After that breathtaking grand final between the Brisbane Roar and the Central Coast Mariners, it’s worthwhile to sit back and reflect on the season that has been.
Most football followers would agree that it has been one of the best seasons on record on the field. The standard of play and the creative attacking football on display has been hailed by many as the best ever witnessed in domestic Australian football.
With that the Brisbane Roar set a domestic football record of going 28 games in a row unbeaten – a feat that will be very hard to improve on and a winning record that may stand for many years to come.
Season six of the Hyundai A-League has also been a record year for the aggregate attendances of any A-League season so far. The 2010-11 A-League season proper aggregate attendance of 1,395,734 sets a new attendance record, beating last year’s figure of 1,322,475 by nearly 75,000 spectators.
The total aggregate A-League attendance of 1,529,390 including the finals series, is also a record. This is another milestone and the first time more than 1.5 million spectators have attended an A-League season.
The A-League also passed its seven millionth spectator milestone during HAL season six.
After losing North Queensland Fury and the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) planning to possibly shorten HAL season seven to accommodate one less team and avoid the AFL and NRL finals, these attendance records may stand for many years to come.
The A-League grand final also proved to be an Australian pay TV ratings winner with over 400,000 watching the nail biting penalty shoot out finale. This was despite the fact that the game was played on the same weekend as the NRL opening round of the season and went head to head with the NRL Sunday match of the day.
This is 30 per cent more than the Australian pay TV audience for the Sydney FC versus Melbourne Victory A-League grand final of 2010.
Internationally the A-League was a big winner too and was shown to over 80 million households around the world and an estimated TV audience of between 30 to 50 million viewers.
The game was also featured in football betting around the world and shown live in pubs, clubs and betting shops across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The next day, bloggers on football websites from all around the world were discussing the “fantastic” and “awesome play off final” from Australia.
HAL season six is done and dusted and has raised a lot of discussions during the season in the media, internet, pubs, clubs, work places and homes. In fact, our domestic football competition has never received so much attention and is very pleasing to note, from that point of view.
I’m sure season seven of the Hyundai A-League will be just as controversial, noteworthy and exciting and looking forward to it already, even if we may have to wait an extra few weeks to see it kick off in 2011.
More importantly, we wait in anticipation for the FFA’s A-League review and what changes and reforms will be introduced before the start of HAL 7.0.
MyLeftFoot
Roar Guru
Cassio has won AU club champion award
Titus
Guest
Does she seriously think it is in a worse financial position than when we couldn't afford to fly our European based players home for a world cup qualifier against NZ.
MyLeftFoot
Roar Guru
No doubt about it.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned" (The Mourning Bride by William Congreve (Act III, Scene VIII).
ItsCalledFootball
Roar Guru
That was you Pip pretending to be Bonita, wasn't it? This season is going to be great, just you wait - 2 teams in WC finals, the 2014 WC qualifers for the Socceroos will kick off, the FFA will get back in the black and the A-League will bounce back bigger than ever - just you wait and see.
MyLeftFoot
Roar Guru
Bonita Mersiades has just tweeted: that the FFA is in "worse hands & financial position than ever "
RedOrDead
Roar Guru
Axelv - The irony in this is that Ben Buckley used the MLS and J-League as examples of the "teething problems" they had when he was shutting down the Fury! It's funny how they have selective memory almost saying, "We remember the MLS also made a couple of mistakes, but we won't learn from them, we'll just make the exact same mistakes too". This will all change when Lyall approaches these issues with an open mind. The MLS realised that it's the patrons and members that make football what it is and less the deep pockets of mining magnates! Lyall thinks "it's all about making money and we need more Clive Palmers!" whereas it should be more, "let's connect with the football public and grass-roots and give them a better match day experience". Why is it that everyone but the FFA sees this? I mean, if we're completely wrong and there's things we don't know or understand the FFA should come out publicly and "educate" us...but until they do, we're just going to continue to think that they are stubborn, thick-headed idiots that only think about filling up their pockets!
ItsCalledFootball
Roar Guru
Its just some personnel changes at the top - excellent news about Kyle Patterson taking over media and communications. A real positive person for football. The real details yet to come on how they will "engage with grass roots and traditional followers of the game". There will also be more announcements about the A-League season, start date, fixtures, improvements etc. Lots of other things happening and rich overseas buyers looking to get into the A-League and shore up the finances for the long term good of the game. All positive, all good - our administration is not perfect - hey which one ever is - but they are listening to the fans and doing something about it, even with their limited financial resources, compared to other codes.
MyLeftFoot
Roar Guru
I haven't come across this anywhere else, but it looks like the FFA restructuring report has been released: http://www.thefootballsack.com/2011/03/ffa-in-management-restructure-after.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thefootballsack%2Ffeed+%28The+Football+Sack%29&utm_content=Twitter
Axelv
Guest
True, however SBS has brought in ad's to their programs as a source of revenue. The income tax towards SBS would be in the tune of a few cents per year, in comparison to Fox Sports which is $720 dollars per year if you choose to pay.
Chris
Guest
SBS is free? It's called Income Tax.
Michael
Guest
Great discussion you guys are in. Lots of good points. I hope that FFA does listen to the supporters, and despite your disdain for FFA and Victory's matchday security, I hope you lads DO continue to go to games because it's people like you we need there.
RedOrDead
Roar Guru
Mmmmm.....cake!
Axelv
Guest
Yeah, but the thing is, when you take into account that most Melbourne Heart supporters use to support Victory in earlier seasons, and most GCU fans supported Queensland Roar in earlier seasons, because these people support australian football, not only have the expansion teams brought averages down because of their lower attendances, but they also increase the divider factor to work out the average, if they were to combine the averages would be 11,000 compared to the other 8 team seasons. E.g lets say we have 1 team that gets 20,000 average, or we have that same market getting 2 teams that get 14,000 and 6000, that's an average of 10,000. despite the same number of people, the average has halved yet the amount of people are the same, because there is 2 teams. Larger averages of 8 teams is a much bigger figure than lesser averages of 11 teams despite the same amount of total audience, theres a big difference even if it seems minor
con
Guest
lol i love how you put the melbourne link of me speaking as an example
ItsCalledFootball
Roar Guru
Avg A-League attendance per game was 8,459 during regular season. http://www.worldfootball.net/zuschauer/aus-a-league-2010-2011/1/ Finals Series average attendance was 19,094. Ave attendance in total, including finals, was 8,892 per game. Excellent results really, given all the dramas and the atrociuos summer weather for watching football games..
Ben of Phnom Penh
Guest
after reading all of this I need a little lie down :)
Midfielder
Guest
Are the Fold players reading Palmers mind...
MyLeftFoot
Roar Guru
No conspiracy. You'll find your answer if you read my post carefully. Or simply research the traffic of some of these other sites, if you are truly interested in getting to the bottom of it.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
So, let me see if I understand ARF-logic ... 1. The ARFers tell us that the reason the commercial print media is so heavily weighted with ARF content is b/c ARF is so popular in Australia. But ... 2. If an independent sports website is heavily weighted with Football & Rugby content, according to the ARFers, this is not due to a lack of interest in ARF in Australia in regions outside Melbourne, Adelaide & Perth. Rather, it is the result of a deep geographically-orchestrated conspiracy against ARF.