Football is booming in a post-code war Australia

I know it is World Cup time, a time when more casual fans embrace the sport of football in Australia, but I salute the many Australian sports fans who do embrace the many football codes even if they have a preference for a certain brand over another.

Sure, there is competition between the major football codes in terms of winning interest from fans and generating dollars through spectator attendance and television rights.

We know that the AFL is the most popular and prosperous of all, followed by the NRL.

But despite the A-League being less popular when compared to other Australian football leagues, Australians do love soccer on a major scale.

Not only did Optus Sport report 868,000 active subscribers who could view the Premier League as of November 2020, but recent data estimates that 1.72 million viewers watched Australia’s 1-0 win over Tunisia last Saturday night at 9pm (AEDT) when including regional and streaming viewers.

Australia’s opening match against France, played at 6am (AEDT), also attracted over a million viewers.

Australia, with its multi-ethnic population, has an immense appetite for World Cup matches, with an estimated 256,000 viewers also tuning into the midnight game between Poland and Saudi Arabia that followed the Socceroos’ victory over Tunisia.

While much can be made of Australia’s social cleavages over the years, including within sport, the country today is vastly superior to what existed decades ago.

As a kid, leaving Olympic Park after Australia drew with Scotland on 4 December 1985 before 29,582 fans, thus eliminating Australia from qualifying for the 1986 World Cup, I was quite annoyed by the drunk Scottish fans who referred to the Australian fans as wogs at a time when the sport was mostly of interest to southern Europeans who then dominated the sport’s fan base.

It was a time when many Australian sports fans, despite Melbournians being rated as among the most dedicated in the world, were rather biased when it came to their chosen sports.

As a track and field club athlete in the early 1980s in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, I was amused when graffiti was painted on the outside of the club room stating that men played football – by which it meant specifically Australian rules.

By the late 1990s, however, after a number of years during which many sports were becoming professional and sought greater global appeal, big soccer games in Melbourne were attracting large crowds, as was the case when Australia drew 2-2 with Iran on 29 November 1997 before 85,000 fans, a match that ended Australia’s hopes of qualifying for the 1998 World Cup.

But Australian interest was not just confined to large crowds watching World Cup qualifiers.

I was there at the MCG on 25 May 2006 as part of the 95,103 fans who watched Australia beat Greece, the then European champions, 1-0 before the side departed for the FIFA World Cup.

So, Aussie sports fans, rather than highlighting differences between the codes, albeit a right due to our interest in sport and our desire to discuss, we also can embrace how many Australians now have a diverse range of sporting interests that often includes the enjoyment of all of the football codes.

As of 2022, soccer is indeed a major football code in Australia.

I suspect soccer will be popular for a long time yet given our multi-ethnic population now supports the big soccer games that unite Australian sports fans as much as any other sporting event.

With such interest in soccer, there remains the potential for Australia to develop an A-League as one of the premier national leagues in the Asia Pacific region, notwithstanding Australia’s other popular football codes.