Stefan Mauk has always been one of the more outspoken Australian footballers. The Adelaide United midfielder spoke to Front Page Football ahead of the 2024/25 A-League Men season about his frustration at football's lack of mainstream media coverage and his work in that space.
Stefan Mauk has not been shy to share his feelings on Australian football's lack of mainstream media coverage since returning to the A-League Men. (Image: Brock Pearson Photography)
Depending on where you live in Australia, your sports broadcast media and newspaper front pages are undoubtedly dominated by either the AFL or NRL. A code that does not have its weekly comings and goings reported on, with the exception being Channel 10, the rights owners, and some non-News Corp affiliated outlets like the West Australian, is football.
For Stefan Mauk, this critical absence of coverage proves to be an existential barrier to potential new fans' engagement with the A-League Men.
"It is very hard for people to become die-hard A-League fans if they don't know when the games are on and if they don't know who the players are," Mauk shared with Front Page Football.
"You might say that maybe we don't get the clicks and don't get the people watching games, but if you don't invest in it, you are not going to get it, so what comes first?"
Playing in the A-League Men and following the AFL, Mauk has had a front row seat to the disparity of media coverage. While he feels football can do much more in the way it advertises itself, the media must meet it halfway.
"It makes the perception of the league really poor," Mauk shared on the lack of coverage.
"Then you get comments about the league struggling and that it is a poor standard when I don't think that is the case. I think people don't know about it because our clubs, the APL, and Football Australia need to do a lot better, but we could also have more of a helping hand.
"For example, with the AFL, The Advertiser posted stuff about what players were doing in the off-season, and they can't report on our (Australia Cup) Semi-Final."
Mauk has experience playing overseas in countries with a high football standard, and the attitude for the domestic game within their borders compared to Australia is showing.
"When I was in Holland, it (football) was everything...I didn't have to think about anything other than training and rocking up to the games. I'm not worried about the crowd, the media coverage, or the standard of anything," Mauk shared on the top-tier status football occupied in the Netherlands during his time at NEC Nijmegen.
Meanwhile, playing in Japan for second division club Fagiano Okayama, situated in a city of about 700,000 inhabitants, Mauk shared that the media was much more present for the team than he had observed in the A-League.
"They are still behind baseball as the number one sport, but the media coverage is there. Every single day, there were four or five journalists at training; there were cameras every day," he said.
"We had that level of media interaction generated in a small town like Okayama, where I was, where we had ten to twelve thousand people most games. I walked the streets there, and I would get stopped; I couldn't understand it, but I am sure it was because I was on TV or in the newspaper a lot, so when they would see me on the street, they knew who I was."
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In the absence of that traditional mainstream coverage, Mauk has taken matters into his own hands to try and fill the void. From launching a podcast with best mate and current Western United player Ben Garuccio during his last months in Japan to starting a weekly show on South Australian radio station FIVEAA, Mauk feels like football has a point of difference from other sports that dominate the media landscape, and that it should lean into it.
"I am not just trying to speak about one specific topic of the world game on FIVEAA, and I think that is our biggest strength. If we can connect everything there is news every single day," he said.
"In the AFL, you see a lot of news that is irrelevant, to be honest, and that is because they don't have the amount of games, where football has the domestic game, but then you have the overseas leagues, cup and European competitions; there is a game on every day. We can talk about that stuff if there is a platform for it and enough people would want to hear about it; we need to give them the platform and make the mainstream media realise that there is an appetite for football."
In the age of social media, it is not an anomaly for players to play a bigger part in popular culture than the clubs they represent. The A-League Men has been dealt a fresh dose of that reality this off-season by the signings of players such as Douglas Costa (Sydney FC), Juan Mata (Western Sydney Wanderers), and Rafael Struick (Brisbane Roar). All three players boast a significantly larger Instagram following than their new clubs.
This phenomenon is not unique to football as a code. Mauk views it as an opportunity for players to be elevated as personalities that drive the sport's narrative.
"I am obviously not too shy; I don't care if I get hate, whether I am playing or off the field; they are attacking me as a personality or a player, not me as an actual person, so I try and look at it like that. The more players we can have doing that, hopefully, we can drive change and make people realise that there is interest in it," he expressed.
Should football capitalise on growing interest through greater coverage, Mauk believes that it can snowball into a stronger space where today's players can have roles in the media world once they retire, as is prominent in other codes.
"I think other players that feel comfortable should do the same thing because while you're a current player, your voice does carry a little bit more weight. The second you retire, you're a little less relevant unless you're in the AFL and become a media personality," he explained.
"It is something that, we can act like we are the victims or we can try and do something to change it, and I think we need to take that proactive approach."
In season 2024/25, Stefan Mauk will balance his podcasting and radio duties with Adelaide United's ambition of returning to the A-League Men Finals Series. It remains to be seen if Mauk's calls for respect from Australia's mainstream sports media will be heeded, or if the struggling competition can somehow garner a fraction of the attention that made the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup irresistible, even from outlets traditionally known to neglect it.
After a Round 1 bye, the Reds will begin their season at Coopers Stadium on the 26th of October against reigning A-League Men champions the Central Coast Mariners.
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