AFL misses the mark with global-focused marketing push

I'm a huge fan of footy, but the afl seems to be going out of it's way to make it hard to see any games here in the us. I wasn't able to watch any game but the grand finale last year. If they really want to expand their audience, they need to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible (read basic cable) to gain fans which will lead to sponsors which will lead to the income.

Look I like AFL and it is Australiam bord and bred but i hate to say it "Its a big fish in a small bowl". We all know about it but no one else really does anywhere else. I had some friends from the states who visited and couldnt stand it because they thought it wasnt structured like American football. Well there game is just very loooooong without that much happening. Its all taste isnt it. All codes have their fine points.

The funny thing in all of this is Australian Rules Football is attempting to inject a global flavour and spreading the gospel far and wide in the hope of exanding beyond our shores. Whereas, cricket, the sport best-placed to expand into markets like the USA (2nd biggest online consumer of cricket), Canada and Europe on the back of migrant communities from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bangladesh... and it is run by a small cartel of self-interested countries who are hell-bent on knobbling expansion. The irony.

Ahmed (if that is your real name) you obviously know nothing about other sports. The mark - Gaelic football is the obvious one, Rugby (inside your 22 but until about 40 years ago anywhere), Rugby League (ingoal), Gridion (and no not from a hail mary pass?? from a kick its called a fair catch and means you get theball where you caught it) Goalposts with no crossbar - polo is the only one that comes to mind but originally all football games had this and only came in in the late 1800s due to obvious reasons about how goal should be scored.The behind post are purely AFL but I don't see the reason for them except as a ripoff of the legitimate multiscoring system of Gaelic's unders and overs. How is using a leather ball unique?? Until the 70s that was what all footballs were made of. Just because AFL has said no to modern ball technology does no mean that maes it somehow superior The only skill I can think of that is purely AFL is the skill of chicken chasing :P

ha!

Thanks ciudadmarron & Titus, that is a fascinating read. I would still contest that “In its earliest form is the largely acceptable foot only use of the ball.” is not true as we have discussed, certainly from reading the history of football link I would say it's more than likely the original games used both hands and feet, note a variation from my original stance! Really interesting though! Any more interesting sports history links will be greatly appreciated!

Try this source Reality, "A few centuries later(1300's) another monk wrote that football was a game "in which young men... propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air, but by striking and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet." This chronicler strongly disapproved of the game claiming it was "undignified and worthless" and that it often resulted in "some loss, accident or disadvantage to the players themselves." "According to George Owen (c. 1550) in Wales football was slightly different from the game played in England: "There is a round ball prepared... so that a man may hold it in his hand... The ball is made of wood and boiled in tallow to make it slippery and hard to hold... The ball is called a knappan, and one of the company hurls it into the air... He that gets the ball hurls it towards the goal... the knappan is tossed backwards and forwards... It is a strange sight to see a thousand or fifteen hundred men chasing after the knappan... The gamesters return home from this play with broken heads, black faces, bruised bodies and lame legs... Yet they laugh and joke and tell stories about how they broke their heads... without grudge or hatred." http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fhistory.htm

mostly taken from: Football, the first hundred years : the untold story / Adrian Harvey Also, i didn't mean to suggest that one was more popular than the other. Just that outside the upper class sphere, there were holding games as well as kicking games and they were distinct;and that when codifying, the kicking game (as opposed to a carrying game) was favoured first.Hands could be used but there was clearly a line in the sand re: carrying. Also, it's important to note that until this codification these were not spectator sports - they were leisure activities. In the context of this article note as well that the melbourne rules of 1859 do not state clearly whether carrying is or isn't allowed, and apart from this largely resemble the laws of football popping up in England.

I must admit I may be guilty of following the "official" history then. Can you reference a source? I looked at wikipedia and found various references to middle age writings, they seem to suggest nothing has changed and there where variants of kicking and holding games, I can't see how it can be said with authority that one was more popular than the other though? (yes back tracking from my original comment!) Maybe it's just hard to believe that in the days of public hangings people would turn up to watch the local team kick a ball, when they could be watching them kicking each other?

