Tribalism the key to successful expansion

Tribalism can be about anything and there's no need to have a 'geographical' divide. In the same city you can have the red and the blue or the rich and the poor, or the political left and right.

I don't know anyone that's still a Strikers fan (I was 14 when they won the NSL). The number of registered footballers in Ipswich is greater than the number of people associated with the Strikers. Ipswich has geographical and demographical differences to metropolitan Brisbane, which is why it might attract some football fans in that area that are currently only casual Roar fans or football fans that don't attend A-League games. And, for the the record, again, not saying Ipswich should get the next expansion spot. South-east Queensland doesn't need another team for a while. However, if the FFA want a rival for the Roar in the near future, Ipswich would be better than the Strikers for the above-stated reasons...in my opinion.

I was responding to Waz's claiming that I don't know what I'm talking about because I called the majority of Roar fans casual supporters. Waz thinks Roar v Strikers derby will attract more people, I think a Roar v Ipswich one will. We got off topic when I had to justify the casual fans statement.

WTF are you on about, of course there is still animosity between Strikers and Roar. There are still PLENTY of Strikers fans who just will not get on board with BR. Forget Ipswich. Forget Logan. They will never EVER work. The only option for a second team in SEQ is the Strikers out of Perry Park. Anything else will fail.

Well it's not like a Catholics vs Protestants rivalry or anything but people in Brisbane always identify with being north or south side. Most people hardly ever visit the opposite side of the river unless they have to. I'm on the north side and feel like ive entered a completely different town when I go to the south side. It's a weird thing

Mag 11 - Finding it very hard to follow your logic in these articles. It has been widely recognised for some time now that there is a "casual" market that Roar and other like teams should be tapping into. You cite all the obvious "facts" but do very little in suggesting how Roar can grow their home gate average up to 25,000, just half of a Grand Final crowd. That would make interesting reading. Cheers jb.

Also, if you can get 50K to a GF, at least 30K of which would claim to be Roar fans, then managing less than half on that on a regular basis suggests there are a lot of casual fans out there. And, of 12.5K, how many are regulars? A good percentage would be ones that come to only one or two games per season, judging by the queues for ticket sales on game day.

I'm just trying to unpack this rationally. You'd think that the people who might " walk" from Foxtel if they lost the a league rights would at least have watched the a league final right? Right. So last year 240,000 watched the gf. Maybe some proportion of them would walk that weren't primarily purchasing Foxtel for the afl, nrl, epl or so forth. Unlikely that there would be 100,000 more Foxtel subscriptions than gf watches at risk, no? And the fact that there are over 9 million Optus customers to start with puts the 100,000 in context. Optus apparently has 27% market share which puts the overal number of Australian mobile "customers" at over 35 million. So perhaps need to be careful making one for one comparisons with household Foxtel subscriptions given there are less than 3 million of them And, of course, the old gross revenue trap. Mobile telephony is very competitive and, even with all their other services, Optus net profits are below $100 per mobile customer. Back of the envelope suggests they'd bleeding pretty badly at this stage

Epiquin, 2-3 games is not going to happen any time soon. With expansion though at least 1 would be a good idea, And I like your idea of Chatswood. The Mariners have a medium term agreement to have at least 80% of home games at CCS and I think have committed to 2 games a season in Canberra (assuming certain 'metrics' are met. That means in the seasons that the Mariners have 13 home games 11 will be at CCS and 2 will be at GIO. In the seasons that the Mariners have 14 home games 12 will be at CCS and 2 will be at GIO. Assuming the HAL is expanded to a 12 team 33 game season then that would mean a commitment of either 13 or 14 games at CCS and 2 at GIO. That would allow 1 game for northern Sydney. A game against one of non NSW teams that already have a home game at CCS on a Friday night at Chatswood at 7:45 would be great.. It is probably 30 minutes better in terms of public transport connections than NSO, has plenty of pubs and restaurants around. Commuters coming back to the Central Coast can just stop off on the way home while 7:45 is late enough to allow people to get down from the Coast after work.

