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When you flick on the TV and see one code played in front of a packed stadium and the other in front of empty seats, which would you think is in better health?
There’s no two ways about it – the Big Bash League is absolutely smoking the A-League at the box office.
When the Gabba, the Adelaide Oval and the WACA are for all intents and purposes sold out over the long weekend – not to mention the 70,000 who piled into the MCG for the BBL’s Melbourne derby – it’s clear which competition has captured the Australian public’s attention.
That said, we’re comparing apples with oranges here.
One competition is a seven-month, 10-team marathon featuring clubs from two countries, while the other is a five-week, eight-team sprint traditionally characterised as ‘just not cricket’ by even the game’s most fervent supporters.
I’ve watched a few Big Bash League games this season but I’d struggle to recall a single result.
I couldn’t even figure out which Sydney team was supposed to be which, and I haven’t got the first idea of who actually plays for them.
If the A-League is a franchise league, then Big Bash is more like a circus – but you certainly can’t say it’s not a successful one.
And questions should really be asked of why Football Federation Australia has seemingly been so willing to sit on its hands and simply cede much of the summer over to its rival.
At the same time the BBL was rocking the MCG, A-League fans tuned into the familiar sight of two blokes and a sheep rocking up to Westpac Stadium to watch Wellington Phoenix go around.
It didn’t help that it was bucketing down in the Kiwi capital, but then the rain in Melbourne didn’t exactly hold back the crowds from the MCG.
After being given an ultimatum by the FFA last year, Wellington supporters have responded by consistently not showing up to games. It’s maddening.
Meanwhile, Western Sydney’s enforced move from Parramatta Stadium couldn’t have come at a worse time, and the Wanderers will eventually move into their new home ground with fewer fans than they started with.
So what’s the answer? It’s not, I would venture to say, sitting around and pretending like the Big Bash League doesn’t exist.
We’ve tried that for a few seasons now and the results don’t flatter the A-League.
Perhaps we could start by acknowledging that while the Big Bash League represents the high point of a provincial sport played only in a handful of countries, football remains a global phenomenon.
So maybe snubbing players like Alessandro Diamanti and Eduardo isn’t the most sensible tactic, since we’re never going to get the equivalent of the world’s best players down here anyway.
If the Tim Cahill experiment has taught us anything, it’s that big-name marquees will only bring so many extra fans through the gate, so perhaps it’s time to focus on lifting the overall standard of football.
We also need to do better with our free-to-air coverage, which has languished for too long in Standard Definition on SBS2 – not helped one bit by lacklustre scheduling.
Lack of budget remains a perennial problem, but we also need to see some more marketing around specific fixtures – something certain clubs are starting to do better than others.
Still, we can be sure the A-League has made some critics sit up and take notice, if a tweet from the Sydney Morning Herald sports reporter Andrew Wu last night is anything to go by.
“A comp where 0% of crowd remember result next day would still be better than the A-League,” tweeted Wu.
I’m not quite sure of the specific methodology behind Wu’s conclusion, but perhaps we should console ourselves with one simple premise.
The A-League might not be the best in the world, but at least when the next Melbourne derby kicks off, we’ll be able to tell which team is which.