Just six years ago 61,823 lively and excited fans packed ANZ Stadium for the Super Rugby grand final in which the Waratahs came out victorious against the Crusaders.
Although it was the grand final, Super Rugby crowds in the 2014 season tended to fill 16,913 seats per game. Yet since then Rugby Australia has seen their stands fall to an average attendance of 8798 fans per match, filling only 35 per cent of stadiums.
There is a clear crisis. Despite cheap tickets, fans do not want to attend, which creates to a slippery slope effect – less money from fans leads to less revenue for management, tensions arise regarding TV deals, fans begin to stop watching from home and before we know it Rugby Australia is in a financial crisis.
Now let’s cross the globe to the United States. In the 2018-19 NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) football season, the South-eastern Conference (SEC) announced that US$651 million (A$895 million) were generated from games and distributed among its member universities, equating to just over US$44.6 million (A$61.3 million) per school, this excludes the other nine conferences which generated similar figures. The NFL, similarly, generated approximately US$14.2 billion (A$19.5 billion) in 2017.
(Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)
Of course factors such as a larger population and larger stadiums, among others, can be attributed to this sizeable revenue, but there is one thing that all three organisations (Rugby Australia, NCAA, NFL) share in common: their countries have a great sporting culture, something that Rugby Australia has not capitalised on.
The United States builds a culture from the ground up, starting at high school. Across the nation football games from top-ranked high schools are streamed on the National Football High School network (NFHS). Fans can identify with a team, especially those from small communities.
Australia has already hit the spot with this. The historic AAGPS (Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of New South Wales) competition, consisting of some of the country’s most prestigious names, such as Newington College and the Kings School, pull in crowds of over 1000 students, fairly acceptable for a school community that normally consists of around 1500. These games pull in fans from their campus communities and alumni too, showing a clear fan-base and a team identity local community can stand with.
However, there is a missing piece within the high school system. Although a potential TV deal surrounding televising the GPS first-grade competition in New South Wales and Queensland was floated in 2019, it never gained any traction. Such a deal would give the air that rugby needs in the preliminary phases and would act as a feeder for talent to the developmental phases before players hit the pros.
The high school culture is already there, so why not spread it into state-wide communities too? It has worked in the US through the NFHS network, so why not implement it here?
Yet fast forward one or two years and there is a missing link: the college phase. Rugby Australia’s developmental phase showcases top talent and exciting matches, yet it’s all hidden as a lack of culture and identity provides no return for potential television deals and sponsors. The number of Australians pursuing higher education has hit record numbers, with 2.8 million high school graduates pursuing a bachelor degree. As such, Australian universities are provided with the money and support base to create a sporting league of their own.
It’s a long stretch, but merging the teams of the Shute Shield with the money of the Group of Eight universities, which generated $66 billion dollars in revenue in 2017, could provide the grounds for the perfect identity Australian rugby needs, similar to one of college football.
Readers may wonder how this all ties into the topic of ‘What can Rugby Australia learn from college football?’. American sports develop not just their players but also their fans from the grassroots of the game.
The under-10s and under-11s football players grow up watching high school matches on television. These fans later evolve into aspiring and current college students who identify with their universities team. They are proud to associate with and represent their university, which creates a passion for the game.
Furthermore, providing prospective professional athletes with a full-ride scholarship, a free education at a world-class institution, all tied in with an opportunity to develop their skills under high-level coaching, provides them with an incentive and overall produces better-developed athletes for a high-level competition like Super Rugby.
Rugby Australia and Australian universities have the resources and tools to put on a program just as similar to the NCAA. A chance to create fine-tuned athletes not only makes the game more appealing for fans but makes Australian rugby more competitive in general.
Australians love to win, and by following the NCAA model of college sports they would have the chance to win more while putting on a show. More publicity would surely lead to filling the seats at matches and greater TV deals.
The opportunity is there for Rugby Australia to fix their culture issue and financial crisis, although it is up for them to take it. Although it would be a long road, such changes would pay off in the long run.
Tree Son
Roar Rookie
My point was that many people in the south latched on to amateur athletics because there were no professional sports until the 1960s at the earliest and many of the teams down here are even newer expansions or teams relocated from more northerly parts. On the one hand, you point to the the fact of population growth in the south post war as a factor in attracting professional sports. On the other hand I’d suggest there were other social and legal movements going on in America at that very same time which led to The same outcome. I don’t think it has to be either/or. As a note I’d argue that for instance New Orleans was not appreciably smaller than Cleveland which got its team in the 40s but New Orleans not until the late 60s
Mark
Guest
In the American South, professional sports were slow to develop due to the relative lack of large cities. A professional sports team needs a reasonable-sized urban population to draw fans from, given the large number of matches played each season, and the South had few cities of the required size until after WWII. It's only since the 1960s that sports teams from the South have joined the NFL, NBA and MLB. Until then St Louis was the furthest south of any major league sports team. Segregation was actually much more of an issue with college sports in the South. Very few of the colleges based in the South (apart from the historically black colleges) had any black students, let alone athletes, until the 1960s. James Meredith needed armed soldiers just to enrol at Ole Miss in 1962. In any event, not sure what relevance your assertions are to the article?
