MALAYSIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE.. IS IT PROFESSIONAL ENOUGH?

Last night, I attended a Super League match between PKNS Selangor and Johor DT at Stadium Shah Alam.  It was an entertaining match.. opportunity to watch Guiza’s skills ‘live’, plenty of goals, and Johor DT won.. Yeah!! (I was born in Johor J ) 

But what actually caught my attention was that there were less than hundred PKNS fans at the stadium, outnumbered 20 times by Johor DT’s fans, and this was supposed to be PKNS home ground.  It made me thinking.. how can PKNS survive financially with this small number of fans?

Let us take a look at professional football clubs in Europe.  Their main sources of revenues come from gate revenues (attendance to home games), sponsorships, and rights/ royalties from clubs’ merchandise.  All these revenues require core fan base.  A club need supporters to attend its home matches and buy its merchandise while sponsors will only come forward if the club have supporters that watch the team play.. it is simple marketing rule.  So, how can a team like PKNS survive in the long-run if only 100 fans turn up for a home match?  Malaysian football turned professional in 2004 and after nearly 10 years, we still have clubs with no supporters playing in Super League.

Other than state or state-linked teams (T-Team and Johor DT), there are 9 clubs in the Super and Premier League with no or limited fan base.  All these clubs need to have wider fan base if they want to be a successful professional football club.  For example, ATM cannot expect to have only soldiers as its fan base and playing at Paroi this year for its home games, far from its fan base, make it worse.  They could use for example Sungai Besi as their home base, make football fans in Sungai Besi and surrounding area feels ATM is their team, and play their home games in KLFA Stadium in Cheras, which is nearby.  In some cases, re-branding might be necessary.  For example, Sime Darby FC can re-brand itself to Sime Subang Jaya to expand its fan base from only Sime Darby employees to include Subang Jaya community (or any other location).

Relocation can also be made to create a new fan base.  We are a football mad country and there are many locations in the country that can be made a home base for a professional football club.  It does not make any economic sense to have 8 football teams with home base in Klang Valley.  Most of these teams are competing with Selangor that already have strong and loyal fan base.  Temerloh can be a good home base for Felda United for example.  Pahang have some of their matches in Temerloh last year with good crowd.  I am quite sure football fans in Temerloh will appreciate regular high level football matches and support a team that is based there.

A professional football club is supposed to be profit-oriented.  Therefore, it needs to attract the crowds to generate income.  Without strong fan base, I am quite sure most of these clubs suffer operating loss every year.  To cover for that loss, they need grant from FAM or cash injection from their owners.  Since majority of owners are public entities, I suspect public money are used to finance these clubs (yup.. our taxpayers money).  Professional league means having professional clubs/ teams, not just having professional players.  So FAM, please make sure there are only professional clubs/ teams in our league before calling our M-League a professional league.