I could only see maybe cork Derry and Rovers getting anything close to that in the future. The other clubs may hit that figure for the odd game but not sustain it for a season.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBoss
Drogheda may have the right idea of linking leisure facilities in with their stadium to generate more revenue. If all clubs did this this may allow them to have a professional team with lower attendances.
As an equation it's sound, in reality Ireland can't sustain 10 professional clubs because it is only a minority of the Irish footballing public that support Irish football, or have you not been to a game since the early 80s?Quote:
Originally Posted by CuanaD
No offence but the line about if teams could get 7,500 to 10,000 a game it would work. It would of course but it will never happen, the great Irish sporting public have no interest in the league.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBoss
Maybe new facilities will increase crowds but seems a long shot.
IMO the first division is not sustainable & within the new 3-5 years I can see it abandoned. Might possibly see another few clubs move back to junior status & have top 16 league with maybe half the teams as full time pro.
Currently the clubs are paying the top players too much (probably more than a lot of them would get in Scotland or England) to have any chance of balancing the books.
Agree Pete with all comments above, First Division is a joke can't see it lasting much longer. I think facilities are decent in most grounds and really don't think this stops people anymore from going to games.Quote:
Originally Posted by pete
I think only Cork and Derry at present could afford a full time set up with out a tycoon pumping his money into them.
I'm agreeing with that, my point was that, even if we got attendances up to the levels equivalent to the English attendance-per-capita, then that could still only sustain 7 professional teams - not nearly enough for a viable league:eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by jebus
That's why we have to look at other ways of sustainable incomes for teams here - having big business people behind clubs can be a great way to develop infrastructure, but they will do well to see any monetary returns.
The Drogs model (if it happens) seems a good idea for the long run.
Official FAI policy seems to be trying to build around the Bord na gCon model (minus the legal bills & fraud) & I can see them being more inclinded to invest the money that is there on a smaller number of clubs. For no more E100m you could get 12 * 10k stadiums - in reality would be less as some clubs already have their own money by selling existing land. In the last 10 years the state has invested a lot more than E100m with Bord na gCon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rovers Maniac
Population of England is about 49m - 56m is an old figure for the UK (now about 60m)Quote:
Originally Posted by CuanaD
I know at the moment that the possibility of that happening are almost non-existent with fans in Ireland more concerned about supporting Man Utd and Liverpool. That is the problem, if there was some way to encourage those fans to support local League of Ireland teams that would be amazing but thats the problem that needs to be addressed somehow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Louth4sam
If we didnt have a 'tycoon' pumping money into us right now we'd be gone back part-timeQuote:
Originally Posted by Rovers Maniac
An all island 14 team league is possible to sustain full time but you would need a good regional dispersion of teams. A ten team league with 5 Dub teams (potentially 6) which is what is going to happen soon will be a disaster. But hey, they are doing it on the pitch so you cant begrudge them.
Any potential league needs a couple of strong regional teams (we're going downhill, scumdalk seem to want to stay in the 1st, Athlone - well I dont know whats going on there, Galway are in freefall, Limerick could come good but probably wont be until the year 2030, Harps have potential but are stuck in yo yo mode (like we were), the Blaahs looked like they were going to be a force a few years ago but now are back in their old habits, theres potential in Wexford but probably not for a while yet, Longford seem to have collapsed or are they simply restructuring? If Cobh can build on what they are trying to achieve they could come good, would love to see a strong Monaghan as fellow north easters but sincerely doubt it, Kildare, well they're only new so they still are finding their feet.. (maybe??) Sligo seems healthy enough and Bray will always be floating around punching above their weight)
So whats the solution? Well I dont know, but its quite possible in a couple of years the Premier could be:
Bohs, Shels, Shams, Pats, UCD, SF, Derry, Cork, Drogs, Bray
Which is 6 teams from a 15 KM radius (or 8 from a 60KM radius) then you have Cork and Derry who are polar opposites of the country!!!
All these teams playing each other 4 times a year!? Boring.
A professional league in this instance would never survive.
