NRL won’t give AFL a free-kick in western Sydney
Columnist By Ben Somerford, 10 Nov 2011 Ben Somerford is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- AFL, Giants, Greater Western Sydney, NRL
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The NRL certainly haven’t afforded the AFL’s newest franchise Greater Western Sydney any special favours following the release of the 2012 season fixture list with several regional blockbusters going up against Giants home games. And, honestly, you can’t really blame them for doing so.
Indeed, it’s a clear signal of intent from the NRL that it doesn’t want the Giants to build any momentum in western Sydney. NRL fans with a passing interest in attending a Giants game, will be faced with a dilemma on most occasions.
It makes a lot of sense for the NRL to protect their product and not give the AFL an opening by placing some of its best events in western Sydney in direct competition to GWS home games.
However, NRL director of football operations Nathan McGuirk told reporters: ”We’re aware of what other codes are doing, but really, our main focus is what we’re doing. It’s hard for us not to schedule those types of matches because we have so many of them.”
Now, I’m only a casual NRL observer, but I do know Parramatta-Penrith is the biggest local rivalry in Sydney’s west. The NRL has scheduled that clash for Round Four, in direct competition to AFL’s stand-alone Round One opening derby between GWS and Sydney Swans at ANZ Stadium. Coincidence? I think not. It’s part of the war between the codes in the region.
The scheduling of a stand-alone Round One fixture by the AFL is something we haven’t seen before but it’s all about building momentum for the competition’s newest franchise. It is in many ways a gamble by the AFL and the NRL are responding to it with the Parramatta-Penrith fixture. And why wouldn’t they?
The importance of momentum is evident if you look at the A-League this season which began after the other codes concluded and with blockbusters to start the term. Once something is perceived to be popular, people jump on the bandwagon. The NRL quite clearly don’t want to offer the Giants any momentum for this very reason.
It’s worth pointing out, the NRL don’t announce the exact match day and times just yet, but it’ll be interesting to see if they schedule the Parramatta-Penrith clash to go up in direct competition to GWS-Sydney on the Saturday evening.
Whatever the case, the Parramatta-Penrith derby will certainly draw plenty of media attention away from the GWS-Sydney clash in the build-up to the match in that week.
And looking at the 2012 NRL draw, what is noticeable is that there’s a lot of games in western Sydney early in the season.
Again, I’m only a casual rugby league observer, so I don’t pretend to know the normalities of a NRL fixture draw, but the intent of all four western Sydney teams only travelling outside of Sydney three times in the first five rounds seems clear. It means their fans will have the opportunity to attend most of their clubs’ NRL games and the temptation of some live sporting entertainment in the form of the Giants won’t be as strong.
Also, six GWS home games are on the same weekend as derbies between clubs from Sydney’s west. Again, I don’t blame the NRL for doing this. It makes a lot of sense.
In response, acting Giants CEO Dave Matthews said: ”I think if you asked the people of western Sydney they would say they would prefer events to be spread and not going head to head but the NRL clearly think differently and that’s up to them.”
Indeed it is, and while Matthews may try to paint the NRL in a negative way, you can’t really blame them for protecting their product. They are hardly going to gift-wrap a free kick to the AFL in its own traditional territory.
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November 10th 2011 @ 7:22am
Boomshanka said | November 10th 2011 @ 7:22am | Report comment
Channel Nine effectively control what games get shown and when – not the NRL.
November 10th 2011 @ 8:05am
The_Wookie said | November 10th 2011 @ 8:05am | Report comment
All Matthews has done is indicate that not everyone is a single code tragic and there are people who follow more than one code.
The AFL hasnt asked for any free kicks from the NRL either, and AFL HQ almost never mentions the NRL when doing its fixtures and events. Theres no war here either.
Games at Blacktown are going to be small by virtue of ground capacity if nothing else, several games will be in canberra, and they cant even get access to the showgrounds until after Easter. This was alsways going to take some time anyway. Its a 20 year plan for a reason.
