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Western Melbourne Group has triumphed over Team 11 and South Melbourne to become Victoria's third A-League club.
Western Melbourne Group will become the A-League's 11th club next season thanks to two factors: money and optics.
The bombshell decision to inject the WMG side at the expense of favourites Team 11, from Melbourne's South-East, rattled many that saw the Dandenong-based bid as ticking all the boxes.
Melbourne's South-East has more people, footballers, football clubs and interest in the world game than the West.
It has a stadium site with ready-made infrastructure, including a suburban train station and regional CBD just metres away.
WMG's site is a Tarneit paddock with one road in and out, and a regional train line nearby.
The necessary infrastructure request to bring the site up to speed is likely to out-strip taxpayer funding required to build Team 11's new stadium, seen as their bid's achilles heel.
What got WMG across the line was the most significant football infrastructure promise in Australia's history.
Their plans to build a stadium with private funding was praised by FFA chiefs.
"Western Melbourne is a growth corridor and the prospect of having our own stadium built out there is exciting indeed," FFA chief executive David Gallop said.
A third Victorian bid, from NSL club South Melbourne, wasn't seen as positively as the two outlying bidders.
Behind the scenes, a licence fee battle also raged.
FFA, with consultants Deloitte, ran a silent auction asking clubs to name their license fee, aiming to maximise the cheques being written to head office.
That process continued as late as Wednesday night, though Gallop said it "wasn't appropriate" to go into detail on those discussions.
"Some of those negotiations happened in the closing days and hours of where we ended up," he said.
"It was really important that we achieve the affordability bar that we put in place."
Team 11's failure to get a Victorian Government funding pledge for their new stadium was a huge barrier.
Their other comparative failing was their interim arrangement, proposing to play matches for two seasons at suburban AFL ground Casey Fields.
WMG will play matches at the recently upgraded Kardinia Park, a 36,000-seat modern multi-sport venue in Geelong that appealed to broadcasters.
"(Kardinia Park is) a high quality stadium and one we think could work for a few years. There were other (bids) that their interim stadium or facility plan would have seen them playing in a far from ideal location for a number of years," Gallop said.
"We believe we have to present the A-League in the best possible light straight away."
Gallop said they tested the Victorian Government's resolve on writing a $150 million cheque for the Dandenong Stadium but it still might not have made the difference.
"To be fair to the Victorian Government, they were always open to the conversation but it would not have overcome what we would have done in the interim," he said.
