Roar Rookie
Joined September 2014
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Just love me rugby and cricket. Don't mind a bit of league on the side and AFL during the finals. Tennis, golf, surfing etc...you name it and I'll have a crack a being second best at it.
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The announcement that Phil Kearns was appointed Rugby Australia’s director of the 2027 Rugby World Cup bid brought a wry to smile to my…
If you're like me and you read The Australian, then Alan Jones' weekly stream of consciousness is probably becoming quite tedious. This week there…
There are lots and lots of comments in this article. Many centre on the assertion of a few. Namely, that the NRC is a failure and that the crowd numbers are there to prove it. I believe when making these types of assertions, i.e. ones based on hard data, you need to be very careful to avoid data sampling errors. Accordingly, I have dug up some old 2007 data from the ARC.
Without graphics its challenging to describe all the factors at play. By Rd 3; the ARC Gross Crowd 39k , NRC 24k. On the face of it this looks pretty bad but like I said at the start there are many factors at play that the overall numbers don’t reveal. The biggest one has been mentioned in lots of comments, MARKETING. The ARU has simply not put in any effort in this regard. I would say the ARU marketing budget for NRC is probably less than what a single powerhouse Sydney/Brisbane rugby club would have to spend during a season. Some of the other factors appear to be parochial. Perth, Melbourne and Canberra were strong contributors to crowd numbers in the ARC’s early rounds.
No doubt back in 2007 the ARU would have liked what they were seeing by the end of Rd 3. It was fools gold, the weekly crowd numbers dropped significantly from Rd 4 onwards culminating in a final that was attended by 1500 people, which is about half the number that went to the semi final the week before at the same venue.
If the NRC maintains avg 8k round gross attendance through to the end of season then it will eclipse the gross crowd numbers of the 2007 ARC season. This would not be a bad out come at all. In fact given the significantly lower cost structure of the NRC, plus Fox Sports $1.5m contribution, the competition may even break even with these numbers.
This is an important point because the NRC has three strategic objectives 1) Better pathways for players to professional rugby (increasing depth in the talent pool) 2) Growing the grass roots fan base 3) Creating more content to sell for TV rights.
I think may would agree objective number 1 is currently been realised. 2 and 3 are the long game and it is because of these that the ARU needs this comp to be break even from the get go. This will ensure is continuity year after year and its only from continuity that fan bases can grow and its only from strong fan bases that TV rights start to look valuable.
In summary before you start bashing the comps numbers at least make the effort to compare apples with apples.
Nostalgia and a new dawn in the NRC
Good ideas, there’s probably enough there for the ARU to roll out over the next two seasons. If they read The Roar they will no doubt do this.
But why can’t live streaming start immediately? Why doesn’t The Roar fill the gap in this space? The Roar must have official contacts within all the teams and could probably pull in some key sponsor to help with the production costs. I don’t know how much a live stream costs but I am assuming its not much. I mean all these games will be getting filmed, so it should just be a matter of hooking the camera up to internet? Of course the quality will vary but at least its a start.
Last time I checked there were 1800+ views City -v- Melbourne game. If that can be repeated across the comp that’s thousands of additional people every week. No huge numbers, but tapping into the core supporters is vital to build momentum for next year when hopefully some of the professional ideas set out in this article are implemented.
Streams, a shield and craft beer: How to boost the NRC