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In a week where the biggest issue being discussed is the ’40/20 rule’ and ‘ballboy-gate’, I enjoyed an article by one of my favourite NRL journalists, Brad Walters, earlier today.
Match scheduling is something which we have discussed numerous times here at Ladies who League. For me this issue comes down to one key question and it’s a question which unfortunately can only be answered by the NRL administration and the broadcasters when it is time to renew the broadcast deal and that’s ‘would the NRL prefer for rugby league fans to attend games live or are they simply content with large audience numbers watching from the couch?’
There are two time slots which I would like to target in this story and the first one is Thursday night football.
Only one group of people enjoy watching Thursday night football and that’s people who watch from home.
For those people who enjoy attending live football, Thursday nights are basically impossible. This time slot is a perfect example of the NRL administration deciding with the broadcasters to schedule football with an aim of achieving a large television audience.
Thursday night is hard for professionals, for people with children or for people who need to travel a distance in order to attend the game.
It will be interesting to see the crowd turn out this Thursday night between the Canterbury Bulldogs and South Sydney Rabbitohs. This game has the potential to be a crowd pleaser.
There are two very popular Sydney teams with large fan-bases, playing exciting football. The Bulldogs are now back in the hunt for a top four finish and the Rabbitohs are on the march to September.
Instead of seeing upwards of 30,000 fans attend this game, as should be the case, I will be surprised to see more than 20,000 – which is disappointing, irrespective of the size of the television audience.
Was the NRL not embarrassed by the less-than-15,000 fans which attended the South Sydney Rabbitohs v Brisbane Broncos game last Thursday night?
I understand that the NRL is a business – the latest broadcasting deal was the largest in the sport’s history. However, surely we can work towards a model which suits home viewers and members and fans who like to watch live football. A schedule which encourages family attendance and demonstrates to the next generation of fans that there is nothing quite like live football.
The next time slot is of course, Monday night football. Most fans have simply come to accept that this is part of NRL life now – but I still think it is a concept which needs to be reviewed. I just don’t think it’s working and if you look at crowd figures for this year on a Monday night, you would probably agree.
Brad Walters discusses this in his article too and suggests that despite a poor attendance like the 6345 to see the Sydney Roosters take on the Gold Coast Titans an audience of 225,000 on Fox Sports is a significant deterrent from scrapping the concept.
Again, it comes back to the basic question – do we want a large television audience or bottoms on seats?
If we want bottoms on seats, scheduling is one aspect which really needs to be considered over the off-season and in the negotiations for the new broadcast deal. If however, we’re content with large television audiences, then perhaps it’s time our teams got used to playing in front of empty stadiums.
P.S. For anyone interested in Brad Walters piece, you can find it here: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/why-NRL-clubs-want-more-sunday-afternoon-matches-20140818-105bcm.html
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