. . . turn out the lights and don't let the door slam on you on the way out. . . the sad demise of a mad owner of a club. Number one football/any sport lesson: look after your football community and make things happen for them and they will look after you.
the team can hold its head up high, the fools who were supposed to run the club and its interests definitely cannot
It's unfortunate that the two new teams that were introduced in the Hyundai A-League for the 2009-2010 season have both folded and couldn't go on.I live in Canada and whenever I watched highlights of the Hyundai A-League,Gold Coast United's home matches never seemed to be attended as I(and mostly evrybody) could only see empty seats in the stadiums...Why couldn't the club get decent crowds for home matches?
Mostly because Palmer was an idiot that seemed to actively go out of his way to piss off the fans. The reason why you didn't see anyone in the stands is because the guy was presented with two options for leasing Skilled Park. One option was to lease the entire stadium for a X amount, or lease a section of the stadium that had a capacity around 5,500 or so for significantly less. Initially he leased the entire stadium, but when attendance dropped to below 5,500, he stopped leasing the entire stadium and only leased the smaller section of the stadium. Unfortunately that section of the stadium was where the cameras are, so it had amazing views of the empty side of the stadium, but very little view of the side of the stadium that was 3/4 full. Palmer also stopped advertising for the team about halfway through the first season and the league had to step in and take over the advertising. Gold Coast also had fairly expensive tickets for A-league.
The Gold Coast population itself doesn't attend any sporting event in large numbers plus the Gold Coast is the Australian city that was most affected by the financial crisis.
Yeah, their Rugby League side is facing a financial implosion and their AFL club is getting money pumped in much like the West Sydney Unicorns will operate.
The AFL team has an advantage of an incredible stadium deal though. They somehow made a profit last year - mainly because of a Foo Fighters concert.
At least we know what Palmer is going to do with his money now that he doesn't have GCU: Same Titanic but brand-new, built from scratch, billionaire says