Strategy Should the West Coast Eagles buy the Melbourne FC?

[Euro Star]

It's not costly for the WC, especially if just winning games and running a good business is the goal, which is not 'wrong'. Infact in the current financial enviroment, it makes more sense. If the AFL was a free market, It would basically be dominated by your lot, Collingwood and Adelaide. There are people that support my club, 'the family club', that would prefer we ran more like that. However, like all the Victorian sides do to varying extents, and Fremantle, Sydney, Brisbane and Port have done, there has been a greater emphasis placed on the history of the club, and values (and politics) that are associated with it. It makes it more complicated. I am actually from Perth, I got into VFL because of the Eagles, I followed the Eagles for the first couple of years they were in the comp, but if you asked me what team I was most passionatly into, I would have said West Perth, the side my family had always supported. I then went to live a couple of years in the Eastern States, and because of a couple of friends, I started watching the Hawks. I prefered how the clubs in Victoria ran, more like the WAFL clubs had been. Training sessions were open and there was a social club which you could be a part of if you wanted. The Eagles were not like that, and as far as I understand are still not like that (is there a West Coast social club?). Of course Victorian sides are not as much like that these days, but they have had to retain many of the traditional aspects. For example, Hawthorn deliberately have based themselves in ground they share with the community. It sucks as far as privacy goes, but they felt it was important to continue to engage in a visible way with the Eastern Suburbs.

That's a nice story mate but you haven't stated anything that makes running HFC more expensive than WCFC. You've basically mentioned a social club and the fact that you train in a suburban ground as to why it's so hard for Victorian clubs. Oh and an emphasis being placed on history, I'm not sure how any of that incurs substantial additional costs though.

On the bolded part of your quote:

Freo - came into the comp 20 years and haven't accomplished anything yet (not a troll to Freo supporters, just a fact) so I'm not sure what all this history is that makes things so hard for them is. What you could have said is that West Coast already have a lot of the market which makes it harder for Freo to break into (nothing to do with footy culture though). I understand the long history of footy in Fremantle but I'm not sure how that disadvantages the dockers.
Sydney - was South Melbourne, moved to Sydney. I'm sure everyone that supported South Melbourne was stoked at the time. Wow, the culture! (Perhaps it's harder for them because they moved to a non-AFL state and find it hard to fill membership, particularly during down times on the field. They alsohave historically paid their players more - I'm happy for that to apply to West Coast!)
Brisbane - merged with Fitzroy, I don't remember their supporters being too pleased at the time, nor were Fitzroy supporters. Perhaps if Fitzroy had spent more time "just winning games and running a good business" they wouldn't have gone belly up.
Port - I'll give you as they do pride themselves heavily and vocally on their culture but you watch their membership dive when they're not performing on the field - all this history and culture they're paying for is really working on their members.

I'm not even arguing West Coast runs like a business because I think it does but at the end of the day, but winning games and being financially viable is what life should be about in 2015. Coming up with "your club is financially successful therefore you're north American franchise" and "it's complicated because of our culture" is pretty baseless.

And yep, you are the family club, taking all those old grannies money through your pokies - nice one!

 

[WCE_phil]

This is straight up the most ludicrous, unrealistic and shit idea i've seen on bigfooty. I feel ashamed that it came from one of our supporters. It makes Roby sound like the chief analyst for Merrill Lynch it's that stupid.

 

[Wise Guy Sam]

This business venture makes more sense than the AFL running us

 

[pantskyle]

This business venture makes more sense than the AFL running us

Welcome aboard WGS.

 

[ROYAL EAGLE]

The financial matter. Your team doesn't have the same issues of most of the AFL with engaging the community, and juggling traditions for fan base as a result of how it all started up. You team is the only team that is free to just go out and make money. Adelaide could of been in a similar position, but seem to have chosen to run with a very South Australian pride image which again ties them to a bunch of traditions and expectations. West Coast are the capitalists in a league of socialists.

Where the capitalists of the league, that just happen to have more community involvement/programs than any other club in the league.
Our players do more community work/hours than every other club, we also partnership with more charities and donate more money than every other
club. We may have a very shit website, but our club is number 1 in the afl for community engagement.

 

[Bluelegs]

What would that make us? The Deegles?

 

[RookiePick]

What would that make us? The Deegles?

The Eagons? I am excite

 

[W.C. Fry]

(is there a West Coast social club?). Of course Victorian sides are not as much like that these days, but they have had to retain many of the traditional aspects. For example, Hawthorn deliberately have based themselves in ground they share with the community. It sucks as far as privacy goes, but they felt it was important to continue to engage in a visible way with the Eastern Suburbs.

The club has identified this as a problem and has for many many years (I can remember talk of it about 10 years back in the Yearbook) been working on this. The problem was always the query over the future of Subiaco oval and therefor the future of where our home base was. When the decision was made on a new stadium we decided on a new home which will feature a social club. This should be great as it will be within walking distance of the new stadium - which I would imagine would be one of the closest social clubs to the ground at which most sides play. I am glad they waited to make a decision on it. If they just built one in Subi it might have had some use for a few years but would be useless in a few.

As for tradition. Well we didn't have any. I for one am also glad that we didn't try and piggy back ourselves on to something that had nothing to do with us. We have created our own history and like most things in life have had good and bad, but mostly good. I am happy we did not name our club champion award until we had someone like Worsfold to name it after. 99% of AFL fans would need to google Doig to even know the slightest about the name. I also wouldn't swap our history with half of the established clubs in Victoria, I am proud of it and think it is better than theirs anyway.

