Farewell from FootballToday Following others before it, time and cost have got the better of us and we are closing our metaphorical door. Thanks for reading! 05 March 2020 |

Football Today: independent, insightful and informative 05 March 2020 | FT Editor

It is with regret that FootballToday is closing down.

We began this site as a content curation site in 2014, principally as a means of sharing other independent content from around Australia (all but one of which have now had their demise also); began writing our own and publishing others' articles a few month's later; and moved it to its current format more than three years ago.

In that time, we twice suffered distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks due to the publisher’s activities related to calling out FIFA and a former FFA administration on governance related issues. One of these was so large, it brought down the web host’s servers for five days of outage globally. We have had legal threats from FFA Board member Heather Reid, Football Queensland Chairman, Ben Richardson, and new Football Queensland CEO, Robert Cavallucci - all designed to intimidate an independent media outlet. All have come to nothing.

However, none of those are the reasons we are closing down.

It is a simple matter of time and money: not enough time for the publisher or editor to bring in enough money to meet the costs of writers, contributors and other associated costs with a site of this type.

We have always paid our writers who sought payment, generally at a better level than other comparable sites that present as independent but are actually supported by large media entities. (Some contributors haven’t sought payment as they are in full-time jobs elsewhere and this was another outlet or interest for them).

However, our view has always been that writers are as entitled to be paid for their work as everyone else in the community - just as players and administrators expect. While it is one thing to do an unpaid ‘internship’ and build-up a portfolio as a student journalist, professional writers should not be expected to do something for nothing.

We have also never sought to be a site that focuses greatly on match reports or player ‘ins and outs’, but to fill a void in the football media firmament focussed on analysis, issues of football politics and culture, and football below the elite level.

Having said that, some of our contributors have travelled around the world and throughout Asia in pursuit of their footballing passion, sometimes being the only Australian writing about a match, yet the former FFA administration never helped us by providing media access for that individual simply because they wrote for FootballToday. In fact, one former senior FFA staff member, still employed in the game, told one of our writers that he should not write for us because (a) of its owner, and (b) the site was “only about making money”. We always thought (b) was rather hilarious as the person appeared not to realise the relationship between revenue (ie. getting money in) in order to meet costs (ie. to pay writer(s)) – which perhaps says a lot about the basic understanding of economics of some FFA employees.

By way of contrast, when our editor Matthew Galea recently travelled to Yokohama to see Ange Postecoglou’s Yokohama Marinos win the J-League, the club and the J-League were only too happy to oblige with media accreditation and access and arranged it with 72 hours notice.

We would like to thank all our readers, social media followers (and even some of the detractors) and, of course, our team of contributors and writers – all of whom have said they have enjoyed the opportunity to write for FootballToday because they could write things that wouldn’t be published elsewhere. We are pleased about that.

We are also pleased to have given so many a platform to start and/or continue their work and hope that they can continue to do so well into the future.

If you wish to follow our contributors and their writings or views on all things football, please do in the first instance via their Twitter links given on their profile pages here.

If you wish to be engaged, inspired, motivated and informed, make sure you follow Fair Play Publishing and the Football Writers' Festival. The 2020 Festival will be held at Jamberoo Pub on 30-31 May 2020.

Finally, a closing column from our publisher, Bonita Mersiades, is here.

Categories: News | Football Business | Football Life | Australian Football | Women’s Issues

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