Mind you, part time football has been around for 80 odd years... what was so bad about it? If facilities improve so people can watch a game in comfort + safety then I'll be happy enough.
it dosent look like it - the crowds are not there. plus the facilities are to poor at the minute. when you have got less than 1000 people turning up for a premier league game then it cant work long term.
You really need to define exactly what you mean or expect from a full time league. It's definitely possible if you want a full time league that doesn't attract the current level of players. You just have to look at the Conference and lower in England, clubs are full time, attract crowds not dissimilar to here but the only highlight they might have in a season is a good FA Cup run.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rovers Maniac
I remember a conversation a couple of years back that I had with one of the former directors of Pats who said that an average home gate of 3,000 would be enough to see the club break even with their full-time setup (this was around the time that a couple of thousand people signed a petition saying they wanted Pats to stay in Richmond but less than half of them were turning up to matches).
I have never been fully convinced that the league benefits overall from so many players being full time. Sure it helps develop some of the younger players more and improves fitness, but to a large extent we just end up paying the same players who'd be in the league anyway far more money than we can really afford. I believe that a club can be professional without being completely full time. Last year Harps trained almost as much as they do now and it worked well- fitness and sharpness were very good despite the players having other work. Derry City and St Pats have used similar setups in the past also. In the interim at least I think that sort of 'halfway house' model would be a good answer for many of the clubs, but at the moment the obsession with going full-time means we're seeing quite a few clubs land themselves in serious financial difficulty.
if the league isnt full time its going no where really. even from the point of europe. look how bohs mauled rhyl over two legs. do we want to go back to been like rhyl ? part time is just like a hobby.
It depends on how you define full time. If full time is 30 full tie players on €5k a week and all the full time admin staff that goes with it then it probably isnt going to be ever sustainable.
On the other hand if its 15-20 players on about €2,000 a week and the balance of players on about €500 a week playing part time (A league and under 20 players) and some full time admin staff then maybe at some point in the future it would be sustainable!
I do beleive facilities need to improve to get the crowds. While facilities at most grounds are adequate people still expect more. Irish people see stadia like the premiership grounds and expect Cobh,UCD And Shels to have the same thing. This is because Irish people in the main are morons.
As regards the eternal queston of how we get more people to matches?
Well lads without being smart if I knew the answer to that one I would'nt be working in Basketball!
I think it's about balance. No club here is going to sustain a squad of 30 or 40 full time pros. At least not in the foreseeable future. It would be better if clubs maybe supported 5-15 full time players and supplemented the squads with part-timers. This way they still have a full time core, without spending vast amounts.
The other good point being made is that pros here are paid far more than is reasonable, considering the crowds and income generated by clubs. We've all heard the stories of lads here getting paid more than they would in the championship or league one, when our clubs generate a fraction of their income.
no thats not right but the least you could expect is an acceptable standard ie like turners cross. take the current finn park - its a kip to look at. the sooner they move the better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Titan
IMO The only way that we could have 10 professional teams at the moment would be if almost all of the clubs were feeder clubs to big enough clubs to send over 5 or 6 players a season with wages paid by the parent club. Would there be enough big teams interested - I suppose our results in Europe have a big bearing on this.
(woah - overuse of the word club)
Our current model of full time isn't sustainable - matching a players day job wage + their previous part time football wage + a bit more for less security means we're paying way over the odds.
It would be sustainable if we had a proper structure that fed youth players through to the League of Ireland from youth teams were they were getting realistic wages. The top players would be picked up by UK clubs, with the transfer fees going back into irish football.
The irish are a nation of part time band wagoners - you can look at any sport you like, and they don't sustain anything near the top crowds throughout a season. Much is made of the GAA, but the crowds for league games and even early championship games are crap when compared to the later stages. Ditto Rugby, although certainly in Leinster they are getting better - I think 9,000 season tickets sold this year. Even the oft quoted hordes going across to the UK generally only make a few trips a year. Expecting 10,000 a game to fund it is pie in the sky talk.
It's a bottom up approach we need, not all the bull top down leave the rest behind stuff we always see proposed (like with AIL).
