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Friday night marks the start of Super XV, unquestionably the best domestic rugby competition in the world. But I, like many fans, won’t see a minute of it. And it’s not through a lack of interest or enthusiasm.
Join The Roar’s Super Rugby Tipping comp now and savour the banter on Mondays.
Rather, it’s because the viewers are now limited to two groups of fans: those with Pay TV, and those that go to the game. Neither of this applies to me.
I can sense the derision from rugby devotees. (*Snort*) “Some fan you are”.
Well, I read Greg Crowden every Monday morning and subscribe to Spiro, went to the Bledisloe last year in my Wallaby jersey and remember as a kid being woken up by my dad to watch Mark Ella score a try in every game as we won the Grand Slam.
I also live many hours from Sydney, with my new family, and have a big mortgage which makes heading to a game or the pub a lot harder than it used to be. I am sure that this season, there will be the chance to catch a live game or at least, sneak down to the pub a few times.
But when forced to choose, it will be to watch my favourite Rugby League team before the Waratahs take the stage.
I could, of course, get Pay TV, where the coverage of all four major codes is terrific, with almost every game live and uninterrupted. However, thanks to the Australian public’s love affair with sport, the Federal Government has stepped in to allow people like me to watch almost all the sport I want to see without forking out an extra dollar.
It is only the unfortunate rugby and football aficionados who have to get Pay TV in order to enjoy their games.
Fans of most other sports — like cricket, rugby league, AFL, basketball and motor-racing – are very nicely served by the free-to-air channels.
Unfortunately for rugby, and also the A-League, this leaves lots of fans like me, who enjoy the game, but have other sporting passions, left in the cold. We hear about the games, read about them in the paper and on the internet, but don’t get the chance to see any of them.
Worryingly, as time goes by, there are more and more people who will become accustomed to competitions such as the Super XV and A-League happening in the background, with the total interest level getting progressively smaller as the years go by.
This situation is made even worse when you sit down to watch the evening news where, to be blunt, if the sport isn’t on their channel, it didn’t happen.
Every day, millions of Australians are exposed to the news services, breakfast shows, and current affairs shows of the free-to-air networks. These are the same networks spending enormous amounts of money buying the rights to broadcast certain games and need to make an enormous amount of money selling adverts in the middle of them.
It is no surprise that they push their own products hard and pay lip service to sports making money for their competitors.
Pay TV has been hugely important to both rugby and football in Australia.
The dollars paid for the Super Rugby competition kept the players in the code when Super League was threatening to strip the ranks and it funded the football renaissance that was such a wonderful feature of the last decade.
But as long as both domestic competitions are kept from free-to-air television, and the mainstream media will continue to ignore them, fans like me will continue to miss them and popularity will decrease.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.