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Johnny Warren often spoke about his dream for Australian football and his famous line ‘I told you so’.
One area he applied his ‘I told you so line’ was football and Australia’s commercial media with one of his wishes, SBS would become no longer be necessary as the commercial media would out bid SBS for football.
Football has returned to SBS, their challenge is almost to make football so popular rival stations will outbid them in the next media deal.
I wondered aloud how hard the task would be and have used two reference sites, Australian Stadiums and the Ultimate A-League.
I considered football’s history in Australia both the good and the bad. I then started to look for some facts that might guide me.
Crowds and rating are two things that stand out if for nothing else than the revenue they bring.
Recently I wrote an article pertaining to whether football in Australia was at a tipping point pertaining to general media coverage.
A client had said the A-League was being watched and if it could improve and hold some of its figures better, more positive media would be received.
Looking for what my client told me and the job ahead I started with the link from Australian Stadiums. The table from Australian Stadiums is a wealth of information and is updated weekly.
I will highlight what it does not contain to make some sense of its figures.
What is staggering is the AFL crowd figures – 6.6 to 6.8 million per year. What a huge source of revenue and for sales of merchandise these crowds must bring.
Without the Socceroos and only recorded for eight years football, or the A-League has drawn a bigger crowd than all cricket combined.
A-League over eight years: 10,911,353.
Cricket over ten years, combined Tests, ODI, T20 Internationals and domestic one-day competiton: 10,255,196.
If you add five home Socceroos matches per year at an average of I think 40 to 45 thousand, that’s another 200,000 over eight years or 1,600,000.
All up 1,600,000 for the eight years of the Socceroos and 3,600,000 for another two seasons, add another say 200,000 for this season and football has a crowd figure of say 17 million against cricket’s 10.3 million.
The big difference is the average obviously. But the 17 million would put football at roughly half the NRL after adding to the NRL another 2.5 million for State of Origin and Test matches over ten years to the NRL figure.
Sport Tot Crowd Ave Crowd Maximum Minimum
| AFL | 68,186,444 | 36,386 | 100,016 | 6,354 |
| NRL | 33,083,451 | 16,785 | 82,976 | 4,125 |
| A-League | 10,911,352 | 11,595 | 55,436 | 1,003 |
| NBL | 6,057,555 | 3,829 | 14,805 | 920 |
| Super Rugby | 5,716,978 | 21,738 | 52,113 | 10,122 |
| Test Match Cricket | 5,148,080 | 23,724 | 89,155 | 107 |
| One Day International Cricket | 2,441,803 | 24,418 | 79,000 | 3,109 |
| Domestic One Day Cricket | 592,435 | 4,896 | 26,190 | 696 |
| Domestic Twenty20 | 2,072,878 | 14,913 | 46,581 | 3,177 |
| ABL | 144,987 | 1,342 | 3,124 | 200 |
Source http://www.austadiums.com/
SBS have a huge audience to work with, the figures show a loyal supporter group 17 million over ten years is nothing to sneer at. Further the average is arguably the easiest to develop and increase.
| Year |
Crowd |
Average |
Teams |
Teams < 10 K |
| 2005/06 | 1, 046,558 |
11,628 |
8 |
4 |
| 2006/07 | 1, 262,232 |
14,025 |
8 |
3 |
| 2007/08 | 1,381,362 |
15,348 |
8 |
1 |
| 2008/09 | 1,166,710 |
12,963 |
8 |
3 |
| 2009/10 | 1, 483,199 |
10,445 |
10 |
6 |
| 2010/11 | 1,512,479 |
8,793 |
11 |
8 |
| 2011/12 | 1,536,231 |
10,819 |
10 |
6 |
| 2012/13 Note | 1,539,194 |
12,216 |
10 |
4 |
Note still two rounds and finals to go say another 200, 000.
Source http://www.ultimatealeague.
The above chart clearly shows a steady increase. You can see the expansion mistakes in the figures and the afterglow effect of the 2006 World Cup in season three of the A-League.
But football has maintained its crowds and should add another 200,000 this year with two rounds and the finals to go breaking the 1.7 million and hopefully the 1.75 million mark.
All this has been achieved without any FTA coverage a minimum of main stream coverage and often negative reporting from outside and at times within the football media.
Can SBS delivery Johnny’s desire and have the commercial media fighting over football?
The challenge for SBS will be to engage the park teams, and the family and friends of the park teams.
Without doubt football’s ratings are the lowest again using an average method but when taken collectively over time they start to become huge. This is a massive challenge and more positive media would help.
My armchair guess is a 14,000 crowd average or higher and a 100,000 media watch average on Fox will result in a total turn around in media treatment of football.
However this requires a 20 percent growth in crowds and a 33 percent growth in pay TV. It will be interesting to see if SBS is up to the challenge.
The base has held – can the next level be reached?
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