November 10th 2011 @ 8:22am
Chris said | November 10th 2011 @ 8:22am | Report comment
Actually there’s only one game scheduled at Blacktown.
But yes, the AFL has made it very clear they are in it for the long haul. And frankly, with the form of the Eels and Panthers, I’d hardly call that game a blockbuster…
November 10th 2011 @ 8:10am
mds1970 said | November 10th 2011 @ 8:10am | Report comment
The NRL don’t announce the dates and times of games until a few weeks before, so we don’t know if they clash. We don’t yet know if Parramatta v Penrith will be on the Saturday night.
Even if it is, Parra Stadium only holds around 20,500. The AFL will pull a bigger crowd, but the NRL would get bigger TV ratings if it’s on FTA. But it won’t be on FTA on Saturday night.
November 10th 2011 @ 8:19am
oikee said | November 10th 2011 @ 8:19am | Report comment
It needs to be on Friday night to pull in the punters. AFL playing games on Saturday night , no wonder they get nobody watching on tv.
The NRL draw this year is the first time they have got it right.
November 10th 2011 @ 8:24am
Stu said | November 10th 2011 @ 8:24am | Report comment
The NRL tried that on the Gold Coast this year and failed miserably. The NRL can try all they want to deter the AFL by focussing on top level scheduling, fact is though the AFL do the ground work and have the biggest support framework for junior footy of all the codes. Speaking to a member of the AFL at a schools event, he said their marketing plan is simple. You win mum, you win the family. The NRL don’t really market to families, well not as well as the AFL, and will not stop the AFL in GWS. Shame is, most fans I know like both games and would like to attend both games especially blockbusters. This scheduling game only goes to show the juvenile mentality and small mindedness of the NRL administrators.
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November 10th 2011 @ 10:55am
JamesP said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:55am | Report comment
As the saying goes…Happy wife happy life!
November 12th 2011 @ 8:55am
Aaron said | November 12th 2011 @ 8:55am | Report comment
I can’t see how the NRL failed on the Gold Coast. The Suns certainly did not take Gold Coast by storm and draw in anything substantial. All i can really see from the Suns presence is a financial loss for the Lions to go with a 28% membership loss and some of their worst crowds ever. AFL was the only “football” code in Queensland to not get a game with over 50, 000. They didn’t once break 27, 000.
Their (NRL) schedule was great considering they have the same demographic teams in the Brisbane/Gold Coast region. GCS were up against a wooden spoon NRL team that was frankly horrible to watch play. In 2012 Titans have a fresh squad of extremely talented players coming in to give them that boost, a great fixture and will face much less GCS media attention. I’m not sold on the Suns first year by a long way.
GWS face four pretty big NRL clubs who have signed on superstar players and coaches (including both coaches from the 2011 NRL grand final). All four of those teams will have competitive rosters. Canterbury, Parramatta and Wests are looking like potential competition favorites while GWS are expected to win maybe 4/5 games. The fixtures in Western Sydney for the NRL are frankly amazing. When the play makers of Wests Tigers and Parramatta Eels come together, one of those two games alone will generate more interest and media than GWS will all year. GWS have also hurt a potential audience by blatantly ripping off the colors of the Wests Tigers and signing Izzy, who consistently broke NSW hearts in State of Origin.
As for a juvenile mentality towards accepting others sports, you’ve clearly never tried supporting either code of Rugby in Victoria. Now AFL and NRL fans collide in forums and article comments and League fans get to see the bias and close minded nature of 99% of the entire AFL fan base which hurts their chances of success incomparably. AFL showed it’s true colors with the whole “Brisbane Bombers” debacle. They didn’t understand that name was just an attempt to invalidate the “Ipswich Jets” rival NRL bid, celebrating the proud tradition of the Air Force and Amberly RAAF base in the Western Corridor region.
November 10th 2011 @ 8:53am
M1tch said | November 10th 2011 @ 8:53am | Report comment
Parra v Penrith is a geographical derby but it isn’t the biggest derby in western sydney, that is a well known fact.
