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How does the A-League rate?

Roar Guru
21st May, 2013
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The Central Coast Mariners head to Melbourne to take on the Victory. (Photo: Paul Barkley/LookPro)
Roar Guru
21st May, 2013
25
1395 Reads

It’s a question we all have an opinion on, fans and detractors alike. A much-publicised survey came out a few weeks ago, ranking Australia in the top 20 leagues of the world, but is this reasonable?

How does the A-League really stack up against the rest of the world?

It’s a question I have asked myself, and in fact I first wrote this piece several months ago trying to answer just that.

It’s never likely to be answered on the pitch, but given the fascination many seem to have for attendance figures, perhaps they might provide one source of comparison.

First, let’s check the history.

After an encouraging start, the A-League attendances quickly grew before undergoing a major slump, and then recovering in the past two years.

While it is impossible to compare that with the established European leagues, we can look at the J-League and MLS, both of which are relatively recent start up leagues, and often used as benchmarks for the A-League.

The J-league kicked off with an average crowd attendance of about 18k and grew to 19.6k in year two, but by season five slumped to only 56 percent of the opening season attendance with 10.1k.

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It took a further seven years to surpass that first season tally with 19k in season 12.

Since then, their total has levelled off at between 18 and 19k, so no real growth since that opening year.

The MLS has a similar story, 17.4k in season one but suffered a steady decline to a low of 13.7k (79 percent) in season five.

It took the MLS a further 11 years to pass the season one total with 17.9k in season 18 (2011) and a 5 percent increase in 2012 to 18.8k

The A-League started with 11.2k, grew to 14.6k in season three, and dived to a meagre 8.4k in season six (74 percent), but recovered dramatically in seasons seven and eight with the recently completed home-and-away season coming in just under 12.7k (113 percent).

The J-League and MLS took 12 and 16 years respectively to surpass their start up averages, while the A-League has taken only eight. Our competition then seems to be doing quite well as a start up league in terms of its own domestic market.

Locally, and just for comparison, the NRL had an average attendance of 8k in 1985, took until 1993 to grow above 12.5k, peaked at 16.5k in 2005, and hasn’t really increased since.

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In fact those figures might be a bit high, given the recent suggestions that some clubs are over inflating attendance figures.

Internationally, from 89 professional association football leagues, the A-League rated 25th in terms of average attendance with 10.8k at the end of the 2011/12 season.

Assuming that most of the other, better established leagues will not have varied too much, the current average of 12.6k would bump that to a very respectable 17th.

Of the sixteen above that, In Europe, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Netherlands, Scotland, Turkey and Russia have leagues with higher attendance averages, the last three being between 13k and 14k.

Where this figure falls down for Australia, is in the number of teams and games played.

Most of those leagues play 34 or 38 games per team, compared with 27 in Australia, which gives them far larger total attendances per season and therefore more income.

Being the major sport in most of those countries also means corporate and TV sponsorship is easier to come by. More money of course means better players and a stronger competition.

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Attendance wise then, the game in Australia does compare favourably with most of the rest of the world.

I would further argue that while future growth in average attendances is desirable, the current level of 12.5k per game is more than acceptable and ranks us appropriately on the world scale.

To improve our playing depth though, our future focus should be to increase the number of games played, either by playing each other four times, or increasing the number of teams.

More games, hopefully means more money, and an improved standard both through more experience for players and coaches, and higher wages keeping more of our better talent in the competition.

A stronger national competition of course will help to create a stronger Socceroos.

A top 20 league with a top 20 national side, I think that those two things should be acceptable and attainable targets for football in this country.

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