 

[the harry]

This is straight up the most ludicrous, unrealistic and shit idea i've seen on bigfooty. I feel ashamed that it came from one of our supporters. It makes Roby sound like the chief analyst for Merrill Lynch it's that stupid.

Merrill pretty much went bust. The chief analyst (among others) lost shareholders $60 billion in 12 months. Hardly a high standard.

 

[eagle eyed]

This thread makes me laugh, what a idea!

As an aside (as much as I hate to admit it) I have long been envious of Freo having their training base a leisurely stroll from the centre of Fremantle. You often see players and club officials in Freo, if you were a fan you can quite easily walk to the ground, have a look, then go have something to eat or drink less than 5 minutes from Fremantle Oval. However Freo are about to destroy this connection with their fan base by moving to Cockburn, if fans want to see them train they'll need to drive, bus, train it to the area, I really see it as isolating their club from the community. Granted there'll be a new community growing around them but it's not really their heartland.

As someone else has said, WCE has created it's own history over the last 28 years, unlike Freo we have not tried to claim the history of some WAFL clubs as ours. We started in 1987 and we have been writing the pages ever since. I'll gladly take 3 flags in our first 20 years, in 50 years time we will have a rich, successful history to talk about. Out of interest, what history did the VFL teams have when they started up? None! It's like saying a 5 year old child does not have much life experience, no sh1t, tell me something I don't know, however when that child is 50 things change. Proud we don't have pokies, the vic teams could get rid of theirs if they either relocated some more teams or just let them fold, the market over there is saturated, they're all fighting for the same dollar, someone has to get a smaller share of the pie.

 

[Bluelegs]

Out of interest, what history did the VFL teams have when they started up? None!

To be fair the MFC was started as a branch of the MCC so the clubs history was immediately tied to the history of the MCC and the foundations they set with the creation of Aussie Rules Football. The MCC played Football during the cricket off-season to keep the players fit. In regards to other victorian clubs, most clubs had been established long before the creation of the VFL and many clubs earned their place in the league after playing in lower leagues before hand.

All that being said, it was over a hundred years ago for most clubs, and in a multi-billion dollar national competition it makes more sense to create teams in the way that West Coast was.

And yeah, the whole 'no history' argument is rubbish. West Coast has history now.

 

[schmuttt]

LOL this is so good

 

[Demon 16]

Happy to lease ourselves to you for 12 years plus say 1 further option of 3 years.

We should post a tidy little profit out of it, and still get ourselves back in time for our next premiership window..

 

[eagle eyed]

To be fair the MFC was started as a branch of the MCC so the clubs history was immediately tied to the history of the MCC and the foundations they set with the creation of Aussie Rules Football. The MCC played Football during the cricket off-season to keep the players fit. In regards to other victorian clubs, most clubs had been established long before the creation of the VFL and many clubs earned their place in the league after playing in lower leagues before hand.

All that being said, it was over a hundred years ago for most clubs, and in a multi-billion dollar national competition it makes more sense to create teams in the way that West Coast was.

And yeah, the whole 'no history' argument is rubbish. West Coast has history now.

My point was that when a club is started it does not have any history. Before the teams that made up the VFL entered the league they probably did exist in some other league of sorts, however before a group of guys initially sat down and created a club (way back when), there was no club and as such no history. Out of the expansion clubs only PAP was the introduction of a team that already had roots in another league and therefore history. Like you said WCE have history now and in 10 years time so will GC & GWS. It really is futile when fans of clubs that don't win anything bag those that do by saying they don't have history, happens the world over. Anyway, when are we buying Melbourne? Would love to see the Silverback's (Gary Lyon) face on the footy show if it happened. Actually, I'm surprised Eddie hasn't thought of this already.

 

[tesseract]

View attachment 115122

That pick brings back memories of playing Alien Storm on the Sega Master System.

 

[Beutbrute]

Haha, gold. Buying Melbourne FC would be silly. They are a business located in a saturated market. Not very much upside.... No, we should look at buying out Fremantle so we have a monopoly on the market... oh wait... maybe we should buy the WA Football commission instead?

 

[jmadrox]

Haha, gold. Buying Melbourne FC would be silly. They are a business located in a saturated market. Not very much upside.... No, we should look at buying out Fremantle so we have a monopoly on the market... oh wait... maybe we should buy the WA Football commission instead?

it would be a wiser investment ifn Freo bough WCE. You have more scope to improve on the field than we do! Being said, Melbourne is better than both! Counter-cyclical investment. Buy at the bottom, sell at the top. Once Melbs is back to a successful club off the field, sell back to AFL for tidy profit, and buy the next club, probably North...

 

[ep2018]

We should just buy all the clubs.

 

[the harry]

We should just buy all the clubs.

That's a little unrealistic don't you think?

 

[The_Reaper]

Actually look at Sydney's financials- we should buy Sydney

 

[the harry]

Actually look at Sydney's financials- we should buy Sydney

Could be technically insolvent in 12 months if things drop off a bit. Pretty amazing given the year they had with a grand final and signing Buddy in the last 18 months. Surely that would make membership and crowds peak but they still struggled.

At least Melbourne can't get any worse really, like they're at the bottom of a cycle surely.

 

[Matele]

>Buy Melbourne

>Clear out club and keep assets

>Create social club/hub for eastern states fans

>????

>Profit

 

[Matele]

On a side note, how long before there is a roast for the harry?

 

[The Falcon Strike]

I note many Melbourne supporters are now posting on the WC

I assume they welcome their new WC overlords

 

[Adzam]

I didn't realise they were for sale