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A client of mine holds a senior position in sports media for one of Australia’s leading media buying companies. He advises his board on all sports and how big their sponsorship and advertising spend should be.
If you guys can recall I wrote an article ten months before the AFL media deal was signed and was only $15 million off the target. It was this guy who told me the figure and why.
What he tells me is there are tipping points that trigger interest from sponsors and the media generally. The key indicators are ratings, crowds, media space, and net hits. More than most he is aware of the changing media delivery platforms.
He has told me that when certain points are reached and held over some time, heads will turn.
Football this year has had 23 maybe more games rating over 100,000.
Crowds are currently 12,300 season on average and that is after some of the worst weather over the last month or so.
The A-League is rating around 78,000 overall. The 78,000 does not include the New Zealand ratings, which for Wellington games is between 13k and 40K this season.
For other A-League matches I am not sure. But it is reasonable to say the A-League has a combined Australian and New Zealand rating in the low 80s.
The media has been far friendlier to Football this year than it ever has before. Many general sports commentators are even starting to defend attacks from traditional sources like violence at games, having a go at the game itself.
Some that come to mind are Richard Hinds from Fairfax, Offsiders on the ABC, John Stanley on radio 2UE, and Phil Rothfield from News Limited.
Essentially the A-League is now standing on its own feet without the need of the Socceroos for headlines.
My client says the A-League is within a few points [his term] of getting some very positive coverage.
Essentially the numbers say the audience is bigger for the positives and the acceptance is such that the positive stories will not deter fans from other codes.
A mistake I use to make is to assume that guys like him do not pay attention to the media coverage as a correlation to the ratings and crowds.
To explain, cricket receives masses of coverage yet its ratings have been falling for a while now. Football’s media compared to cricket over summer is a fraction at best 10 percent.
Yet aside from the Big Bash, other cricket numbers are not so high for cricket to maintain their current coverage.
My client tells me if the A-League could grow its crowds above 13,500, and Fox ratings over 90,000 next year or the year after, then in the latter part of the season and in the next season (say 12 months from now) there will be a huge shift in acceptance.
The positive coverage will continue if the figures keep going up, and so will the overall acceptance.
He also said the W-League and the Matildas are a very important cog in football’s future. His reason was if women have played football they will by and large understand and appreciate it and are a huge untapped market.
He said football is at a very real tipping point, not there yet, but not that far away.
I would be interested in the thoughts of fellow Roarers – do you think football is getting ready to explode?
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