November 10th 2011 @ 9:55am
voodoo people said | November 10th 2011 @ 9:55am | Report comment
Also, a little too much is being read into the draw by the media – the NRL has been trying to schedule as many “blockbusters” in the first 10 weeks as possible, before the rep season kicks in, and crowds (and quality) drop around origin.
Interest in the back end of the year is the run to the finals.
Heritage round rivalries, round 1, ANZAC day and Easter weekend are all part of it. Scheduling derbies in the weeks between makes sense. This has little to do with the AFL.
And as M1tch pointed out, Parra vs Penrith is arguably not the biggest rivalry in Western Sydney. Parramatta vs Canterbury is bigger.
November 11th 2011 @ 6:15pm
damon said | November 11th 2011 @ 6:15pm | Report comment
Yeah, GWS v Sydney is a much bigger.
November 13th 2011 @ 11:58am
super G said | November 13th 2011 @ 11:58am | Report comment
Parra v Canterbury or any Western Sydney derby involving the Tigers would be bigger.
November 10th 2011 @ 9:36am
Tom said | November 10th 2011 @ 9:36am | Report comment
The afl will be lucky to get over 100,000 in viewership (Sydney metro) for the gws vs swans game and will be trounced by every other channel.
If penrith play parra on a Friday night expect a viewership in Sydney metro to be around the 800k mark.
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November 10th 2011 @ 10:15am
me, I like football said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:15am | Report comment
Really? the highest rating H&A NRL game in Sydney last year was 554K. Must be some blockbuster
November 10th 2011 @ 9:43am
clipper said | November 10th 2011 @ 9:43am | Report comment
I have said a few times this would happen, and it was obvious they would try to divert attention away from the Swans / Giants game. It’ll get a few ‘war’ stories in the Telegraph, and may give the AFL more publicity than they would otherwise get. It could also backfire for the NRL if the Swans / Giants game gets more punters than the Penrith / Parra game. similar to the situation when they Titans went head to head with the Suns, with the Suns getting more people on the day.
November 10th 2011 @ 10:28am
M1tch said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:28am | Report comment
The Giants v Swans will probably get more, but get beaten in the ratings which is what the nrl and afl really want at the end of the day.
November 10th 2011 @ 10:38am
me, I like football said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:38am | Report comment
depends if the NRL clash is on FTA.
November 10th 2011 @ 10:58am
JamesP said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:58am | Report comment
If its on Saturday – it defintely wont be.
SO I dare say the national FTA audience fo the AFL will smash whatever foxtel ratings they get.
The big test will the the Sydney FTA audience. I predict anything between 100 – 200k
Foxtel will probably be around the 300k mark.
November 10th 2011 @ 11:39am
me, I like football said | November 10th 2011 @ 11:39am | Report comment
The 300k for Foxtel would be Australia wide, The Sydney figures much less. So you would say a win for the AFL if they could at least get half of what foxtel get.
November 10th 2011 @ 12:08pm
Australian Rules said | November 10th 2011 @ 12:08pm | Report comment
There is absolutely zero chance that an AFL game will get higher ratings in NSW than an NRL derby…just won’t happen, even with the novelty factor of the first GWS game.
As for attendance…I think a crowd of 25-30,000 would be a good result for the AFL. But again, I would be staggered if the crowd was bigger than the NRL game.
November 10th 2011 @ 12:56pm
JamesP said | November 10th 2011 @ 12:56pm | Report comment
No one is suggesting the Sydney AFL ratings will be better than NRL. As was pointed out above – the game will be foxtell so it will be impossible to tell how many come from Sydney as they are Australia wide.
