Football Australia will announce an unprecedented $15.3 million loss at their annual general meeting next week, with the national governing body forced to lay off over 20% of their workforce and restructure the business to try and halt a worrying financial slide.
It is the same story this time around: the 2025 financial report, seen by ESPN, shows Football Australia generated a record $139.4 million in revenue last year, almost $16 million more than the year before.
That revenue has been aided by the receiving of $18.8 million in government funding for hosting the Women's Asian Cup, in addition to a contract worth almost $54 million, likely a bundled AFC and FIFA broadcast contract plus sport betting data rights with IMG Arena.
That additional revenue, however, was almost entirely cancelled out by two main factors.
The first is a bloating cost base, with employee and team benefit expenses increasing by over $13 million (including $810,000 paid to former director Jaclyn Lee-Joe "for services rendered in relation to the PlayFootball registration system"), an extra $3.4 million in marketing and media, and an additional $2.3 million on event hosting expenses, among other smaller increases across multiple line items.
The second factor, and more concerningly, is that just over $12 million of their total $15.3 million deficit were unbudgeted losses, with roughly $9 million of those losses attributable -- once again -- to the writing-off of debts owed to them by the APL.
This goes some way to explaining the announcement made by new Football Australia CEO Martin Kugeler earlier this week that the organisation would be triggering another round of mass redundancies, with one in five employees affected to try and bring their budget back to "living within their means."
But there are more to some of these losses than meet the eye.
In this year's accounts, $6 million is listed as "loss allowances," or debts that Football Australia believes are unlikely to be repaid. Last year, this line item was titled "credit losses," of which over $4 million was reportedly the forgiving of debts owed by the APL.
An additional $3 million of Football Australia's 2025 losses has been attributed to the "settlement of legal proceedings and claims" -- partly, one can assume, in the "confidential settlement" with Macarthur FC -- while another $3 million is for "business transformation costs," likely related to the redundancies and restructures triggered last year.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Football Australia had reached a "financial settlement" with the APL "over claims of historic debts between the two organisations," with the league owners paying just under $1 million to Football Australia in exchange for debt forgiveness.
It is a useful image to project: that the two organisations who have largely been at loggerheads since (or even before) they "unbundled" back in 2021 have now resolved their issues and intend to move forward together.
But exactly how much debt has been forgiven in exchange for this relatively small public settlement sum?
The APL's debts cover multiple areas, the largest of which is referee fees. As part of the separation agreement between the two bodies, Football Australia was responsible for managing all referees but the APL was required to pay for them including their salaries, match fees, travel, accommodation, and training support. In total, referees cost the APL roughly $5 million per season, which multiple sources confirmed have not been paid for the past four seasons.
Additionally, Football Australia is entitled to 10% of both international player transfers and club expansion fees which, according to public reports, could total almost $9 million since 2023.
In Football Australia's 2025 financial accounts, there is a section titled "Trade and other receivables" which show two amounts: $15.9 million and $16.7 million. These two sums are labelled either "neither past due nor impaired" or "greater than 121 days," suggesting that Football Australia have many more millions in receivables -- or money they expect to be paid to them -- listed as overdue, which they have not yet written off, but which have no hard due date.
At the time of writing, then, Football Australia have forgiven $10.2 million in APL debts in the past two financial years, with millions more likely to be forgiven in future.
Exactly how this current and future APL debt forgiveness will be publicly explained or financially accounted for is unclear.
One clue perhaps rests in the change in Football Australia's own retained earnings over the past three years. In their 2023 financial report, the governing body had $20.6 million in retained earnings supercharged by hosting the Women's World Cup. At the end of 2025, it sat at negative $3.4 million.
Where exactly did that money go? Does the recent timing of Football Australia's settlement suggest that even more debt forgiveness for the APL is on the horizon?
And given such significant and unexplained changes to their retained earnings, should this trigger more serious concerns about the ongoing solvency of Football Australia if they themselves are unable to pay their own debts (partly due to their forgiving of the APL's debts)?
The biggest question in all this is: why is Football Australia -- a national governing body whose own Congress reflects their many different stakeholder groups including state federations, the players' union, and a women's council -- giving money to a private organisation that they deliberately separated from five years ago?
It is a particularly troubling question given Football Australia's board, who must sign off on these decisions, have fiduciary duties to all of their members, not just A-League clubs.
This is money that you assume would otherwise be invested elsewhere in the game such as alleviating the exorbitant cost of grassroots registration fees, funding community clubs, upgrading facilities, and creating participation programs.
If the APL is unable to pay its debts -- which the past two years of Football Australia's write-offs imply -- then there may be a bigger concern about the sustainability, even solvency, of the A-Leagues.
Why does Football Australia care about that? Well, according to part 32.b(v) of their Constitution, Football Australia is not only the regulator of the A-Leagues, but the owner and licensee. This means that they may have greater legal powers when it comes to a potential extinction-level event for the domestic competitions.
Specifically, if the APL continues to not pay its debts, Football Australia may have the ability to retake ownership of the leagues, including all its associated commercial assets, totalling tens of millions of dollars.
In this legal context, Football Australia's directors have a legal responsibility to critically assess the ongoing financial health of the APL to understand whether or not they can pay back their debts.
As the past two years have shown, there are serious concerns about the A-Leagues' ability to do just that. And based on the sudden resignation of a Football Australia board director mere days before the release of their latest financial accounts, there may be further concerns about the board's own decision-making when it comes to the A-Leagues.
These financial accounts therefore lead us to ask some bigger, open-ended questions that this month's annual general meeting may or may not answer.
First, how is Football Australia managing the conflicts inherent in this relationship, where the governing body appears to be prioritising the APL at the expense of their other members and the company itself?
Second, where is the "unbundling agreement" that was negotiated between the two bodies which ought to state clearly who is responsible for what?
Third, what mechanisms are available to Football Australia's members to ask for this unbundling agreement and ensure Football Australia's board is acting in all their members' interests, as is their legal requirement?
And finally, the biggest canary in the coalmine of it all: what is the current financial status of the A-Leagues and how much longer can they survive?