The competition has experienced plenty of growing pains over the journey – with multiple clubs either dying, stillborn, renamed or relocating – yet it appears to have emerged from a difficult teething period in the best shape of its short life.

Speaking at the launch event at Allianz Stadium, which hosted the league's first grand final in 2006, Lowy said the toil had proved worth it, laying the foundation for a huge decade ahead.

"We are not at the end of the road," Lowy said. "We are not even at the halfway point on the road. We are just starting to get into a stride and I'm confident – more than confident – that we will be doubling, if not tripling, our viewers, spectators and [quality of] football in ten years' time."

"We've got to grow. There is no more beautiful game than our game. I don't want to put down our competitors, but when I get the chance, I do. That's why we'll double or triple in popularity in that time. No other game can do for Australia what we do.

"Previously, while the game was still football, it was an ethnic game. Today, it's a mainstream game. And we're in Asia, where this month Western Sydney will play in the Asian Champions League final in front of a prospective audience of half-a-billion people.

"This brings us into the heart of Asia, our neighbours who we do business with, live with and have diplomatic ties with. Our game is not just on the pitch, it's off it, and it's for Australia."

Lowy recalled how fearful he was the A-League would be a flop when it was first announced.

"10 years ago, I remember a similar press conference to this, when we announced the beginning of the A-League," he said. "I was very emotional. We took over the game in 2003, in 2004 we cancelled the NSL and started with the A-League.

"Some suggested we should avoid a national league ... and leave it to the states. But to me, without the A-League, there is no football in Australia.

"I remember standing in front of the microphone and I was begging, literally begging, for spectators to come. Secretly in my head I was hoping, thinking we'd get maybe 5000 people per game.

"I thought if we got that, what else could you want? And yet here we are today. When the league started, the viewing public was about 800,000. Now we're reaching 2.5 million households."

FFA chief executive David Gallop might have spent half of that time guiding the fortunes of the NRL but said it was clearly now a "golden period" for football, for which the A-League remained the centrepiece.

"There's so much going on right now, even as we look forward to Friday night's first game," Gallop said. "I like to think of Australian football as the 'hamburger with the lot' in Australian sport.

"We're in a final of the Asian Champions League, we've just completed the grassroots National Premier League finals last Saturday, we're at the quarter-finals of the FFA Cup, the Socceroos are in the Middle East this week, we're in the middle of the W-League season and it's less than 100 days until the Asian Cup.

"But the meat in the hamburger is the A-League. That's the engine room of Australian football and, this year, we have ambitious benchmarks that we're aiming for.

"We'll go through the 2 million crowd barrier for the first time. We're aiming to get 660,000 weekly viewers on Fox Sports and SBS, 2 million web users, 1 million social media followers, and we expect to go through the 100,000 membership mark.

"Rest assured, the other competitions have gone to sleep. Now it's our time."