The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Are football's TV ratings actually important?

Roar Guru
12th December, 2017
Advertisement
Melbourne Victory have knocked off Sydney FC to go through to the A-League grand final (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Roar Guru
12th December, 2017
183
1608 Reads

I was one of the people who believed football could rate an audience of between 200,000 and 300,000 per match on a commercial free-to-air station.

This was all based on two things. The first was that the media would go from hostile to positive, whereas in reality, negative media has gone into hyperdrive.

The second was that Network Ten would promote football. The kind would say they have been poor, the cruel would say they have been pathetic.

I often read US websites and a recent tweet had me puzzled. It said that the traditional US sports were all losing ratings and that only football showed a growth, though it was only four to eight per cent off a small base depending on the broadcaster.

One particular football site I read is called Big Soccer, and reading from its forums over the years I concluded that the biggest fan groups in the US are millennials or generation Y, who were born between 1977 and 2002, and generation Z, or centennials, who were born after 2002. I can recall reading research in Australia also saying these were also the biggest groups we have.

I became somewhat confused as to why MLS was growing while other sports were failing, and in trying to answer my own question I stumbled upon the 2017 Web Summit.

While watching some of the YouTube videos I realised I had deserted basic business principles in looking at Australian football, so here are my two huge confessions: free-to-air TV ratings are nowhere near as important as we think, and we need to go back to basic business principals on broadcast platforms.

Advertisement

Further to the video above is a 2016 Conversation article that suggests that a bottom-up approach is the way to go, which lends enormous support to the creation of a second division and for promotion and relegation when ready.

In the video, one presenter described the various media platforms and breaks them down not by race, gender, or wealth but by age. He says in brief that TV is a ‘boomer’ platform and neither millennials nor gen Z watch TV. They prefer digital platforms.

In another video, generation Z people are described as being different to millennials in that they love creating for platforms.

What this says to me is a digital platform could be more important for football than free-to-air TV. Consider the following calculations.

Last year’s ratings had the A-League attracting roughly a third of the AFL’s audience. Fox paid the AFL $220 million per year for approximately 220 games of three hours duration – that’s $220 million for 660 hours or $333,333 per hour. Football provides 140 games of two hours duration – or 280 hours for $50 million or $178,571 per hour – which is 53 per cent of the AFL’s hourly rate.

Free-to-air TV can blame the FFA if it wants to, but nobody wanted the rights and we got $4 million.

Attempting to tie this together, football’s fan base doesn’t watch free-to-air TV; they watch online platforms, meaning we would be better off on Facebook, Amazon, YouTube or some other digital broadcaster.

Advertisement

The AFL, NRL, rugby union and cricket models that have traditional baby boomer and generation X audiences who are already fixed to their codes do not fit with our fan base. I would go further and the next FFA CEO should be a millennial.

In summary, free-to-air TV does not fit our fan demographic but still has a place in the evolution of football.

close