Despite murmurs of his fake footy team becoming a lucrative side hustle, Dr Ken Sakata says if he wanted to make money, he would just “do more medical work”.
Melbourne-based Queensland Football Club (yes – you read that right) has all but gained cult status in the last two years.
The satirical team has never fielded a side. Yet they have their merchandise in the bag. And it’s the merch that has become a champion of one thing that legitimate sports outfits seldom have – Australian manufacturing.
From sourcing materials to design, all the way through to the end premium “archival” ’90s sportswear product, it’s all done on home territory.
But the club’s roots lie in one of the most troubling times in recent Australian history.
A doctor’s pandemic escape
“We were getting these doctor WhatsApp group messages of videos of young doctors, younger than myself, dying. So I was pretty stressed out,” founder Dr Ken Sakata said, recounting working on the frontline as Covid-19 charged across the globe.
He was thrown into the thick of it as the pandemic hit Australian shores, working in hotel quarantine and then vaccine counselling.
Almost overnight, his job as an orthopaedic surgeon had turned from “set plays” to dealing with a new and, at the time, unknown virus.
“It was very, very stressful. I wrote my will,” he told news.com.au.
“We didn’t know at the time how serious it was going to be.
“And I didn’t want to add to this anxiety because I was feeling it too.”
Unlikely inspiration
The QFC founder, manager, posterboy and everything else said that during that period, then-Essendon Bombers player Conor McKenna lit a spark for him to become a professional athlete.
Dr Sakata recalls watching daily news updates on McKenna’s positive and negative Covid tests, all the while feeling symptomatic and being unable to get a test of his own.
“So one day, I was like, ‘OK, I’m just gonna pretend I’m a football player,’” he said.
“I’m gonna be a football player online. It’s gonna be a giant joke because that’s the way I process stress.”
Dr Sakata, who has never played a game of AFL, began posting his workout regime on social media, as well as his diet and even leading patterns.
Naturally, his faux-footy stardom progressed into bootleg merchandise, then into a legal letter.
Popular satirical online AFL interest group, The Carlton Draft, released a shirt featuring a collage of Dr Sakata playing football in a Gold Coast Suns jersey.
It read: “Ken Sakata – tall small forward.”
He claims to have moved $2000 worth of the shirts before receiving a cease and desist letter from the AFL.
He saw that as the perfect time to develop his own intellectual property.
“It was like the most fun I had all that year, this little escape. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna continue doing this.’
“But, you know, I’m a doctor. I don’t want to run afoul of the law.”
His answer? The Queensland Football Club.
‘I guess it’s a business now’
“I thought I’d make up an entire merchandise line for this team that I just made up,” he said.
He aptly launched the merchandise on April Fools’s Day 2022, and astonishingly sold out all his limited-range sweatshirts and shorts in just three hours.
Today, the demand is just as high for the satirical, Australian-sourced and produced, ’90s-styled sportswear – though the range has since expanded to singlets, caps and sports polos, among others.
He now juggles the fledgling business with his medical career.
“I’ll be operating, and in between cases, I’ll have this voice message on my phone saying, ‘Hey, we have run out of yellow dye,’” Dr Sakata said, laughing.
“And none of my clothes are yellow. What does that mean?
“I’m already having so much fun.”
A ‘fun, dumb’ business for a net positive, not profit
Despite some media speculation, he said the Queensland Football Club is not, and never was, about making money – though he concedes it turns a profit.
“I want to impress on people that it’s a fun, dumb business. It’s super fun, it’s super dumb,” he told news.com.au.
“I’m not thinking that I’m going to change the world, but this is a fun damn business to run.
“The good thing about fun, dumb things, is that there’s a lot of energy behind it.
“So I want to divert that energy, not into my bank account or into myself. I want to divert that energy into a lot of altruistic things that do happen around the brand, right?
“So it can go in the form of donations, it can go in the form of awareness of Australian manufacturing.”
More Coverage
Dr Sakata’s tales of his footy club have amassed him a degree of online fame with millions watching his journey.
“I’m just trying to harness this weird energy that’s out there into something that’s a net positive,” he said.
“I assure you that if I were after extra cash, I’d just do more medical work. That pays way better.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7HWrGWcp51jrrZ7xaKlmqaTmnyjwdKipZ6ro2S6orrUn5icrKWntq%2BzjqJkoK2VqMButdOsZJplkqrAqrrErKpmpp%2BserW0xGaZnqukYrOwu9OyZK2dkaJ6tbTArWSnnaaav27DwKxmp52nqHq0wM6rsGhoZJt9crGQnW6abWVrr3KBmJ6ZcHFiZYOmr8WaZ2%2BcZQ%3D%3D