For the NRL, the answer is simple - a faster horse

This article is partly in response to Mary Kaye’s article ‘Ratings, or bums on seats’.

Today we face the same problems our ancestors did, and while not the same, history always seems to rhyme – specifically the viewer and broadcaster split.

I remember a time when the cricket wasn’t shown in your home state to ensure people actually attended the game. What an idea that was! That was some 25 years ago now, but getting people to the game is still an issue. Delaying matches or not showing them incentivises those who were thinking about staying at home, to watch on television, and was one of the first ideas to attempt to address the problem of falling crowd numbers.

The problem of scheduling in rugby league is solving itself as the money generated by television incomes seems to be (and indeed for sometime) outstripping revenues from ground attendances – overall the game trundles along.

Should television be the driving force in the game? Maybe, certainly as a stakeholder they have a say, but I’m pretty sure the balance has swung way too far to the broadcasters’ side and a couple of hypothetical examples highlight this point.

Imagine living in Brisbane and, for whatever reason, are unable to attend Friday night matches. How could one reasonably still be considered a ‘fan’ given the scheduling allows for so few (if any) opportunities to attend the matches live.

The point is, of course, equally valid for any team and any time. From a personal point of view, I would love to support a ‘low-Friday-night-television-appeal’ team, as I like watching football in the afternoon, but it hardly seems fair to a club to be forced into only playing Saturday afternoon matches for exactly the same reason.

If heroin was a legal product that was only able to be advertised between midnight and 2am, but offered an inconceivably huge sponsorship, would the games be moved to start at midnight?

I would assume not, yet gambling advertising seems to be a driving factor in kick-off times, Origin specifically. This is an old debating trick, the ‘to the absurd’ argument, but still…

These hypotheticals are as pertinent as any issues in the game right now and some simple measures would probably do wonders to improving them. A more balanced draw would ease some of these scheduling tensions and afford fans a chance to see their team play.

I’m imaging a setup where each team has to play at least some games across the weekend and can then choose when to play their remaining games. I’m sure fellow Roarers will have their own thoughts on scheduling, but I think we mostly agree that it could be a lot ‘fairer’ across the board.

The gambling issue, however, strikes me as particularly tough. Knowing people who have had problems with gambling makes it ever so bad to invite them over to watch a game – similar to the awkwardness that ensues when you invite a recovering alcoholic to Octoberfest.

I understand that as a legal product gambling companies have as much right to sponsor sport however they wish. But personally I feel the ‘superliminal’ advertising, when Samuel L Jackson gets up on the TV and berates me for not gambling, is too far.

Once again some balance would probably help. Maybe if the early Saturday game was to be free of advertising of alcohol, gambling and tobacco, it might attract that unknown pious crowd, or just the ever growing group of addicts in our midst.

I would certainly prefer to watch a match that wasn’t constantly trying to sell me onto a combination of beer and gambling, and I’m a non-addict, non parent.

Over a hundred years ago now, Henry T Ford was peddling his wares, trying to sell those fancy new production cars of his. He quipped that had he listened to the consumer he would have designed a faster horse.

Well, a century of fossil fuel burning may have proved a couple of things. Yes, you can train the consumer, but, and possibly more importantly, maybe that pursuit of profit isn’t the best of ideas either. Maybe a faster horse would have been a better idea.