Opinion
A Matildas public holiday won’t fix football’s funding failures
Millie Muroi
ReporterIn the 10 years I’ve played club-level soccer, I’ve only ever scored once. It was a Sunday in Perth and my coach sent me on, not in my usual position as a defender but as a winger. As I ran on, he said: “You’re going to score a goal today.”
Watching the penalty shootout on Saturday in Sydney, with more than 4.7 million people around the country, I’m certain our belief in the Matildas – backed by financial investment – made a difference.
Usually more comfortable assisting and defending, there was one season I scored.
It was one of the most-viewed events in two decades and demonstrated two things. First, it busted one of the biggest myths: that people are inherently less interested in watching women’s sport, and that it therefore has less commercial value than men’s sport. Jersey sales for the Matildas have outpaced those of the Socceroos, and three of the Women’s World Cup matches have jumped into the top five most-streamed games on Optus out of 6000 live matches on record.
Second, it showed that when we do work towards levelling funding and pay for historically underfunded sporting groups, they often perform better and attract more public interest. That helps them to be seen and attract their own deals with big companies. They just need to start on a (more) equal footing.
Of course, there’s more to it than money. The Matildas are a talented team with star players who have put in the hard yards, and they have home advantage. But those things are also facilitated by better funding.
It’s easier to train and perform at your best when you’re not worrying about your next pay cheque – or having to pose for a nude calendar. And it was government and private-sector backing that brought the tournament here.
I hopped on the merchandise bandwagon with thousands of other people during the Women’s World Cup.
It was only in 2019 that a landmark collective bargaining agreement helped close the pay gap between Australia’s men’s team, the Socceroos, and the Matildas. It guaranteed both teams an equal 24 per cent cut of total national team revenues and meant Australia’s best women footballers would receive an annual salary between about $66,000 to $100,000, up from an average yearly retainer of just $21,000 in 2015.
It also gave them off-field benefits including business-class flights, training facilities and specialist performance support staff that the Socceroos had received for years. These things make a difference.
And it hasn’t come at a cost to the Socceroos, who had their equal-best performance last year when they finished in the round of 16.
There’s still a way to go, nationally as well as internationally. The boss of the international governing body of football (FIFA), Gianni Infantino, this year set a target for prize money at the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup to equal pay-outs at the men’s tournament. For the current Women’s World Cup, it is about $150 million, compared with $440 million for the men’s tournament last year.
Meanwhile, the prime minister’s suggestion of a public holiday if the Matildas seize the trophy is a nice sentiment. But former Matilda Melissa Barbieri’s sharp rebuke for the government to “just f---ing fund our sport properly” is valid.
Everyone, except perhaps business owners paying penalty rates, loves a public holiday. But it would cost about $2 billion in lost productivity, or up to $9 billion in production by the “worst-case” estimates.
A decade of community-level soccer has cost about $5000 just for registration.
That’s millions of dollars worth of tax revenue for the government that could be spent on many things including making the most popular team sport in Australia accessible.
The World Cup and the Matildas’ success will bring thousands of new players into the game and, with that, some new sponsors. But there’s a funding shortfall – made worse by conflicting demands from Australia’s various bodies for soccer governance – especially at the grassroots level.
Soccer is notoriously expensive, with local clubs charging hundreds of dollars more than other team sports. This year, I paid $500 for a five-month season with one training session and game a week. That’s before factoring in transport costs and soccer gear.
To create the best pipeline for talent, we need to make the game more accessible. For some families, $500 for half a year is out of reach. For talented players wanting to play at a higher level, the fees can stack up into the thousands – slices of which have been alleged to fund higher-level teams.
And when facilities and funding run short, it’s often the girl’s and women’s teams that get the short end of the stick.
Through a decade of playing soccer, I’ve found the default has often been for men’s teams to get priority if a field is double-booked or equipment needs to be shared. Occasionally, I’ve had coaches who have stood their ground, winning us a fraction of a field to work with at training.
I’ve been lucky to be coached by people who believed in the importance of women’s sport, and to have grown up with a family that invested just as much into my sporting pursuits as they did those of my brother. And so, after seven years of chasing a soccer ball around every Sunday, when my coach told me I would score, I did.
When Cortnee Vine kicked the winning penalty on Saturday, the country erupted in triumph and blurry videos of the moment flooded social media sites from stadiums, pubs and homes across Australia. We’re far from fixing all the inequalities in our sport, but everything we do that shows we’re willing to back our players, financially and otherwise, makes a difference. We’ve got the ball rolling and the Matildas are mounting the case for more.
Millie Muroi is a business reporter.
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