The Roar
The Roar

AFL
Advertisement

Hold the brakes on AFL expansion

23rd May, 2017
Advertisement
Are you not entertained? (AAP Image/David Moir)
Roar Guru
23rd May, 2017
85
1885 Reads

Three closely related issues floated in the background of the AFL this week, behind the jumper punches and the injuries and the comparisons of flawed title contenders.

Both issues speak to the general philosophy of the AFL as an organisation and as an association of clubs.

One is the decision two weeks ago to freeze the number of clubs competing in the AFLW in 2018 at eight, the same eight teams which battled this February and March.

The intent is to expand by just two teams in 2019 despite the intense interest of at least six of the current AFL franchises in fielding a women’s team as soon as allowed.

The second is the fallout from the home-and-away game held in Shanghai in Round 8 between Port Adelaide and Fold Coast – sorry, Gold Coast.

Despite the game being a sell-out, the general tenor of the conversation following the game was more appropriate to a novelty event, rather than a landmark, first-of-its-kind game that would set the precedent for a series of such fixtures in the future.

Finally, while not currently drawing large numbers, support in Hobart and Launceston for the Hawks and Kangaroos games continue to pprove that a full-time Tasmanian team could be as economically viable as the last two franchises introduced.

Yet no desire to place one there has been evident.

Advertisement

All of these decisions show a conservative approach from the AFL as an administrative body that should not surprise anyone who’s followed the game for any length of time.

While the league brass is more than willing to tinker with rule changes, schedule formats, playoff tickets and fighting regulations from moment to moment, anything requiring investment of capital is looked upon with great trepidation.

Whether that’s good or bad depends on your own opinion.

Let’s set aside the day-to-day discussions – all the questions laid out a moment ago, about rules and schedules and playoffs and such. We don’t have room for both topics here.

But when it comes to expanding the game into new markets, the AFL has consistently shown itself to be on the side of concern. If you were the holder of the purse strings, you might very well have the same opinion.

It’s easy for us to roar, ‘Tasmania deserves a team!’ or ‘The success was there this year! Let’s make the AFLW a 12-team league next fall!’. But if we’re wrong, we’re not the ones who would be left paying the bills. The AFL is. (And then us, because they’d have to make it back somewhere.)

These issues are all related: Tasmania, China, and AFLW expansion. They all involve the assumption that professional footy has audiences out there waiting to consume the product in numbers exceeding what’s currently doing so. But consider where we’ve been first.

Advertisement

Touk Miller Gold Coast Suns AFL 2017

The immediate precursor of the AFL, the original Victorian Football League, was indeed ‘Victorian’ from its official beginning in 1897 until about 1980. Its members were clustered in and about greater Melbourne for those eight decades. In fact, exactly the same 12 clubs participated (with wartime exceptions only) from 1925 through 1981.

But by then, there were competitive teams across the country in other leagues. Expansion for the VFL first meant a tentative toe in the pool, a move from south Melbourne to Sydney before the 1982 season. And then the addition of the Bears in Brisbane and the Eagles on the West Coast in 1987.

It eventually led to the full-out name change of the league in 1990, the self-declaration as the nation’s footy league. Additions in Adelaide (1991) and Fremantle (1995) had root clubs in place already when they were annexed, and then the league sat at a very manageable 16 teams for 15 years.

Then, it decided to force expansion.

New teams were planted in western Sydney and the Gold Coast. These were not organically-born clubs like the last two franchises, or all of the original teams. The powers-that-be sensed a pair of markets that would be economically viable to expand their product, and expand they did.

However, the backlash from traditionalists has been biting. While banner banter is meant to be light-hearted and witty, there was an ounce of bite in the Bulldogs’ banner when they came to play at GWS last September.

Advertisement

“Your club was born in blood and boots – not in AFL focus groups.”

That isn’t an unusual sentiment around the league. When I was first pressured to claim a team around then (being American, I have no geographic alliances), I half-sarcastically cast my heart with the Giants, because they didn’t seem to have any fans of their own.

Meanwhile, Australians have spoken with their feet. The average attendance at an AFL game has been over 31,500 every year since 1997. Of the other 16 clubs, the lowest game-average attendance over the past 20 years is for Brisbane at just under 25,000. (North and the Bulldogs are next above them on the list, just under 27,000.)

Sydney is 11th out of those 16, at just under 31,000. Placing second teams near Brisbane and Sydney, given those numbers, might be questioned in hindsight.

The result? The average combined attendance at Gold Coast and GWS games since their entry into the league seven and six years ago, respectively, just barely equals that of Brisbane.

Gold Coast has had perhaps the most exciting player of his generation, Gary Ablett Jr, as its headliner for all seven seasons of its existence, although injuries the last two years have taken the lustre off that.

GWS now claim the title of premier favourites for 2017, at least before injuries started decimating their list. And yet attendance in those communities continues to disappoint.

Advertisement

I won’t pretend that a losing product the first several years doesn’t hurt. Culture issues with the Suns may have taken their toll on the east coast, code competition is stronger there than in Melbourne, and the size of the stadiums themselves aren’t going to threaten any MCG records.

The point is, the AFL has reason to be conservative about expansion on any level right now.

The best leagues in the world took these steps slowly, and at some level with the quality of the product in mind as much as the money to be made.

JJ Watt of the Houston Texans

The Houston Texans were the last NFL expansion team, introduced in 2002. (Jeffrey Beall / Wikimedia Commons)

The Canadian Football League tried a massive southward expansion in 1993 when (despite financial issues for virtually every Canadian team already) it accepted the Sacramento Gold Miners, joined the next year by four other US teams.

By 1996, however, the American experiment was history, a financial mess that only produced modest interest in the States and a whole lot of upset Canadians, as oxymoronic as that concept sounds.

The various American competitors to the National Football League usually were in it for the fast buck. But the XFL, the WFL, the UFL, the WAFL, and Donald Trump’s USFL all came on with money and television contracts and the hopes of carving a niche for themselves.

Advertisement

Instead, they ran themselves into bankruptcy, all within five years, usually less, trying to present themselves at unsustainable levels of competence. (Like our current president.)

On the other hand, the WNBA has been playing women’s pro basketball in the US with the financial support of the NBA for 20 years now, and despite that nest egg has never rushed to expand unreasonably.

The league has ranged from its original eight teams up to 12, but never beyond that number. As one franchise began to struggle, another home would usually be found for the team.

Even the mighty National Football League, with the resources of a small nation and the American populace in the palm of its hand, has been smart enough to barely dip its toes into international waters. They just put on once-a-year games in Mexico City (to 150,000 people) and three to four games per year in London (to sell-out crowds in Wembley).

It had experimented over the previous 25 years with the World League of American Football (with teams in the US, Canada, and Europe), which brought the CFL expansion the following year to fill the void left by its closing. And ‘NFL Europe’, which had some success as a training ground for NFL players, officials, and even rule experimentation over the course of 15 seasons.

So, based on historical precedent, going slowly on all fronts is the wise move. Based on the ‘double-G’ experiment in the AFL’s most recent expansion, being cautious is understandable.

As tempting as the Tasmanian market is, if none of the current clubs think they can make an 11-game go at it each season, tapping the brakes is smart. (And don’t ask about more games in the Northern Territory just yet, either.)

Advertisement

And when 10,000 Chinese (judging from the broadcast, most of whom weren’t Chinese) turning up, in a city of far more than ten million, is considered a reason for excitement? Flying that far to play in the smog seems like too much wandering even for this Wanderer just yet.

close