What's so historic about the AFLW?

How come Australian Football is by far the biggest and most watch sport in the country, and players for more than 150 years have never been able to represent their country. Who cares? The public and the players don't! Now, a sport that you can represent your country is soccer and the WLeague grand final was on last Saturday it could only pull a crowd of 4,500 - less than any crowd so far for the AFLW 8 matches so far. The first match between Carlton and Collingwood was the largest crowd to attend a women's sporting event in Australia's history. Foxtel released their figures for last Saturday, 150,000 watched the AFLW game on Saturday in a head to head with the men's ALeague which attracted less than 50,000 viewers. Sponsors are falling over themselves to get on board. (Sam Lane ABC Melbourne radio) This morning and a bloke from an suburban footy club phoned ABC radio and said that last season (2016) they had only 3 girls involved with football at the club. Already this year they now have enough girls to field three teams! I have attended two AFLW matches, thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would have willing paid. A few more years will see AFLW players fully professional with the same training, coaches, medical staff that is available to the men's AFL and their athleticism and skills go through the roof.

#Northerner Just on the quiet - I suspect #Mat didn't read the articles.

#Hard Yards Regional tv ratings are limited too. You have the QLD, Nth NSw Sth NSW and then Vic/Tas. So - straight away where are NT (Darwin, Alice Springs), regional WA, regional SA, and even misses out on places like Mildura and Broken Hill and some western Qld.

I was a bit surprised by that comment, so I read the latest article by Barbieri, along with the previous one. And I couldn't find a single instance of her "dumping" on football. Both articles were very much directed towards the support of women's sports in general, and pointing out the pretty obvious fact that a lot of women who wanted to play Aussie rules football, can now do so, and that is a good thing for women's sports in general. That Barbieri, or anyone else, thinks that the expansion of professional sports opportunities for women is a good thing, is very far from being critical of football.

Gee you wouldn't want to be in the trenches with Melissa. She's quick to dump on the sport that made her for the extra fame and fortune of the Victorian game. I spose whe's been all over the world courtesy of the Matildas and now want's to check out the suburbs of Melbourne and Adelaide.

It's interesting that former Matilda, Melissa Barbieri, as able to note the historic nature of the first AFL Women's game: http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blog/2017/02/08/why-do-you-support-womens-afl-not-w-league The first weekend of the AFLW has come and gone and along with it, a multitude of records. First to topple; over a million viewers on various channels including free to air TV for the weekend. The Melbourne City v Canberra United semi was rescheduled from 2pm to 8pm due to heat - and rightly so for the good of the players - and the crowd actually exceeded that which turned out for the A-League match beforehand. It was, nonetheless, still dwarfed by the AFLW. This is actually Melissa's second article on the AFL Women's in as many weeks, both published on the TWG site. You might recall that the first one was called: The sleeping giant has woken. She knows what she's talking about.

The AFL were clever by waiting for Free to Air commercial Tv stations to have secondary stations which means more opportunities for commercial sponsorship than ABC and SBS (and of course a shorter season). Soccer, basketball, netball and Rugbys growth (a direct competitor) also prompted their move but had to await the growth of the game in the northern states to give national advertisers something to bite into. The fact that women make most of the weekly purchases in the household is crucial.

I thought this was well highlighted when I was on my way to the Melbourne derby on Saturday. On one side of the road there was a poster for the Derby, on the other side of the road there was 6 posters for the upcoming Bulldogs AFLW fixture. The A-league needs to get at least one marquee fixture on free-to-air (preferably channel 10) and start pushing themselves into the public consciousness. I can't tell you how often I get asked 'Oh are Victory playing tonight?' When I say I am headed to a game. The A-league is still invisible to people who aren't actively engaged with it.

Too many are making the mistake of thinking that these fantastic numbers relating to the first round of the AFL Women's are due to marketing, rather than being a very organic groundswell of support. The AFL excutive has been caught with its pants down here, they did not expect the numbers they are getting

I've already commented on the regionals - the figures are hard to find, there are double ups etc. No conspiracy theory. There's a reason why the ratings are 5 city metro - it's because that's what the advertisers are after and that's what drives the price networks are willing to pay.

#apaway How about - just accept that the AFLW is the right sport at the right time. The 'movement' was gaining slow momentum - womens frustration in general with sports and recognition etc. And what better sport to come to the party now than the most engaged with sport in the country (combination of participation, attendance, ratings, memberships etc) that already had massive female following but very, very limited female participation. That's why it's happening. Right sport at the right time. Don't look for other deeper meanings or Melb media conspiracies. 10 years ago wasn't quite the right time - the W-League was a slow burn. The WBBL was a relatively slow burn. The WNBL and re-birthed Netball - simmering away.... ....and the AFLW, suddenly boiled over seemingly straight away (like an 'overnight success'). They have though been building slowly too - testing the water with the Melb v Bulldogs womens matches and a couple of other exhibition games of the last couple of years. We've already seen ladies like Daisy Pearce not just gain a public profile - but - excel in the public eye. The new generation of AFL commentator will much more easily be male or female.

#Bakkies You don't seem to understand. Girls were welcome enough in VicKick/Auskick etc. Even playing junior footy. Up until they turned 14. You comparison of mini Rugby is on a par with that. The issue was that no one was running girls footy leagues/clubs for them to transition to. It was boys=footy and girls=netball/basketball. Problem is - no one really asked the girls - it was forced upon them. And perhaps easily dismissed with the 'stone age' (to use your term) notion of girls being more fragile and timid and not likely to enjoy the tackling etc. But even after the court case in 2003 and from there the slowish growth - - it wasn't until the conversation turned to the AFLW (initially slated for 2020) that this area really exploded - both the interest and the public narrative.

Just like regionals have to be taken into consideration when considering TV Ratings. But that means that RL would be painted a positive light, and we can't have that Clippster old boy, can we ;) (waits for conspiracy theories on why they can't be used).

#Apaway There's an interesting 'smart after the fact' aspect to your assertion of "The AFL’s immensely strong marketing and media campaign was always going to ensure big crowds and big interest." You do realise that the media was just as likely to completely scoff at the whole exercise. The AFL themselves had scheduled Carl v Coll on the Collingwood training ground at Olympic Park....perhaps 5,000 might have got in there. The AFL only started getting concerned about the capacity at Ikon Park during the week leading in - largely because they WERE getting some positive press. And positive levels of interest. Perhaps being womens - the regular naysayers kept quiet because it's not a good look to go negative and get called misogynistic. What WAS clever for the AFL was the timing of Round 1 - it's in a quiet weekend, the tennis is done, the mens AFL practice matches haven't started yet - cricket has gone quiet. Really only up against the soccer and basketball (and neither of those tends to hit the marketing hustings nearly hard enough when the opportunities arise.

I think you need to get over the "soccer fan" bit. And from an AFL perspective, of course it's historic. But, AFL perspective is not really an accurate barometer for measuring things.

The big difference is that the paytv penetration is larger in NSW than VIC, so that has to be taken into consideration when measuring the percentages.

Cat migrated from New York I believe a long while ago.