Hope Economics

Why clubs keep betting on seasons that don’t add up

There comes a point, after enough years in football, where you stop asking whether something is possible and start asking whether it is probable.

I find myself there more often now.

Not because I’ve lost belief in football, but because I’ve watched too many clubs, run by good people, make decisions that only make sense if you believe that this season will be the one that breaks the pattern.

This post is about men’s football.
I’ll write about the women’s game separately, because it deserves its own lens.

This is not about ambition.
It’s about hope.

And how hope, in men’s football, becomes an economic model.

A quick explainer

At the top level of men’s state football sits the NPL, the highest tier available in Tasmania. Clubs don’t simply enter it. They are licensed to participate.

That licence comes with financial cost, administrative workload and ongoing compliance obligations. It assumes organisational depth, volunteer capacity and the ability to absorb risk.

Entry itself is expensive.

Holding a licence, meeting compliance standards, staffing match days, maintaining facilities, and delivering what is expected at the top tier requires significant resources before a ball is kicked. Add player payments on top and clubs are committing large sums of money and time with no guarantee of return.

This is not incidental.
It is foundational.

Winning the league does not cover the cost of entry.
Prize money is shared, limited and symbolic.

Which leads to the obvious question.

Why do clubs still pour money into it?

What I’ve seen, up close

Over the years, I’ve watched men’s clubs move in and out of the top tier.

Some lost a benefactor and could not replace that support.
Some merged because the numbers no longer stacked up.
Some simply ran out of people willing to carry the load.

Others chose to stay where they were. Not because they lacked pride but because they understood their limits. They knew what they could staff, fund and sustain.

I’ve seen boards change and priorities shift.
I’ve seen ambitious seasons followed by quiet resets.
I’ve seen clubs chase one last push and clubs choose to step back before the push broke them.

None of it was simple. None of it was clean.

What struck me, over time, was how often the same logic appeared underneath very different decisions.

Hope that the next season would unlock something.
Hope that success would stabilise the club.
Hope that the strain would ease once a target was reached.

Sometimes it did.
Often, it didn’t.

Hope as a business case

Most clubs don’t enter a season expecting to lose money.

They tell themselves
a good Cup run might offset costs
success might attract a major sponsor
crowds might lift
visibility might unlock something bigger
next year will be different

This is not delusion.
It’s hope.

But when hope becomes the justification for repeated financial risk, it stops being optimism and starts becoming an economic strategy.

A fragile one.

Spending to stand still

One of the quiet truths of elite men’s football is that spending is often not about moving forward.

It’s about not slipping back.

Clubs pay players to
hold position
protect reputation
avoid being read as declining
stay serious in the eyes of others

This is not reckless. It’s defensive.

But defensive spending is still spending and it rarely builds anything durable underneath.

When finishing first or last changes very little

There is another question that sits underneath all of this and it’s one I keep coming back to.

In a system without promotion and relegation, what does it actually mean to finish first or last?

You don’t go up.
You don’t go down.
The licence remains.
The costs remain.
The obligations remain.

So the stakes become symbolic rather than structural.

I’ve long been an advocate for promotion and relegation, not because it’s dramatic, but because it gives meaning to position. It creates consequence. It rewards sustainability as much as ambition.

Without it, winning becomes a statement rather than a step.

And that’s where the economics become harder to justify.

If finishing first doesn’t materially change your future and finishing last doesn’t force a reset, then the question naturally follows.

Why are we spending so much?

Is it for progress, or is it for pride?
Is it for pathway, or is it for proof?
Is it to build something, or simply to say we won?

None of those answers are inherently wrong.

But when the cost of chasing that answer includes financial strain, volunteer exhaustion and long-term fragility, it’s fair to ask whether the reward matches the risk.

Hope thrives in systems where consequence is blurred.

Promotion and relegation doesn’t remove hope.
It sharpens it.

The short-term season problem

An eighteen-game season sharpens this dynamic.

With limited matches
pressure on results increases
patience decreases
rotation narrows
depth becomes harder to manage

Paying players feels like insurance against a short runway.

But insurance only works if the risk is occasional, not structural.

The invisible subsidy

Here’s the part that rarely gets named.

Most clubs are not gambling with spare cash.
They are gambling with unpaid labour.

Every dollar spent on player payments usually requires
more administration
more fundraising
more compliance work
more emotional load carried by fewer people

The financial loss is visible.
The human cost is quieter.

And it accumulates.

Why walking away feels impossible

For some clubs, stepping back is unthinkable.

Not because the numbers don’t make sense, but because identity is tied to status.

Being top tier becomes who the club is, rather than where it happens to play.

So the question becomes
How do we stay here?
Not
What does this cost us?

Hope fills the gap where strategy should sit.

Two doors that keep the hope alive

There are genuine prizes on offer in men’s football.

One is open to everyone.

The Lakoseljac Cup allows any club, at any level, to make a run, to test itself, to dream.

The other is narrower.

Win the league and you earn scheduled games against interstate opposition in the Australian Championship.

Benchmarking.
Visibility.
Proof.

Those opportunities are real. They matter.

But they are also rare.

And rare outcomes are a dangerous foundation for regular spending.

When hope crowds out honesty

Hope is not the problem.

Football needs hope.

The problem is when hope replaces honest conversations about
sustainability
volunteer capacity
financial exposure
long-term purpose

When clubs feel they must keep rolling the dice simply to be taken seriously, something has gone wrong in the system.

A quieter definition of ambition

After many years watching seasons come and go, I’ve come to believe this.

Ambition is not how much you spend.
It’s how long you last.

It’s whether the club still recognises itself after leadership changes, after a bad season, after the noise fades.

Hope belongs in football.
I’m less convinced it belongs in the balance sheet.

The question underneath it all

I often wonder whether the biggest gamble in football isn’t losing matches.

It’s continuing to bet on seasons that don’t add up, because we’re afraid to imagine a different way of being ambitious.

Hope is powerful.
But hope, on its own, is not a business model.

And perhaps the bravest decision a club can make is not chasing the next breakthrough, but choosing a future it can actually sustain.