Rebuilding active support is the biggest key to the A-League Men's success

"So yes, you are right. Opening up more foreign spots would come potentially at the expense of local product. But you were the one who wanted more foreigners. So that’s your call. " I never said or implied any of that Marron. My original comment was "The comp is also made up of those not good enough for Europe and South America and those in the twilight of their careers who had their day in Europe and South America." We are losing our best local players to other competitions and A-League clubs pick up the odd international that were great 10 years ago but can't get a game overseas. That must affect active support.

My plan this week is to try and get 0/6 again. Just watch me get 5/6 instead! :silly:

But George, so what, if it is avoiding other football codes. So what? Absolutely the best players are attracted by money. That's not the point - we will never attract the very best players. The point is, if you are a foreign emerging player wanting to play football to improve yourself - are you going to go to a league that plays for 6-7 months, or one that plays for 9 or 10? When your 6 month season is over, you are less likely to get football elsewhere. Your criticism was that there aren't enough foreign players. And even then there are only so many foreign spots. To get more foreign players, those would be the two things you'd need to do first to try and get some more. So yes, you are right. Opening up more foreign spots would come potentially at the expense of local product. But you were the one who wanted more foreigners. So that's your call. IMO, we won't get truly great foreign players in the mens league, under most circumstances, anyway - at least, not the extent that it will make a huge difference in terms of attracting rusted on support for the league. So the attraction of the league is always going to be on exciting prospects. You are also right to highlight the issues. If they were easy we'd have solved them by now. But one thing we cannot do - no matter if it would be a magic bullet or not - is turn the A-Leagues into the best leagues in the world, on par with Germany or Italy or elsewhere. It won't happen. But I see it repeatedly "why would I watch this, when I can watch the EPL" or whatever. Rather than trying to suggest that it is as good as that, I think the leagues should actively try and market themselves as what they are. Ours.

Nothing like letting a couple of AFL supporters run their discerning eyes over the sokkah numbers. It's hilarious watching you 2 lather up over something you clearly don't watch.

Roberto Just doing a quick assessment of the last couple of months: -Channel 10 averaged 7.8% in October and 14.2% including its multis -in the first two weeks of November it averaged 5.7% and 12% with multis -in the two weeks of the A League its been 5.15% and 11.9% with multis In October the best week was actually the Matildas Brazil game and the other weeks had some show called the "dog house" that was apparently driving its performance. I think the big problem is, even if 10 were happy with the current numbers, what happens when they decline further? What do they do with the pre game and post game shows?

Ac You are right to point this out. I've tried to highlight in the recent past that Ten's share of audience, on the whole, is extremely low. Ten might have a strategy to drive up the audience by being the football channel, and that might work in the long run, but for the moment, its overall numbers are very poor. I won't pass comment on how good 88k is at prime time on the main channel, except to say that it would have only just snuck into the top 20 in the multis, and that a repeat of NCIS on Ten Bold got 88k as well. Ten's total share of audience for Saturday was 11.6%, miles behind the ABC who was in 3rd spot, and a tiny bit ahead of SBS. Now that's low. Not much joy in the 16 to 39 demos either, I mean, fair dinkum, even Nine's A Current Affair got into 4th spot in that demo!!

Ac a good point you make. When you see the 20th re-run of a Tom Cruise movie getting 300k plus viewers you wonder whether its worth the expense of showing a live sporting event for half the audience. The answer is yes it is. You need a focal point in your programming that you can then leverage off in your news, reality shows etc etc. You wonder if the 300k watching a Tom Cruise movie for the 20th time are even awake?

Yeah absolutely, but they just need to adjust accordingly I guess.

a big advantage this game has is that it isn't a contact sport and parents are beginning to realise this :football:

continuous improving trends in all key statistics would be great :football:

I think that is happening to various degrees. I believe every Victory home match is a doubleheader from this weekend? Roar have quite a few but not all. I play on getting to Redcliffe early to watch the ladies although the ever present issue of heat is a factor for both players and fans.

Jordan, Mate you are all over this, I believe that is a cracking plan, a cunning plan!. The other question I have to ask is why dont they play a Women's A-League match before the Mens each week. With a WC coming up, the Men's supporters can get there early, buy a special priced two match ticket and support the lasses, before supporting the lads. More people will get a taste of just how good the Women's football is and more people will be saying hey, I'm going in for WC tickets.

Here’s josh again calling WSW a big club even though WSW can only draw about 8,000 people to a home game at a new 30,000 seat stadium. You keep the illusion up josh, as long as you believe it that’s all that matters.

This was a fair comment on the state of play. Channel TEN pay their Way by getting people to advertise with them. 88,000 across 5 cities isn’t great. They need to be doing much better otherwise A-league needs to go to a multi channel and they put on a movie on their main channel. The main channel and sub channels might give a respectable rating the result more advertisers. Does it take I’m to build an audience? Yes - and that needs to be allowed to happen. But TV networks can’t run on thin air. They need dollars. Possibly paramount plus is delivering lots of punters.

It's an interesting topic and one I was thinking about on the weekend. Obviously COVID has disrupted a lot of things and being able to attend sport is one of them In terms of size SFC Cover are smaller but this somewhat works in the smaller stadium and so is still rather atmospheric The production worked well in the first week, if MVFC NT and ST and WSW RBB can start to swell the numbers this should work well with the Channel 10 utilising in-stadium coverage instead of the Studio for the Saturday night games Of course larger active support means high energy and we have to hope the new FA and APL handle a few people getting over-excited and throwing a bottle or two than their predecessors who lacked the wit to see media co's with an incentive to help "rival" codes with hit pieces about A League fan behaviour and joined in the pile-on. Of course being aligned with a mainstream commercial network in Ch10 I'm optimistic the dynamic has actually changed and we can expect more mainstream media support and while I wouldn't agree for O/S leagues like the EPL I can actually see some sense in allowing a small stake of media ownership in the A-Leagues

Although average crowds are currently 5000 average less than season 2013-14 and TV ratings so far on 10 are let’s be frank uninspiring, I wouldn’t be worried about the A-League Mens too much this season. However I would be if no improvement next season and beyond. The APL, Channel 10, Paramount partnership will have had a year to sort out any teething problems in their alliance and hopefully the Phoenix are back home, Sydney FC are doing well in their new stadium, McArthur have sorted out the pitch issue, Victory’s crowds have returned, Newcastle are playing Pappasball, Adelaide have upgraded seating, the Mariners control their stadium and the Wanderers are back to their Pirtek days. Can’t see much change regarding Western United until their promised shiny new stadium Is up and running and the Roar, even if firing on all cylinders can’t return to the nearly 15000 average they had at Suncorp in 2013-14 playing at Redcliffe, as it only holds 11,500 and is not commuter friendly for its supporter base. Nor do I see any change regarding Melbourne City unless they bring in a David Villa type again for a full season this time. Also of course they could reinvent themselves in the Dandenong region, but that would probably upset the CFG applecart.

There’s something special happening here in Australia at the moment in both Mens and Women’s Football , we have momentum Channel 10 is pushing hard , there’s obviously a die hard supporter base , International Matches . Can someone explain what A League success looks like , crowds , fans , membership etc