More than half of the A-League's 12 men's clubs are either part of a formal multi-club ownership (MCO) group, owned by parties with stakes in overseas clubs, or linked to a foreign club through cooperation agreements. The trend is redrawing the competition's financial map, and its chief executive, Steve Rosich, is unequivocal about the benefits.
"We have numerous international owners and multi-club owners in our competition, and we think that's a really good thing," Rosich said. "Pound for pound, there's probably less risk with a well-resourced international owner that understands sport, and understands football in particular."
The shift is global. Football Benchmark estimates there were 152 multi-club groups running 380 clubs worldwide in 2024, up from just 18 groups and 40 clubs in 2012. Australian soccer, chronically short on capital, is an attractive target: licences are cheap by world standards, the salary cap limits spending, and the country's record of producing young talent appeals to international groups.
But the model has costs, as the experience of Melbourne City's supporters shows. When Heart, introduced in 2010 as a self-consciously different alternative to Melbourne Victory, was bought by the City Football Group in January 2014 and renamed Melbourne City a few months later in Manchester City's light blue, long-time Manchester United fan Matthew Galea felt his club had been taken from him. "Once the colours changed, I'm like, 'Well, this isn't what I started supporting,'" he said.
City has since become an A-League powerhouse, with facilities and systems envied across the competition, and the network has opened doors for players such as Socceroo Patrick Beach, now at Troyes, CFG's French club, and for coach Ange Postecoglou, who rebuilt his career at Yokohama F. Marinos. Yet average crowd numbers have declined since the Heart days, suggesting on-field success alone does not build a supporter base.
The tension is structural. When a club is a cog in a larger system, its interests can conflict with the group's: whether to sell a promising player for the network's benefit or keep them for the club; whether the ambition is to win, or to serve bigger, more valuable siblings. Trouble can also ripple across the network.
Manchester City, flagship of a group that includes nine other clubs from Brazil to Italy to China, is the live test. An independent commission found the club guilty of 114 of 115 Premier League charges, concluding it used "sham" commercial arrangements to inflate revenues and cut costs by more than £900 million over nine seasons, and failed to cooperate with the investigation. Melbourne City vice-chairman Simon Pearce is implicated in the charges. Sanctions have not yet been announced and Manchester City has appealed.
If England's new Independent Football Regulator, which has power to force unsuitable owners to sell, ever acted against Manchester City's owners, the strategic rationale for the rest of the empire would fundamentally change. The A-League would be watching like everyone else.