The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

The stadiums thing? Less is more, baby. Less is more.

15th December, 2017
Advertisement
The proposed redevelopment of Allianz Stadium has hit road blocks ahead of the NSW state election. (Image: Facebook/Allianz Stadium)
Expert
15th December, 2017
92
2679 Reads

The Sydney stadiums thing? We still talking about it?

We are? Okay then. Let’s talk about it.

But let’s talk about it with someone who knows what they’re talking about. Hunter Fujak is an academic at the University of Technology Sydney and has been doing a PhD focused on “quantitative modelling of sport and media consumption,” according to the internet.

For the last four years he’s been adding to a CV that contains “cross-disciplinary experience across accounting and sport management, holding a CPA designation and a Masters degree in sport management.”

Whatever that means, chances are he knows more than you.

And so I asked him about the stadiums thing and what can rugby league, specifically, do to get more people in.

Because you can have as shiny a big bastard of a stadium as you like, if the punters won’t come, it’s just as big an echo chamber.

And the punters aren’t coming for a variety of reasons.

Advertisement

But Hunter Fujak’s data is quantitative. And numbers don’t lie. And so I asked him this:

Matt Cleary: So, Hunter Fujak, if that really is your name, where do you think our greatest game of all, rugby league, should go – or will go – in the next few years to get more in the gates? They’ve got an apparently independent commission – though the great God of Television will surely still control scheduling – and they must have an idea of their direction. But do they? And what it it?

Hunter Fujak: “I think there are two components [to increased attendances]. If you think about economics you’ve got supply and demand. And I think the one thing NRL is trying to figure out is the supply side.

“Any business can control supply a lot easier than they can control demand. And so we’ve seen the draw come out and I think they’re starting to cotton-on to the fact that there are too many games in Sydney.

“And they’ve also realised, you know what, we don’t really have the power to force a team to go.

“In the past, they’ve offered $10-$15 million dollars for a team to up shop and no one bid. So realistically the only way a team is going is if they bankrupt themselves.

“The NRL has realised they can’t force a team to go.

Advertisement

“So the only way we can get less games in Sydney is to get teams to move games from Sydney.

“So from a supply side, I think they realise what they really need to do is try and create scarcity. It looks like their strategy.

[latest_videos_strip category=”rugby-league” name=”Rugby-League”]

“What I think will happen in the future is they’re going to actively decrease games in Sydney per Sydney team to drive up the scarcity.

“Look at the NFL in America. They have the highest average attendance of all sports and they only play a 16-week regular season.

“So they have an incredible amount of scarcity, because there’s only ever six, seven games in any one city. Before you know it the season is wrapped up.

“If you look at the NRL, back in 1995 when there was again basically at the peak of the total amount of clubs, there were 119 games in Sydney in the regular season.

Advertisement

“In 2017 there were 95 games in Sydney. And that’s still a lot of games to be playing over 26 weeks in Sydney.

“So there is absolutely a lack of scarcity. And if we think about last year our suburban grounds were probably at about 50 or 60 per cent capacity. You’d go to Allianz, ANZ, it was more like 10 to 20 per cent capacity.

“This year the Tigers lost two games from Sydney, the Roosters played two games out of Sydney. Souths are taking two games out of Sydney.

“And obviously that’s how we’ve ended up with games in Perth, Adelaide, Christchurch. There’s the doubleheader in Auckland, the doubleheader at Suncorp.

“So given there are so many Sydney teams – and hence so many “derbies” – every Sydney team could realistically play eight home games in Sydney, and 4 ‘home games’ somewhere else.

“Because realistically how much value does a Sharks versus Cowboys game have at Cronulla? How many extra fans does that bring in? Compared to taking that to Cairns?

“If you know there’s roughly one game per month at your home ground, you would like to think that it becomes more an ‘event’.

Advertisement

“If you’re a Manly fan and there’s one game a month at Brookvale you’d like to think that it is much more of an event.

“My biggest recommendation is to identify a fixture list – and I think they’ve done a brilliant job with 2018’s fixture list now that they are controlling it.

“What they need to do is identify all the local derbies, quarantine those and say this is our pool of Sydney games.

“Get the 95 games down to maybe 70 at some point. And find the 70 core games that are most valuable, those are the Sydney games, play them in the right stadiums and the right time slots and all your Cronulla versus Cowboys, your Manly versus Titans, all those games that add relatively little value as a spectacle, those are the ones which you take away to somewhere else where they can add more value.”

close