Macarthur FC chief calls for enquiry into ’exorbitant’ player pathway fees

Macarthur FC chairman Rabieh Krayem has thrown his support behind in-coming FFA CEO James Johnson’s pledge to rein in the cost of playing football, claiming it’s become “a middle class” code at grassroots level.

Source: Macarthur FC Twitter

Despite being the nation’s most popular participation sport, the price of registration fees for kids and adults has risen relentlessly, prompting Krayem - whose south-west Sydney-based team enter the A-League next season - to call for an FFA inquiry into what he views as a festering issue.

While only a small fraction of the levies imposed on participants goes to the FFA or the nine state federations, the latter rake in between $10,000 to $40,000 a year in license fees from the NPL clubs under their auspices, with NSW and Victoria the costliest.

The trickle down effect for juniors involved in these clubs’ elite programs can cost hard-pressed parents in excess of $2,000 a season, the most expensive anywhere in the world.

“How can it be that there are more kids playing the game than ever before yet (most recently) in Queensland and NSW registration fees have gone up?” queried Krayem.

“There needs to be a full-on investigation. There needs to be transparency.

“One of the biggest issues in our game right now is that the state federations charge license fees and also control the youth development programs.

“There are over 200 NPL clubs now but how they can all claim to be providing elite youth pathways?

“This is a problem that must be tackled ... nobody can see where the money is.

“We’ve gone from being a working class to a middle class game.”

Former Australian youth international Johnson, who officially steps into David Gallop’s shoes in January, has identified the issue as one of the most-pressing facing the game at grassroots level.

“One thing I am hearing all the time from everyone - from parents to current players - in the Australian game is that the cost of registration is just too high,” he said.

“What we cannot have is cost acting as a barrier stopping players from playing football.”

Former Australian Association of Football Clubs chairman Krayem has committed Macarthur to making their academy structure a fee-free zone when it's ultimately rolled out.

“The reality is there are too many kids paying to play in these elite programs. You wonder how elite they really are. It doesn’t stack up,” he added.

“This has been a huge issue within the AAFC for the last three years and was highlighted in the review undertaken and handed to the FFA within the last 12 months.”

However, Football Victoria CEO Peter Filopoulos defended the levies imposed - which in his state average around $350 for an amateur club player up to $2,200 for an elite pathway participant.

“It’s the clubs that are charging 95 percent of the fee, not us as a federation,” he explained.

“You also have to look at the fact that the NPL is an elite pathway with 40-45 weeks of participation and four training sessions a week.

“When you break it down, the costs are there in terms of specialised coaching facilities, infrastructure, medical and sports science and council fees.

“When you are comparing apples with apples, the community stream, which is 94 percent of all participation and six percent which is NPL, there is a cost that comes with that for junior football.

“I think in (its entirety) the sums work out quite low.”

Whilst codes like rugby league utilize leagues club revenue to subsidise player pathways, football doesn’t have that luxury, leaving parents to ultimately pick up the tab.

“We always need to look at the cost of play, the cost of participation,” added Filopoulos.

“We don’t have a large influx of revenues coming into the sport, as other codes do, to subsidise junior participation.

“In Victoria we have decoupled the NPL senior competition from the junior competition and introduced additional NPL junior licenses so we can create some market forces to drive the cost to play down.

“A lot of the cost the NPL clubs carry is for player wages and certainly in Victoria that’s become an inflationary element of our game.”

With the entire structure of the NPL currently the subject of an FFA-led review - including the cost of youth football - Filopoulos added that community clubs partially “cross subsidise” the elite programs.

“That’s what our analysis tells us,” he said. “The NPL is a labour-intensive competition to govern and it takes a disproportionate amount of time to manage.”

Football NSW, which takes a $12-18 share of registration fees, has placed those sums into a fund aimed at encouraging clubs to invest in facilities, coaching and referees.

Meanwhile the number of people prepared to volunteer their time for free has diminished.

NSW also claims to have the lowest remuneration to its management and board than any of the state federations.