Roar Rookie
Joined August 2018
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I stirred things up with a recent article suggesting there are too many teams in the three major football codes in Australia. This generated…
Come together. No, not in that way. Get your minds out of the gutter! I'm talking about some of the AFL, rugby union and…
I have been reading a lot of pieces saying Michael Cheika should not be shouldering so much of the blame for the team's poor…
So, when someone dares to come up with a few possible solutions for discussion, you find a need to have a dig.
In any event, for example when Fitzroy ceased to exist people either support the Brisbane Bears, then Lions or they found some other team. Same with South Melbourne. Same thing has happened with various Sydney clubs in the NRL. It’s about getting over it and not treating it as the end of the world. Given that people have done so in the past, there’s not much reason to suggest that they can’t in the future.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
But the modern players and coaches expect to be paid like it’s a business. If we are going back to the days of Jack Gibson, Tommy Raudonikis and co. where they played for love of the game, mateship and a bit of pocket money, no problem. You can’t have players making big money from salaries and endorsement contracts who switch clubs every 3 or so years and not expect it to be treated like a business. In the days of Jack and Tommy there was a thing called loyalty, camaraderie and doing it for your mates.
Sadly, that all went out the window the first time a player got a pay cheque big enough to pay cash for a Phase 3 Ford GTHO and have enough left over for petrol. Once you have players and coaches being able to afford mansions in top tier locations, you are in a business.
While I agree with your sentiment, it doesn’t gel with reality. And, in my view, the reality is that the powers that be are still in amateur hour while they are trying to run a business enterprise. Do it one way or the other. If you want to go back 3 or 5 decades we have the right people in the chairs. But if not, we need new thinking, new ideas, new blood, new approaches, new energy. Pro sports in Australian are in no-man’s land at the moment. It’s like some sort of half-way house and we don’t know how to make the transition to the future.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
Could we convince the networks that they could make even more gold if average match ratings were higher because the competition is more intense, the standard is higher, the live ground attendances are higher all as a result of reducing the number of teams.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
Same goes for the US, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Of course sport is not a business for supporters anymore than movies are a business for regular movie goers or small screen viewers or any more than classical music is a business for regular concert goers or viewers.
As for the talent not being spread, have a look at the massive bucket of talent that ran onto the field in the 1972 VFL Grand Final and compare that with the amount of talent that runs onto the G at the 2018 AFL GF. No comparison. We have twice the population, but much of the population growth has been from immigration from countries where soccer is the favoured sport. Hence, soccer has grown. (There are plenty soccer players who could play in some positions in League and Union.)
In addition, rugby union has grown substantially since professionalisation in 1995. This reduces the talent pool further.
Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney have only one large stadium for Australian Rules, and Melbourne has 2. I therefore don’t understand your point. They used to have grounds where the supporters live, but the suburban grounds in Melbourne are no longer to the required standard. That model can’t work. Who is going to fund the re-development of Princes Park or Moorabbin or Windy Hill or Victoria Park or the Western Oval or Punt Road Oval?
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
Good point. If we started from scratch to build an AFL, there would probably be 2 teams from each of WA, SA, NSW and QLD and 6 from Victoria. 14 is plenty. This could bring average match attendances to about 45,000 (up from 35,000), if nothing else changed. That’s a 29% increase.
With a brand new NRL, we would probably have 3 or 4 from QLD, 2 from Melbourne, 5 or 6 from NSW and 1 from the ACT. 12 is enough. This could increase average match attendances from 15,500 to 21,500, if nothing else changed. That’s a 39% increase.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
ITGIBNALOW – This is absolutely correct. I am a mere frustrated sports fan who wants to see a better competition. And, it’s not as if the geniuses that run any of the 3 codes have done a lot of work on this. The keep tinkering and faffing about at the edges while they could be and should be exercising their mighty minds or finding some mighty minds to earn the massive salaries that spectators are paying them.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
We also have second level comps in the AFL, League and Union. Obviously not the same system as in Football leagues with divisions and so on, but analogous. For example North Adelaide beat Norwood for the South Australian National Football League Premiership in front of more than 40,000 fans. Including the secondary comps across all codes would also change our team per population data, as would including college teams in the calculations in the US, even though those comps have a different purpose.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
I did allude to the HF a bit uproar, gnashing of teeth and hurling of remotes. But as always happens, we do get used to it. There was uproar when the VFL became the AFL, which led to teams re-locating (Fitzroy and South Melbourne) and so on. But we did get over it. Sure, some people might leave, but the newer generations who don’t have that amount history will come along and embrace the new order.
