Well the SANFL and Port Power are tring to nut out an "Alberton Agreement" that delivers more money to Port.
I must admit I find it a bit surprising that Port's Stadium deal is different to the Crows, to their disadvantage. However, Port are $3.5m in debt.
If you are in debt there are a few ways to get out of it - bring in more money (eg an improved Stadium deal, more members and sponsorship etc) or reduce expenditure and allocate funds to debt reduction BUT ideally a combination of the two.
Port are trying to increase their revenue.
However, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that they are being prudent with their expenditure. This year, all players have been issued with Blackberry phones to watch their own video analysis and get messages from the coach. I presume some of this may have been supplied by Vodafone - but there must be operating costs associated with all this. Yesterday, Matt Thomas and Peter Rhode flew to Melbourne to attend the tribunal rather than attend via Video conference. These may only seem like little things but it makes me wonder if they are really tightening their belts in any way?
It just looks like they want to fly "first class" in the AFL when maybe they need to go economy for a while. I know they statistically have the lowest spend for their football department per win, but could it be lower when you have a big debt like that?
Could Choco take a pay cut?
Interested to hear people's views...