No screams of outrage across the Football/Soccer Card collecting community, so this announcement from TnP clearly doesn’t come as any surprise.
IMO a disappointing decision but not unexpected. The box/pack format is never going to be economically viable when it seems there is no sense of who the target market/s are, and no real promotion supporting growth beyond the current collector base.
Hopefully this ‘down time’ can be used for some reflection on where such releases are heading. As we know each release has been problematic, whether it be Issues on price, promotion, distribution or the product itself.
But overall this is a football code with multiple problems on many fronts, and you don’t get any sense of where trading cards sit within an overall promotional strategy.
Just disappointing that the decision not to product a release does nothing for the small & dedicated group of collectors who have continued to support these releases, despite all the problems.
I am sure that existing collectors would buy either team sets or a complete a-league set of all teams (just base cards) if something was produced. Something like what TnP did with teams sets for each country in the cricket ICC Champions Trophy in 2017 & peoplecouls buy them direct from TnP, or a re-seller.
Of course there would be costs associated with doing any small scale release & no economies of scale. But maybe it’s just all too hard to this point, given the current state of the game.
End of the day people are going to to sit somewhere along the continuum - at one end being those who would be happy with just something to be released, whereas at the other end there are those who’s view is ‘do it right, or don’t do it at all’.
If, or when, an Australian football/soccer release is produced in the future, hopefully those who have supported such releases will continue to do so.