Tree Son
Roar Rookie
In the American South, professional sports were slow to develop due to segregation. On the other hand, college sports scholarships were and are a key way of lifting many young men out of the circumstances of their birth. As others have said, the NCAA is a complex and lately controversial thing
gigs20
Guest
HiKa Roar Rookie November 15th 2020 @ 4:40am Moreover, where do you think the American Tertiary Education system gets all that money to pay their coaches (and not pay the players wink wink) By raising fees for the average schlums who weren't blessed with the genetic predisopsition to be amazing at a sport before their bodies had fully developed and therefore had to actually work at their studies to be granted access to the institution they so lustfully support. Ironically, the ones who worked hardest at the things we would expect to be most valuable for somebody chasing a university education are the people who are paying and cheering the ones who shunned most of that in favour of strength and conditioning sessions and playing sport all day, every day. Sorry, cool story but I'm not a fan of the idea
Mark
Guest
I agree with Realist. The author is trying to use the collegiate system for American football, which is the most popular sport (professional, collegiate and high school) in a country of 360 million people, as a model for Rugby Union in Australia, a great sport but one that is nowhere near as popular as cricket, Rugby League and Aussie Rules. Further, high school and collegiate football are embedded in the psyche of the USA - think about how many movies or TV shows are either about, or feature, American football (All the Right Moves, Varsity Blues, Friday Night Lights, the Blind Side, the Longest Yard, just to name a few). High school sports in Australia do not have anywhere near the same status, and collegiate sports are generally invisible in this country to any non-participants. Rugby Australia does need to attract and keep more junior participants, but spending money on university rugby when it doesn't have much money to spare is not the way to do it.
Realist
Guest
This is a terrible, poorly thought out idea. Rugby suffers significant issues at all levels, but particularly the fact it is primarily played by private schools/GPS schools makes the sport unattractive to essentially any non-private school kid, excepting kiwis and islanders. As long as rugby is perceived as the sport of the wealthy elites, it will never gain traction in Australia. Trying to institute an NCAA style approach on top off that is just throwing money onto the fire. A major issue you didn't mention about NCAA teams and the links with the local communities is that the big teams tend to be from areas without an NFL presence. Yeah you have your USC/UCLAs out there, but most of the big teams exist in cities without an NFL team. 5 of the top 10 ranked teams currently are from state without an NFL presence. If you were to do this in Australia, where would you have your teams... oh wait, in the same cities that already have professional teams in all major codes. Love your passion, but this is not a reasonable option.
Paul
Roar Guru
I think there's plenty to consider in this piece. The gist of the article is all about creating a love of the game from a young age, so whole families will support teams, either are players, spectators or perhaps even as officials. That make a lot of sense and is surely something that Rugby Australia would want to develop. I'm not sure we would want to go down the same path as America, both in terms of the high school & college football. Many have already commented on the issues endemic in some of these programmes and there are a lot more hidden away. Yes, it would be great to have high school rugby games televised, but at what cost? Ditto with college games, at a time when Rugby isn't flush with funds. I'd also be careful talking about the record numbers of students at uni. According to Google, nearly 740,000 overseas students were enrolled pre-covid and it's safe to say a large chunk of those are from non-rugby countries. Trying to drum up the same sort of interest in the game would be tough, when at least a quarter would have little or no interest.
gazza
Roar Rookie
Answer : ZIP
Bobby
Roar Rookie
Bring back Cheer Squads, Bands and exciting entertainment. Make the game day a spectacle.
HiKa
Roar Rookie
The problems of the NCAA programs are multitudinous. This isn't the place to get into the weeds on that. But here's a tit-bit of the sort of nonsense that ensues: In five (5) US states, the highest paid state government employee is a medical specialist in charge of the state university/college's medical school. There are five (5) states where the actual president of the college/university is the highest paid and one (1) where the highest paid is the head of the law school. They are outnumbered by twelve (12) state's whose highest paid employee is the basketball coach for a state university/college team. The remaining twenty-seven (27) states pay their highest salary to a college football coach. We don't want to be walking down that road.
Max power
Guest
Sydney uni have been getting crowds of 450 for the last century in Shute shield The main lesson that can be learnt from uS college football is not paying its participants So many issues with your idea. Americans love their football, rugby union is uninteresting to the majority of Australian uni students/ most Americans move and live on college and it’s a huge part of their lives. Most aussies catch the bus to uni and feel little to no affiliation with their uni Stop dreaming