But, if the AFL can crack a FTA audience of say 150k. And the Foxtel audience (Australia wide) is say 300k, then that is a win. Out of that 300k I assume 200 – 250k would be NSW based
Finally, as was also pointed out above – given the Eels are hosting, they aren’t going to get anymore than 20k into the ground. So I’d be staggered if their crowd was bigger (if it is, then the AFL has a really big problem on their hands)
November 10th 2011 @ 1:09pm
Kasey said | November 10th 2011 @ 1:09pm | Report comment
If that were the objective clipper, for the AFL to just be able to trump the NRL by sprouting the higher crowd figure, putting my devil’s advocate hat on..whats to stop the AFL either dropping the price of tickets to the bare minimum or even giving away a few thousand in the lead up to the game?
November 10th 2011 @ 1:31pm
clipper said | November 10th 2011 @ 1:31pm | Report comment
Yes, Kasey, I agree – happens a lot, and could also happen the other way – when asked why the Storms crowd figures were down this year, the head honcho there said it was because they no longer gave out free tickets. The trouble is that if prices are low or free, then everyone will expect that all the time, and will be hard to grow the game that way.
November 10th 2011 @ 2:31pm
Australian Rules said | November 10th 2011 @ 2:31pm | Report comment
Undoubtedly, there’ll be plenty of free tickets given away, as there is with the launch of any event or team. Sydney FC were giving out free tix last week, Storm also did it for years as mentioned above and I’m sure the Suns did in 2011.
Big crowds is one thing that makes AFL special in this country and with the Giants being such a long-term investment, the AFL will have no qualms in subsidising tickets for years if they need to. It’s the only way you can build, from scratch, a culture of going to the footy week in week out.
November 11th 2011 @ 1:43am
Bondy said | November 11th 2011 @ 1:43am | Report comment
G, day Kasey, i was watching Real vs Osasuna at 9.55 pm sunday night which is great for our timezone and the rest of the asian market although the ratings weren’t that good in China 60 million but it’s only just been introduced at that time zone so onwards and upwards .http://footballthroughtheeyes.blogspot.com/2010/03/florentino-perez-was-correct-la-liga.html .
November 11th 2011 @ 9:55pm
Lachlan said | November 11th 2011 @ 9:55pm | Report comment
Dude
Wrong article, im sure there would be soccer ones on this website.
cheers
November 10th 2011 @ 10:14am
Mark Young said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:14am | Report comment
I don’t think what the AFL does with GWS will really effect Rugby League at all.
The Rugby League fans are not suddenly thinking if they should go to a GWS game instead of their team, they are going to continue watching their team, regardless of what is happening with the AFL.
The greater influence will be on the Sydney Swans who will have to compete with another team for the AFL fans in Sydney.
And of course, the poor old Melbourne AFL fans who are kindly providing GWS with their best young talent.
November 10th 2011 @ 10:41am
clipper said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:41am | Report comment
Mark, there shouldn’t be many Swans fans who would swap over to GWS. It’s a completely different demographic – most Swans fans are from the East, Inner City and North Shore – the only swap may occur in the hills area. This is why GWS will struggle, at least initially, as the GWS area is RL heartland, whereas the other areas are not.
November 10th 2011 @ 11:00am
JamesP said | November 10th 2011 @ 11:00am | Report comment
Clipper you are spot on – they will struggle intially no doubt. But the potential is great if they can really develop an us vs them mentality. The last thing you need is for GWS to be exactly like the Swans (which is what some on these threads have mentioned in the past). Sheeds knows what he’s doing…
November 10th 2011 @ 12:08pm
Jaceman said | November 10th 2011 @ 12:08pm | Report comment
The melbourne Storm have used Qlds best talent for 10 years to have a winning team so News can sell pay-TV subs in Melbourne and I havent seen any complaints until the NRL stepped in (way too late) to stop these players obviously being drafted to melbourne at over the odds match payments. Everyone could see what was happening but nothing happened. At least the AFL is upfront about the subsidy it is giving to GWS and most people understand this has paid its way to the $1.4Bn TV deal..
November 10th 2011 @ 1:01pm
Mark Young said | November 10th 2011 @ 1:01pm | Report comment
Jaceman I agree with you wholeheartedly.
It is enormously annoying that a bulk of QLD talent has been shipped down the Hume to win premierships for a team that exists primarily to help our TV deal.