Chopper - The original Brisbane United idea was also a failure for they only lasted 2 seasons, season's 91/92 and 92/93. The origins of the idea are not widely recognised but they actually came from a meeting held in 1977 when the first division clubs in Brisbane discussed the possibility of "Uniting" so that a second team could enter the NSL, (Brisbane City had initially declined to play in the NSL). No doubt as you are aware Brisbane City had a last minute change of mind and so the idea of a "United" team funded and managed by the other first division clubs was shelved until it was resurrected in the years above as a last ditch attempt to keep Brisbane represented in the NSL. The Strikers emerged from that wreckage and as a "club" were actually run by the Queensland Soccer Federation ,(get the connection to the original idea). As you point out the Strikers did fill Lang Park once,in a Grand Final, but actually their average crowd was probably nearer 6 or 7,000. so that it came as no surprise that when applications were called for the HAL (Huge $$$$ entry fee) the Strikers merged back into local football with only Brisbane/Qld Roar taking up the challenge. Now the last part of your article makes much more sense,there is a market out there waiting to be tapped and that's where Roar find themselves today,how to get those "kids' you mention,and their "kids", along to watch their games. Roar have also filled Suncorp but to be realistic their average crowd is nearer 13,000 than the 52,000 that attend a Grand Final. Cheers jb

TW I am no expert by any lengths ... but 107, 000 for a competition played mostly in the wee small hours is something... I could be totally wrong but I think there are at least 100K fans out their when added to the 107, 000 easily make the 200 k figure you asked about. I then pondered what the figure could actually climb too.... my 350 was based on 5 matches at say 70 k each which as I said is much of a guess off current ratings... On the multi watchers it came from a general sports article I read roughly two years ago analysing the various fans of various codes.... and the value to that code ... by a reasonable margin the AFL won most aspects... i.e willing to go to matches, purchases of shirts etc, talk back, most single code oriented, twas a large number of measurements and milti watchers was one... all codes have fans that watch all games to most games to many games down to their team down to the grand final only .... AFL had the highest % of fans that watched more than one game..... in many ways something they should be proud of ...

Columbas Arena = Perry Park?

Hmmm, well, your analysis seems to carry some interesting assumptions I'm still not sure of your actual logic. You've added 100,000 extra a league fans to the 100,000 premier league motivated switches and then somehow found another 150,000...must be something related to watching egg ball codes but I still don't get the logic? I'm not sure what the evidence is on "multi game" watching but there are 27 hours of Australian football league games on over most weekends, that majority of which overlap with other games, are on fta in at least one of the teams home states and are up against nrl games pulling similar numbers Also, a bit of a heads up, average revenue from telephony or internet customers can't really be compared directly with per head costs of epl rights. The costs of providing the service need to be considered and, in a competitive market, these are likely to swallow most of these revenues And, of course, another factor you don't appear to have considered hitherto, is the costs of covering the a league to a a para professional standard. The epl is an on sale product

Well, this is as welcome as I've ever been made to feel on these here soccer tabs. thank you, mr football, you literally give soccer a good name...

Crushers were actually reasonably successful off the field, they were murdered via the reformation after the SL.

I know you are from Brisbane or the area, but is there really a north of the river v south?

I will take your word for it regarding the rivalry. I wont in regards to Shark Park/Toyota Stadium/Remondis/Aurora/Cronulla Field/Shire Stadium has to be getting better, the Sharks have been killing it in the financial sector these last few years and some of that has definately been going to upgrade the stadium.

The Word Three months 107, 000 customers for the EPL, the A-League has a bigger following than the EPL if only for the hours. My guess is if in only three months the EPL can get 107, 000 customrs then the A-League will get more than likely most of the 107, 000 and at least another 100, 000 A-League fans ... thats 200, 000 more likely 200, 000 + Fox ratings this year are 90K per game. If these followed to Optus the 200, 000 could be 350, 000.... Whats very interesting when you start to apply the numbers is the AFL over 198 season round games averages 189.5 K per game on Fox..... Also the AFL has more multi watchers than Football ...... This is a very large number .... also lets assume the 107, 000 is at $ 50.00 per month on a phone plan and some of the phone plans move across to broadband at $ 80.00 per month..... so assume an average pay of $ 75.00 per customer .. 107, 000 @ $ 75.00 is 8 million per month for 12 months is 96 million per year, they paid I think 60 million.... These are big numbers

Maybe a slight name change to Hawksbury Mariners might be more appealling to both the central coast and the north shore markets, the Hawksbury River being the common ground (water) that draws the two areas together?

There seems to be a typo in the Fairfax article. Another report I've read has the figures as 9.420 and 9.313.