I must admit I may be guilty of following the "official" history then. Can you reference a source? I looked at wikipedia and found various references to middle age writings, they seem to suggest nothing has changed and there where variants of kicking and holding games, I can't see how it can be said with authority that one was more popular than the other though? (yes back tracking from my original comment!) Maybe it's just hard to believe that in the days of public hangings people would turn up to watch the local team kick a ball, when they could be watching them kicking each other?

Reality, until relatively recently it was thought that early forms of "football" where purely those "get the ball to the other end of the village" mauls and that it was the public schools that invented the modern football codes. Harrow famously was where there was less handling - I seem to recall, funnily enough, that you could only handle it if you took a "mark", and the rest of the time it had to be kicked. However the 19th century colonial/darwinian/imperial minds who codified the games and wrote the histories muddied the waters a bit. There is evidence that football like games, with goals (even behind posts!) were played on smaller fields by the working/pastoral classes in various places before the accepted advent of the games we know today, and that these were quite distinct from the "medieval maul" games. Remember as well that while the FA rules were being drawn up there was already a comp up in Sheffield which limited handling to taking free kicks only. So yes, there was handling, however this was limited. The fact that this was in fact one of the main bones of contention or reasons why the Cambridge rules were codified demonstrates not that handling was everywhere and that they wanted something different, but that handling, and more specifically carrying was creeping in at some places and they wanted to put a stop to it.

"In its earliest form is the largely acceptable foot only use of the ball." It's a common misconception that soccer (Cambridge/Eton rules) came first and the handling games came after, it's actually the other way round! Original street football was very much a "hands on" game, the "foot only" came later with Cambridge school rules (Note, three years after the Rugby rules). I believe (if the Webb Ellis story is actually true) that they would have been mauling the ball around the pitch and he broke free and ran forward with it (you could only run backwards or sideways until that point). There is no reference that he 'picked it up', just that he ran with it. Maybe a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but one that is commonly mis-understood!

Cubby Smith, Our game has had a presence in England since circa 1990 where it was confined to London because of the big expat population. However in recent years it has spread to all corners of Great Britain and Ireland - Albeit only in small numbers. http://www.aflgb.com/main.php?action=clubs Another area is Europe where it has expanded to several countries - Again in small numbers. There is a fair amount activity inter-country competition wise there now. http://www.afleurope.org/

Some of us just simply dont understand the mentality of afl why on earth would you take people to an aussie rules game who are foreign why not to a nrl game or Rugby match,nrls profile is not good geographically internationally so why shouldnt we take people to that,why do some people feel in afl thats its some form of patriotic duty to take foreigners to a sport theyve probably never heared of or will again over many other sports we contest as Australians,what right do you have to assume this? Why with the international profile of R Lge why shouldnt we take people to see this sport and try to expose or exhibit it, why not?. Do afl think of other sports or just I'm still none the wiser redb with the commercial honestly.

Fuss,we've all been overseas,& you can spend a year in the UK & never go to a Football game--I did! But there's this new innovation called TELEVISION! It allows people to watch different types of football games,without having to be there in person:) Of course,you CAN go to various different games in THIS country & get a fair idea about their characteristics-----NFL & Ice Hockey would be exceptions. I,too am doubtful about whether people would come here just to see an AFL game,but they may well do so in passing.

This whole "no one wants to travel here in winter so therefore won't go to AFL" is just stupid. The NAB cup is on now, Summer & Autumn, The regular season Starts in March and has over 2 months of Autumn (some of the best weather in Victoria), three months of Winter, then the finals are in Spring. Basically unless all of our tourist come in the month Of October to January there is plenty of opportunity to take a tourist to an AFL game. Oh and what is the weather like in Qld over winter?

An English summer is pretty close to a Melbourne winter,anyway,so Poms wouldn't much care!:) (At least,it was when I was there!) Also,maybe people from some countries close to the Equator,where the weather is pretty much the same,year round,might want to experience a real winter.

Is it none? I bet it's none.

Why should they have to ask, a decent host would assume they want to see the best Australia has to offer!

"In 40 years living in AUS, I’ve not had even one visiting friend or relative ask to go to an AFL match in Melbourne. I’ve had friends visiting AUS attend AUS Open, F1, Cricket & A-League." Fussball, Ive had heaps of visiting relatives who want to visit AFL games when they are in Australia, they may not come specifically for the AFL, but they definitely take the games in when they are here.