I don’t think two wrongs make a right though.
The other factor which makes this whole endeavour kind of silly is that they are not like the Melbourne Storm, they are more like the Melbourne Rockets, or the Melbourne Stars, or whatever a second Melbourne NRL would be.
And the Swans have a good level of support, but the crowd and TV numbers they are getting are hardly suggesting Sydney is gagging for another team.
Either way, the folk from Sydney can carry on loving league, while the folk from Melbourne can carry on loving AFL with no-one really caring about the other code.
Circle of life really.
November 10th 2011 @ 2:33pm
Jaceman said | November 10th 2011 @ 2:33pm | Report comment
My point is AFL going to new areas but NRL wont try its luck after being burnt on Western reds, Adelaide rams etc. The fact that Stokes owns the perth newspaper means the NRL will have to bargain something to get reasonable coverage..
November 14th 2011 @ 12:06pm
voodoo people said | November 14th 2011 @ 12:06pm | Report comment
Apples and Oranges.
For the NRL, 55% of the nations population is in heartland states NSW and Qld, and it still doesn’t have the balance right between NSW and Qld. Then there is the big market capitals in AFL states which have unique attractions such as advertising, timeslots, payTV subscriptions…
The AFLs position is very different – SA cannot suport any more sides, there is financial preasure to reduce the Melbourne centric view in Victoria, and WA could maybe support another side but probably not in short term. Tasmania is worthless for new revenue. AFL must target NSW and Queensland just to maintain its current market share with population growth.
The AFL’s only options are to push on is the two big markets where it is very weak, and maybe look to a relocation from Melbourne to another heartland area like Tasmania.
NRL still has to sort out Queensland, rationalise Sydney a little, then look to the big untapped markets like Perth, Wellington, and Adelaide. With population growth in NSW and Queensland I’d guess the next 4 NRL licences will be Perth, Western Corridor, Wellington and either Central Coast or Sunshine Coast (depending on a Sydney relocation).
That would make it 10 NSW, 5 Qld, 2 NZ, 1 Vic, 1 ACT, 1 WA, State of Origin, Internationals.
November 14th 2011 @ 5:01pm
Horatio said | November 14th 2011 @ 5:01pm | Report comment
Better split..
November 10th 2011 @ 10:26am
All-Codes said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:26am | Report comment
No suprise really,
I wonder if they are going head to head in Canberra at the same time slot, that will be an interesting one. I hope they dont I was looking forward to a Canberra visit for a weekend of sport GWS and Raiders. That would be a good little weekend away.
November 10th 2011 @ 11:01am
JamesP said | November 10th 2011 @ 11:01am | Report comment
Whether they go head to head depends entirely on the NRL – the full AFL fixture has been out for a couple of weeks now.
November 10th 2011 @ 11:30am
M1tch said | November 10th 2011 @ 11:30am | Report comment
It’s impossible for the NRL to not have any clashes, remembering, the super rugby will be on and the aleague will still be running, games will clash.
November 10th 2011 @ 10:37am
King of the Gorgonites said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:37am | Report comment
At the end of the day RL gets the biggest ratings on FTA. RU gets the biggest ratings on Pay TV. AFL is an over-hyped beast.
November 10th 2011 @ 10:58am
me, I like football said | November 10th 2011 @ 10:58am | Report comment
The AFL gets the biggest ratings on FTA
November 10th 2011 @ 11:02am
BigAl said | November 10th 2011 @ 11:02am | Report comment
Well ! – don’t just sit there at your computer screen – dash around immediately to each and every TV executive with this latest finding of yours.
November 10th 2011 @ 11:03am
JamesP said | November 10th 2011 @ 11:03am | Report comment
Lets not start this again…
When you compater internationals and SoO and other propeorties the AFL does not get – NRL is just in front.
Dotn forget they also have had more H&A games in the past too – which adds to the cumalative audience
When you compare game by game week by week Home and away games, the AFL average much more
Next year will be more interesting as there will be a similar amount of H&A games for each code