TicketCo Media Services a silver lining for Covid-19 ravaged clubs

Liam Watson
TicketCo have come up with a way to turn a negative situation into a positive with their pay-per-view Media Services.

When Covid-19 swept across the world, clubs were left wondering about ways to generate revenue with limited to no fans in attendance.

With countries such as the UK still working towards getting supporters back in stadiums, particularly for the English Premier League, TicketCo have come up with a way to turn a negative situation into a positive with their pay-per-view Media Services.

It’s been just over a year since the coronavirus pandemic made its way to nations other than China, prompting the postponement or cancellation of major events.

In that time, sport organisations and media outlets have had to adapt. We’ve seen new streaming services pop up and the need for pay-for-view type services which TicketCo can provide, to make up for lost matchday attendance.

For supporters at home, they need the best possible viewing experience. As part of their streaming service, TicketCo can offer user friendliness as of utmost importance, a smooth process for ticket purchasing by the end user, versatility to watch not just on TV, as well as high definition quality sound and video.

TicketCo can also work closely with organisations to ensure that everything goes to plan, including a secure URL to the stream that isn’t copied or shared without permission, keeping the match available for sale until it starts & during event, customer data integrating with the club’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, no up-front investment for the broadcasting part of production, the offering of club merchandise, and easy-to-use technology that gives access to graphics.

Just like the clubs and leagues, TicketCo have changed the way they provide their service. It’s now become more important than ever to have a digital element to your craft, where they saw a new opportunity pop up to assist teams that needed a pay-per-view alternative.

TicketCo Media Services has become a video-on-demand solution that aligns with their event payment platform, so the ticket office can cater for online broadcasting. It puts the supporters (end user) at the forefront to deliver them a smooth and enjoyable experience.

TicketCo ensures that fans are able to watch all content on a variety of devices to make sure they aren’t pigeonholed with how they can watch. Having that freedom to watch from a TV, phone, tablet, desktop or whatever it might be promotes good fan experience and less annoyed ones.

There have already been lower league clubs embracing this technology and shows that most clubs are capable of utilising TicketCo’s offering.

“TicketCo is a hugely versatile platform and a true disrupter,” FC Isle of Man commercial director Ty Smith said.

“The platform provides the club with cutting edge technology and capabilities that even professional clubs can only dream of.”  

National League club Altrincham FC is another side that has seen the benefits of pay-per-view streaming, being able to provide fans with access to all of their home games this season.

“Club’s that don’t explore live streaming are crazy, to put it simply,” Co- chairman Bill Waterson said.

“Our partnership with TicketCo proves that you don’t have to be a big club to provide a professional service to supporters.” 

TicketCo Media Services is building on the future of media technology through AWS, the leading cloud technology provider. It hoped that lower league clubs can take full ownership of their digital content and monetise it through a platform like TicketCo Media Services.

It can be handled from a league level instead of club level, so that teams can offer their fans a range of packages, including physical home tickets and virtual away tickets, or virtual home and away tickets for anyone wanting to view games from overseas.

Leagues can also think about branding involvement, so that this is relevant for the viewing audience. Graphics can be used in a similar manner to what we see in top leagues on commercial TV channels. It adds another layer of advertising opportunities, as TicketCo Media Services have an ‘up-sell’ functionality that promotes and sells other products to supporters while fans go and purchase their digital match tickets.

Lower league clubs tend to have a very loyal follower base, but this has the potential to grow with an effective streaming provider such as TicketCo Media Services.

By the time the 2021/22 season kicks off in lower leagues across the UK, it’s expected that there will be full online coverage and monetization of every match. TicketCo Media Services see this as a positive aftermath of Covid-19, where a widespread crisis has created an unexpected silver lining for recovering clubs.

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Football Victoria and VicHealth partner on anti-racism program as community sport data reveals systemic problem

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Football Victoria has partnered with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation to roll out the Set The Standard initiative across the state’s football clubs, in a collaboration that signals a significant shift in how Australia’s most popular club-based sport is approaching racism and cultural exclusion at the grassroots level.

The partnership brings together the state’s peak football governing body and its primary health promotion agency around a shared finding that can no longer be treated as incidental. According to the 2025 report Enhancing the Capacity of Victorian Community Sport to Tackle Racism, 56 per cent of surveyed participants had experienced or witnessed racism in community sport. In a state where football draws participants from some of the most culturally diverse communities in the country, that figure represents a systemic failure the sport can no longer address through conduct policies alone.

