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?
Bondy
Guest
Ian , Cricket is not a sport its loitering in cream coloured uniforms. Its true though isn't it.
Lancey5times
Guest
Lets not talk about over-rates. You'll have us playing 3 ordinary spinners rather than the 2 we already persist with ;)
NUFCMVFC
Roar Guru
haven't read through comments yet But wouldn't the business case for commerical networks bidding more be determined by television audience than stadium attendance? Stadium attendance is an important factor and has an impact on the aesthetics but for commercial tv networks it is a matter of audience That said football is over Summer so it is good to have some live sport over that time, obvioiusly there is Cricket which probably significantly outdoes the A League (will only be able to tell from next year when we can compare SBS to ch9) In terms of Foxtel, Football can be useful in ensuring people keep their sports packages over the summer, though frankly the European football leagues probably do that way more, but ti is good for them to have some live sports in decent hours Cricket is probably closer to Super Rugby in this regard, it is in part an internationalised league At the end of the day, when the current TV rights deal is up, I'd expect a commercial network to compete for some of the rights in conjunction with Fox Sports. I even wonder if like Ch10 and Ch7 & 9 at different times, we would end up with SBS, an commercial FTA network and Fox Sports bidding for rights, for example something like ch 10 on a Saturday game, SBS on Friday games and Foxtel showing all of them live
Midfielder
Guest
Off topic slightly but a good news story... from 442 http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/266696,gallop-gives-community-football-a-boost.aspx
Midfielder
Guest
Just as an aside in the 2012 season the AFL averaged from Fox 181 K and receives 100 million The A- League will average 70 to 75 K and receive 35 million…. With less games shorter game length and less stoppages in play… Meaning it’s the FTA bit that football needs to increase its value.
Peter Wilson
Roar Guru
I think the NRL and AFL have crowd behaviour problems of their own and cricket matches have the highest rate of drunken and disorderly behaviour and crowd violence. Despite the great efforts from the press to put down football fans as violent hooligans, the vast majority of football fans are best behaved and the atmosphere at games is better than the others. Despite the increased attacks on football fans behaviour this year, the crowds and ratings are actuall going up, so there is no substance to your comments.
Peter Wilson
Roar Guru
Lets not get too carried away with SBS broadcasting one A-League game a week next sason. They only average 5.8% of the total viewing public nationaly and most of them watch football already anyway. Will be a slight increase but not a major one. Take a closer look at what MV an WSW Wanderers are doing and try and engage with the fans and bring them to the game. My kids local public school has had a visit from the Swans last week and the Giants next week spruiking AFL to the kids and offering free registrations and NAB bank accounts. In 9 years no-one from SFC or CCM have come near the school. Get out in the community and engage with real people.
Ian
Guest
so the fans that ad is aimed at, the young crowd, did any of them watch football prior to johnny's kick in 2005?
Robert
Guest
One thing that many people dont mention is that unlike the nrl & afl the a-league isnt & never will be the best so I think all in all our statistics are good
Timber Tim
Guest
Expansion should not be forced and the NPL will hopefully be the breeding ground for new teams. shouldn't matter where they are from as long as they are finanically stable and can build a decent core supporter base. Worst case scenario they continue to have a team to support in the NPL. pleasing to see the Fury back even if 2nd tier. Your team exists.
MV Dave
Guest
Yep agreed Matt...another 3-4 years of these 10 teams but in the meantime making preparations to admit 1-2 teams after that ie lets have a NYL team from maybe Canberra for example. Preparation is the key and FFA have some time and money to get the next stage of expansion right...no excuses.
Matt F
Roar Guru
The FFA should hold off on expansion for a while. Let's get the current 10 clubs strong and stable before looking to new markets. The A-League has had enough failed expansion teams already. Gallop's history with the NRL suggests that the FFA won't be rushing to add any new teams in the near future
Ian Whitchurch
Guest
Midfielder, Cricket should be an example of why you shouldnt over-rate friendly media coverage ... cricket gets a lot of very friendly media coverage, and it doesnt help one bit to get people to games.
Brendo
Guest
To me the real challenge is not the growth of the average/total crowd numbers for the current 10 teams. 4 to 7% for the next few years shouldn't be a issue with a FTA partner coming on board. The real issue is the growth of the league to 14 teams while sustaining those numbers. How do we repeat the success of WSW and avoid another Fury/Gold Coast Midfielder Would have loved to see TV Viewing audiences figures included here as well. I know that is much harder as up to now we haven't had a FTA component but eyeballs on screens is gold to sponsors and is the area that FTA will/could make the biggest impact.
Diablo
Guest
I wonder how much potential audience football loses due to 'journalists' doing the dirty work for rival codes? Just look up the C7 court case on the web to see how entrenched sports and their media allies treat rival sports.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Agree with both of you, Ahmed & Ian W The beauty of the NBV & digital delivery is that, with the click of a button, every major company can be a "sports broadcaster". Basically, any organisation with: a) a stable & reliable digital platform to stream the content b) a well-trusted retail interface c) a secure billing system will enter the content delivery market - for sport, music, film .. anything. The bargaining power will finally shift to content providers - film producers, sports leagues, musicians, etc. - who will have access to a multitude of content delivery providers. Currently, content providers have: PayTv or FTA Tv. But, digital delivery changes everything. We'll have telcos (already BT has secured the rights to EPL broadcasts in UK), ISPs, IT companies: Microsoft, Apple, Google, YouTube, Amazon, etc. etc. Heck, even companies like Amex, Visa, MasterCard, etc. could enter the market. As an A-League fan, I don't care who is the broadcaster - I just want a high quality video feed delivered to any device, anywhere in the world. FoxSports has finally understood people are fed up with bundles they don't want. In June, Foxtel Play will be launched - an offering that will give customers the flexibility to choose the content, no contracts & compatible with every internet-enabled device. The future is here.
Ian Whitchurch
Guest
Ahmed, That trend will only help sports clubs. Lets take someone like Fussball, who is absolutely uninterested in a general sports channel. Its a hard ask to get $1000 a year out of him for a general sports channel, because all he wants is all association football, all the time. But it'd be pretty easy, I think, to sell him a TV membership to the A-League, and to the Socceroos, and probably while he's there he'd buy a couple of other all-foot-ball-all-the-time things. If you happen to be Fox Sports, this is a bad thing. But its a good thing if you want to cut out the middleman, leaving more money on the table for the code, the league, the players and the clubs.
Simmo
Guest
It's a fair question, whether we like it or not. The only problem being that it's an impossible question to answer.
Midfielder
Guest
posted in error
Redb
Roar Guru
Number of games is irrelevant when you look at the average crowd.