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Brisbane Lions fighting irrelevancy just two weeks into the season

Who will take over from Dayne Beams as captain of the Lions? (AAP Image/Dan Peled)
Roar Guru
4th April, 2016
35

The Brisbane Lions have played two games in 2016. Has anybody cared?

This is the unfortunate reality the Lions are now faced with.

Thirteen years removed from their three-peat, Brisbane face an uphill challenge to get back into the realms of relevancy.

Sure, they have some nice kids coming through the ranks. Number one draft pick Josh Schache has shown glimpses of how good he can be in just two games and Lewis Taylor is re-finding the form that won him the Rising Star award a couple of seasons ago.

But until the Lions create a sense of belonging in the AFL, the development of these young kids is going to go unnoticed, just like the skills of Stefan Martin, Dayne Zorko and Tom Rockliff has gone mostly under the radar for the past few years.

One of the Lions membership slogans is ‘believe, belong’. Do Brisbane believe they belong in the AFL?

Just 335,000 people watched the Lions’ Round 1 clash against the West Coast Eagles. Of greater concern, just 20,000 free-to-air viewers came from Brisbane. For context, more people (21,000 FTA viewers) in Brisbane tuned into the Gold Coast Suns’ Round 1 match with Essendon.

20,000 is just under six per cent of 335,000. Let that sink in – only six per cent of FTA viewers of the Lions-Eagles match came from the Brisbane area, an alarming statistic. Last season, the average viewership of AFL matches in Brisbane was 29,200, which confirms a steep decline of ratings for the Lions in Round 1.

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Round 2 didn’t go much better. In their home game against North Melbourne, just 26,000 Brisbane viewers tuned in on free to air, out of a total viewing audience of 212,000. This means that approximately 12.2 per cent of free-to-air viewers were from Brisbane.

That Round 2 clash was the Lions’ first home game of the season, where the most hope and optimism exist, yet it was played in front of a crowd of just 18,021.

That number was actually below Brisbane’s average crowd of 18,820 at the Gabba last season – another barometer of the declining interest in Lions football.

For a proud club like the Lions to be out-watched in their own city by the Suns, who entered the league in 2011, is a shocking number.

In fact, the AFL may be happy that Gold Coast are serving better than Brisbane. After all, it was the AFL who forced old Fitzroy out of commission in the 1990s, merging them with the Brisbane Bears. The struggle the AFL has faced defending the creation of a Gold Coast club has been well documented, so they must have cheeky grins back at AFL House knowing the Suns have seemingly already taken over their state.

Excluding the 2014 Anzac Day clash in New Zealand, the Lions haven’t played on a Friday night – the AFL’s ‘prime’ timeslot – since Round 10, 2013. That game was against, surprise, Collingwood, where the Lions lost by 49 points. Brisbane don’t play on a Friday night this season and with the current state of the club, it is tough to foresee the next time they will.

Another index to explore how irrelevant the Lions are is that they play just three – yes, three – games on Channel Seven for Victorian audiences all year long (in Round 10 versus Hawthorn, Round 21 versus Carlton and Round 22 versus Geelong). People need to pay to watch Brisbane play, and with the current state of the team, it’s clear that they aren’t.

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So, crowd and TV numbers are all down and the Lions are not scheduled to play in a favourable timeslot all year long. These are all disturbing facts, but the important question is why?

Why is there so little interest in the Brisbane Lions?

Because they aren’t winning.

The Lions simply aren’t a very good football team. Yes, the aforementioned kids are beacons of light for the future, but Brisbane haven’t won a lot of football over the past few seasons, and won’t win a lot of football games this season either.

We saw the Gabba sold out and rocking during the Lions’ premiership seasons, so we know a winning team draws fans. This is the best way for Brisbane to see a rise in their attendance and ratings numbers, but it’s a long road back to winning, with their list lacking in key areas where other AFL clubs are flourishing.

In a business model where winning comes before profit, the Lions need to get back to kicking goals on the field, which will allow them to win back fans.

Unfortunately though, it’s a long road back for Brisbane. And with the Suns starting the season 2-0, with a number of key players still to return, football fans may be driving down the M1 to Metricon Stadium more often than the Lions want to admit.

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(Attendance and rating numbers via Footy Industry.)

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