Clubs that subscribe to the Set The Standard newsletter will be entered into a draw to win one of three $1,000 vouchers, available for equipment, facility improvements, events or other community initiatives. The incentive is designed to drive early engagement with a program whose ambitions extend well beyond a newsletter subscription.

What the Partnership Signals

Racism in sport has historically been treated as a conduct and governance issue, managed through complaints mechanisms that require incidents to be formally reported and tend to significantly undercount the actual prevalence of harm. VicHealth’s framing of racism as a public health problem repositions the entire conversation.

Experiences of racism are associated with measurable negative health outcomes including anxiety, depression and social withdrawal. When community sport, which governments and health agencies actively promote as a vehicle for physical and mental wellbeing, becomes a source of those same harms, the public health cost is direct and quantifiable.

Resources, not Rhetoric

For Football Victoria, the partnership brings something the governing body cannot provide on its own. VicHealth’s credibility, resources and public health framework give the initiative a foundation that a sporting organisation working alone would struggle to establish. Set The Standard offers clubs practical tools and guidance built around progress rather than perfection, which reflects a realistic understanding of how cultural change works inside volunteer-run community organisations.

The $1,000 vouchers are not a side note. Most community clubs operate on tight margins, depend on volunteer administrators and are already stretched managing growing participation demands. Finding room to invest in cultural development programs on top of everything else is difficult. Providing tangible resources directly addresses that constraint at the point where clubs are most likely to disengage.

The program also arrives at a consequential moment. Football in Victoria is absorbing significant participation growth following the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and sustained increases in junior registrations, bringing new communities into the game in large numbers. The 2025 data suggests the environments those communities are entering are not consistently safe or welcoming. Participation growth and cultural safety work need to move together. A sport that grows larger without becoming more inclusive has not actually improved the experience of the people playing it.

The Man Who Built a Women’s Football Program from Nothing is now an Award-Winning Gender Equity Leader

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Image Credit: Football Victoria

Eight years ago, Spring Hills Football Club did not have a girls’ team. Today it has one of the most recognised women’s programs in Melbourne’s west, a senior NPLW side, and a head coach who has just been named Gender Equity Leader of the Year at the Melton City Council Volunteer Achievement Awards.

Tom Markovski, Spring Hills’ NPLW Head Coach, received the award at a ceremony coinciding with National Volunteer Week, recognised for his community leadership, promotion of gender equality and commitment to advancing the status of women and people of all genders in sport. The recognition comes from outside the football community entirely, awarded by a local council celebrating volunteers across every sector of civic life in one of Melbourne’s fastest-growing regions.

Building from scratch

When Markovski arrived at Spring Hills, women’s football at the club did not exist. His first act was to champion the establishment of the club’s first all-girls team, a process that required persuading a club culture built around men’s football that the investment was worth making.

Women’s football in community clubs has historically struggled to access the same facilities, scheduling priority, coaching resources and institutional support as the men’s game. Clubs have been slow to invest in programs whose return is less immediately visible than a senior men’s premiership, and in a growing outer-suburban community like Melton, where volunteer capacity is finite and demand across every program is high, the case for building something new always has to compete with the urgency of maintaining what already exists.

Markovski made the case anyway, and kept making it across eight years of coaching senior and junior NPL teams while simultaneously building the structural foundations of a women’s program designed to outlast any individual’s involvement. The club’s first all-girls team became multiple junior girls teams. Those junior teams created the pipeline for a senior women’s side. The senior women’s side created visible pathways for younger players to see where the game could take them within their own club.

The outcome is a program that Spring Hills now holds up as central to its identity rather than supplementary to it. The club has become a leader in female participation in Melbourne’s west, and recently made history within the NPLW Victoria structure by fielding junior teams coached entirely by female coaches, a milestone that reflects the depth of the program Markovski helped build.

What the Award Recognises

The Melton City Council’s decision to name Markovski its Gender Equity Leader of the Year places his work in a frame that extends beyond football. Melton is one of the fastest-growing local government areas in Australia, a diverse and rapidly expanding community where the institutions that bring people together, like schools, councils, sporting clubs, carry an outsized responsibility for social cohesion.

Mayor Cr. Lara Carli, speaking at the awards ceremony, reflected on the role volunteers play in communities like Melton’s. “Volunteering creates friendships, strengthens communities and builds a sense of belonging,” she said. “It helps people feel connected, supported and valued, and those things are more important than ever in a growing and diverse community like ours.”

For the girls now playing football at Spring Hills who were not playing anywhere eight years ago, Markovski’s contribution is not abstract. It is the specific and concrete fact of having somewhere to play, someone to coach them, and a pathway that leads somewhere.

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