Asian football will rival Europe one day, says AFC president Hammam

By Les Tan/Red Sports

Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore, July 28-29, 2010 — AFC president Mohamed Bin Hammam was bullish about the future of Asian football.

However, after sitting through two days of the Soccerex Asian Forum, a few present realities of the business side of football in Asia came through more clearly.

Asia — a major consumer of football content
Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohamed Bin Hammam was asked if Asia’s obsession with European football was detrimental to the growth of Asian football. Perhaps he was diplomatic when he said he did not think so. In fact, he held up European football as a model.

Hammam said: “On the contrary, I think the BPL (Barclays Premier League) is doing a great job. We’re trying our best to improve our football. The challenge is to be as good as European football.”

Asia is currently a significant source of income through broadcasting rights fees, merchandising and lucrative pre-season tours. Singapore now has the dubious distinction of being the most lucrative territory for the English Premier League when local telecommunications company SingTel paid a reported £200 million (SGD 426 million) for the broadcast rights for the 2010/11 to 2013/14 seasons.

For the 2010/11 to 2013/14 seasons, the EPL has collected £1.4 billion (SGD 2.98 billion) in international broadcast rights fees. That is double the fees charged for the 2007/08 to 2009/10 seasons which sold for £625 million (SGD 1.33 billion).

This scenario is unlikely to be repeated again, according to Phil Lines, who also spoke at the Soccerex Asian Forum. Lines was involved in the last round of negotiations for the international broadcast rights for the EPL.

With 3.7 billion people or 63% of the world’s population, the lucrative Asian market is forcing the Spanish La Liga to also take notice. A new pre-season tournament in Asia that will feature three La Liga clubs was announced by Francisco Roca Perez, La Liga’s chief executive officer, at the Soccerex Asian Forum. The event, known as the International LFP Cup, is not likely to feature Barcelona and Real Madrid for now, according to Perez.

La Liga, which traditional has matches starting at 10pm, resulting in 5am broadcast times in Asia, will have at least half of its matches kick off at 4pm, said Perez. This will translate to 10pm and 11pm (as a result of daylight saving time) broadcast times in Asia.

“If I make all the games start at 4pm, they (Spanish clubs) will kill me!” joked Perez, as he highlighted the Spanish culture of late dinners.

Asia — a major creator of compelling football content?
Hammam raised eyebrows when he made a controversial comment that Asian football will become such a valuable global product in 10-15 years’ time that foreign investors will buy into Asian clubs.

“Any investor can invest in any team they want, if they think they can generate something and benefit out of it. But I am confident that Asian teams will have the same attraction for foreign investors too in the future.

“I am not mad, I am realistic. It is going to happen one day, I assure you. Asian football has just as much potential as the Europeans,” Hammam said on Wednesday.

Hammam also predicted the day would come when Asian clubs will have the financial clout to bring the best global players to Asian leagues. For that to happen, said Hammam, Asian football clubs will have to be run like companies.

“We don’t have club run like companies yet. Until now, we have only 142 so-called professional clubs in Asia. We would like to increase it to 700 to 800 clubs in the future, that will be able to compete against the best from their European counterparts.

“For me, football is a product. If we can improve our product, we can be the best. We have only started the professional era in 2008; I would like to see that our clubs have the same financial power that enables us to pay as much as the European sides to take the best players to play in Asia,” said Hammam.

A valuable football product is anchored in local culture
What is the present reality?

The J-League currently has the best attendance of any Asian leagues with an average of 19,000 watching a game (source: wikipedia).

A compelling football product depends on having local fans fill stadiums because empty seats look bad on television. In Asia, we are used to seeing full or fairly packed stadiums in England, Spain, Germany and Italy on television. The German Bundesliga currently has the best average attendance in the world for a football league at 41,000. The atmosphere at the stadiums via television is palpable.

Football needs the oxygen of publicity from television
Which brings us to the next point about television. Without a broadcaster — whether free-to-air or cable — willing to take the risk, there will not even be a chance of building up a large enough following, and without that, there are no compelling reasons for sponsors to come in.

The EPL is very much a child of television. Cable television operator BSkyB gave the then newly-formed Premier League £304 million over five seasons in 1992. At that time, it was considered a radical concept. Their bet that consumers would pay to watch paid off.

The clubs took their television money and invested in players. A virtuous cycle — television rights fees providing more resources to get better players, which makes for better viewing, and thus a larger audience, which allows for higher rights fees — set in.

Can Asia replicate the EPL model? While it is not hard to imagine that China, with its population size, having a commercial league that can one day be successful, can it be exported to the rest of Asia? Or even the rest of the world?

Or can there be a pan-Asian league that has professionally-run clubs that can hire the best global football talent with money from a broadcasting rights deal that will rival the EPL in value?

Liverpool’s commercial director, Ian Ayre, reminded the audience at the Soccerex Asian Forum that the Premier League is actually independent of the English Football Association. Hence, the clubs that make up the Premier League, were unencumbered and focused purely on commercial objectives. We see the results of that focus today.

It is hard to imagine that Asia doing the same for cultural, language and geographical reasons. While there are successful in-country leagues — J-League, K-League, V-League, I-League — a pan-Asian league seems almost impossible.

Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes has been talking about about a pan-ASEAN football league for some time but the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) did not bite. As a result, Fernandes set up the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) with the grateful assistance of the South East Asian Basketball Association (SEABA). The ABL has a 10-year deal with ESPN and will start its second season in October 2010.

England legend Bryan Robson, who is currently coach of the Thai national team, was asked at the Soccerex Asian Forum if he could imagine that elite football players would one day play in Asia in their prime.

“It’s a long way off,” said Robson.

He’s probably right.

Categories: Front Page News , World in Motion , boys , football