Football Confidential: Business dinner promoting business and sport links in Asia snubs football
IT was a meeting of some of the great and good, politicians, businesspeople and sporting leaders at a plush dinner in Sydney to discuss how businesses can use sport to increase opportunities in Asia.
IT was a meeting of some of the great and good, politicians, businesspeople and sporting leaders at a plush dinner in Sydney to discuss how businesses can use sport to increase opportunities in Asia.
The timing was perfect too, with Melbourne Victory playing against Shanghai SIPG the night before, and Sydney FC playing in the same Chinese city an hour or so after the delegates left the Westin Hotel.
Not that you’d have known, because brilliantly the organisers neglected to invite anyone from the one sport that Australians could chat about in just about any Asian city, and whose teams play right across the continent.
Former Test cricketer and Cricket Australia board member Michael Kasprowicz was one of the sports leaders at the business dinner in Sydney but no one from football in Australia was invited
Instead the delegates were treated to the insights of former fast bowler Michael Kasprowicz, Rugby Australia board member Ann Sherry, and best of all AFL Commissioner **rielle Trainor — a trailblazing businesswoman, but speaking on behalf of a code that gets wildly disoriented when it leaves Victoria, let alone contemplates engaging with Asia.
We’d love to know what insights for business the AFL’s one game in China could provide, but in the meantime the organisers of the forum, think tank AsiaLink Business, promise us football will be involved in future events.
“The opportunities presented by sports diplomacy and the business of sport with Asia is not a competition between sporting codes,” a spokesman said in a statement. “It’s an inclusive and forward-looking opportunity, that all sports and sports businesses can be part of.”