Absolutely spot on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
There is one thing that is being overlooked in this thread. Junior and Senior Football relationship. If that were to improve then things could get alot better. Alot of the time the people who might actually be interested in taking in a game have games clashing with eL games and both codes (if thats the way to refer to them) operate as two completely different entities at times.
Irish football, when you compare with other models, seems to have an uphill battle all the time but if Junior and Senior football dont work together to improve situations that things are made alot harder. And that is only one element that needs addressing
In short, there could be alot going for the league, but there currently it is not. If those things were resolved then i'd be prepared to answer this question. There is room for improvement, and until that happens and Pro football doesn't work out at that stage then i'd be prepared to admit it wont work. Until then theres lots of favours we aren't doing ourselves.
Don't beat yourself up about that!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevo Da Gull
The fees in are too expensive to most grounds, it should be about 9 euro in for the entertainment we get.
I do think that the players are way overpaid also.
This is true, but players wages need to drop before the prices can drop in all honesty. Arsene Wenger made a point in the papers last week though, in relation to top flight European football, that when you start giving players ridiculous contracts (Ronaldo on reported 175k, Georgie on reported 6k) that it's very hard, near impossible, to ever get these players to accept a smaller contract until their careers are winding down. It's a simple fact of employment, but if we are to lower the wages of some of the players in this league it's going to have to be done gradually, over a 10-20 year period. The only other option is to try and offload all of our better players to Britain, get their wages out of the league and try and start from scratch again.Quote:
Originally Posted by finnpark
The simple fact is that they wouldn't get those wages in Britain. Arguably, for the money clubs are paying they'd pick up better quality english players rather than being held to ransom by supposed Irish stars.Quote:
Originally Posted by jebus
Agreed.Quote:
Originally Posted by micls
We should be back part time as well. Complete fallacy to try and sustain this madness.
I believe you are correct. With LOI players wages quoted as Net figures means the top earners getting far too much. I know he was really only a squad player but George O'Callaghan was paid less at Ipswich than the LOI. The top earners get paid more than Irish rugby Internationals & as you say it is not as if larger wages awaiting them abroad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
On City forum a Haka fan said their wage budget was E700k & cost of living in Finland is not cheap.
If this season has taught us anything it's that we can't sustain an exclusively full-time set up in Galway. To keep it as is here we need to be challenging at the top half of the table. To go full time without the money to attract top players was a mistake. We will return to some kind of mix of part time/full time next season irrespective of which division we find ourselves in.
I think Galway's problem was they tried to do full-time football on the cheap. They signed crap full-time players where they could have gotten good part-timers for the same price. If Galway had of kept part-time and not push up ticket prices that lost them lots of customers they might have been in a better position to go full-time after a couple of seasons. A very expensive lessonQuote:
Originally Posted by GuisaSaigon
So City are a bigger club than FC Haka as there wage bill is close to 3 times FC Haka.Quote:
Originally Posted by pete
Seeing as Irish clubs are paying mad money now, should we not recruit out of contract players from other leagues? A Polish premier division player is a much higher standard that an Irish player and I don't believe many of them would be getting the 5k a week some of our lads get.
In reality, Irish clubs have the same quality of player now as we had 10 years ago, excpet that their full time and their wages have gone up hugely.
:D:DQuote:
Originally Posted by jebus
I know hes on crazy money (3500) but thats just ridiculous. Maybe your counting all his goal bonuses
I'm not sure how long you've been following Irish football for, but that's simply not true.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronnie
Ten years ago the standard of player was much lower. Kids who failed in England came back and did sh!tty jobs rather than play in our league. And no-one went to England as kids, didn't cut it, came back to Ireland to play, and then went back to England again as better and stronger prospects.
The Eircom League now offers a genuine career option for players who didn't make it in England/Scotland, or who are waiting to get noticed. That was not the case 10 years ago. The wages going up is the main reason why those better players now want to play here.
Just what I heard, didn't think it was true so put in reported, doubt Cronaldo is being offered the kind of money the red tops are suggesting either.Quote:
Originally Posted by micls
3,5k is still too much for a disloyal mediocre footballer in this league