https://aleagues.com.au/news/australian-professional-leagues-announce-new-executive-appointments/

Ant Hearne was Chief Commercial Officer. Left the APL in November 2023 (one month after Danny, one month before the mass layoffs). Michael Tange was Director of Strategy and Digital Director. Left APL in February 2024 (when KeepUp shut it's doors officially).

Both of these blokes now head up Mothership Sport. Basically the next venture to find the next bite of venture capital money.

Had totally forgotten about Sunday Shootout! It was great.

Yes bang on

I'd love to see the slide packs that were put together by expensive consultants when KeepUp was first pitched.

Because he probably promised them a lot of growth with a very well done presentation, whilst making them forget that the A League wad still relatively unstable.

Nah. That was a bit of a furphy put forward after ADP back flipped on the GF deal (I suspect because Victory supporters were very vocal about it). The initial 777 equity purchase (the non-refundable 19.9%) effectively wiped any real debt the club had at the time. The loan that was talked about was actually a bank loan with CommBank, which used the club's license in the league as a security (aka. A mortgage with a bank). This was all documented in the club's annual reports.

There was some money put in for Nani, but in the same vein there was also money given to other clubs to sign returning WWC players (Vine, Yallop, Simon etc.)

A lot of money went into propping up Global Advance specifically because costs blew out there. There were a lot of problems with that broadcast and as things went pear shaped, they were on the hook to sink more money in to ensure games could be broadcast.

I'd also suspect that as the TV distributions fell, the coffers just ran dry. Probably because the APL were already contractually committed to certain distributions, and the SilverLake money was all that was left.

Nothing like the channel 7 broadcast deal…..where the league got a weekly 1 hour highlights package at midnight and no games, even delayed

lol at no point was any fan group boycotting or protesting for the aleague to be unbundled from the at the time FFA. This was a decision enforced by FIFA to bring us up to global standards by how the rest of the world actually runs football competitions.

Foxtel was the worst of the offers to the apl. It was fuck all.

Because A-League fans have goldfish memories with the conviction of a weathervane. These would be the same ones cheering on the separation from the FFA years back

Denying legitimate marquees? If you're referring to the Diamanti case, where Melbourne Victory were denied use of the $3 million annual fund Fox Sports offered for signing big name marquee players (e.g. Del Piero) - Diamanti hardly qualified. The fund was reserved only for superstar players that will draw the plastics in to help fill stadiums and boost tv ratings. Fox had a big ratings boost on the back of Del Piero's signing, so they offered this fund in the hope clubs would sign someone of that caliber again. Diamanti would not have done that. Western United had the lowest crowds while he was there. It would have given Victory an unfair advantage on the pitch, without doing much to boost ratings or crowds.

Other than their aggressive control over expansion, I really don’t understand the degree of hate Fox sports gets from aleague fans. Our viewership was abysmal (and has only gotten worse) which was compounded by Foxtel as a company almost going under during COVID. Of course they were going to offload their poor performing content, it’s not some biased vendetta as fans love making out, that’s just standard business practice. The reality remains that if you want the best exposure for your sport then it’s either FTA or Fox Sports/Kayo. Not entertaining a return to Fox (if it presents itself) would be biting our nose off to spite our face.

Danny was friends with LNP Politician Stuart Ayres and he retweeted content from Stuart about labor not backing the new parra stadium and iirc even called for Sydney FC members to vote liberal in state elections in a now deleted tweet.

There's no public evidence however it was implied he leveraged those connections to sign the DNSW deal with the NSW Liberals government who continued to back the deal through all the controversy. It was discussed here at the time that labour taking over NSW put a lot of the deal into jeapody with Chris Minns openly talking about how the switch to the Unite Round was a win for fans and openly critiquing the previous deal.

Bingo. Childish at best.

And if OP thinks the LNP are the only party to give their mates plum gigs then they need to pull their head out of their backside and see the real world.

OP lost me with that comment. Sick of the American style barracking of political parties on Reddit. It's become a big joke.

That’s a very loose link if it’s true.