I was doing my MBA at the Uni of Melbourne at or around the time that of the BT (Big Turmoil) in the AFL. One of our lecturers was Colin Carter (a partner in the consulting firm of Pappas, Carter, Evans & Koop, which later became part of Boston Consulting Group). Colin and his colleagues were engaged by the AFL to shake things up. He and his mates did just that. The AFL became a national comp, there was fallout and there were broken remotes all over Melbourne. And guess what, the AFL has performed the best amongst many of the indicators of success compared with League and Union. Colin said that it was about time that sporting organisations learned how to behave like the businesses they are becoming.
Decisions have to be made fast. The AFL did it in a few fairly short years. Why can’t the other codes? Why does it have to take a decade? I mean, in Super Rugby they seem to make brilliantly well informed decisions at the drop of a hat, don’t they?
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
I guess the comparison with the US was made because they seem to have put their thinking hats on and got it about right in many areas.
So have the Germans and the Brits. More people attend top league football matches in Holland over a season than the NRL does: 5.8 million a year (from a population of 6.5 million) compared with 2.9 million (from a population of 7 million in the heartland of Rugby League in Sydney and Brisbane.)
17,300 people went to the Storm vs Rabbitohs final at AAMI Stadium. Surely a finals match should fill a stadium to more than 57% capacity. If the NRL thinks that this is OK and that having 18 teams is a good idea, I worry.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
The AFL can have relatively high raw numbers per match because we have several relatively large stadiums – most overseas leagues don’t have stadiums being used by multiple teams as the MCG, Docklands, Adelaide Oval and Perth Stadium. Each team has its own and only a few can build grounds with 50,000+ capacity.
Not sure about the argument that there are plenty of other things to do in Australia. Surely people in other countries have other forms of entertainment.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
In what way is the analysis faulty. Percentage of seats filled is a valid measure of the performance of a sporting competition. The reason I use percentage of seats filled is exactly for the reason you mention. You can’t compare a 50,000 crowd at the MCG with a 50,000 crowd at the Adelaide Oval because the G is half full and the Adelaide Oval is completely full,
You can’t say that one-third full stadiums week in and week out is an indicator of the good health of a code.
And as for comparing Australia with much larger markets, around 6 million people in Holland (population 6.5 million) attend football matches every year in their 18 team top league competition. Sweden has around 10 million people: 2.2 million go to football matches every year. 2.9 million Belgians (population around 11.4 million) go to the football every year. Yes, I know that football is the major sport, but they also have strong (ice) hockey leagues.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
Glad you picked up on that. It was certainly the focal point of the whole piece.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
At the end of the day if we the people are not getting the best possible competition at the best possible value, perhaps it’s time to take a more pragmatic approach. I am not suggesting that we totally embrace the American mindset, but there has to be a sharper focus on improving attendances and ratings, rather than continuing to faff about the edges.
While it’s true that the average attendance at Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm home matches is approaching 60% of the stadiums’ capacity, the overall average attendance across the competition of around 15,500 is abysmal. And when you have the average attendance at Sydney Roosters (one of the teams playing in the 2018 Grand Final) home games of 13,300 in a stadium holding 45,000 (ie under 30% of capacity), something is fundamentally wrong.
And I wonder about the choice of the word ‘already’ in reference to the Broncos and the Storm. The Broncos were established 30 years ago and the Storm have been around for 20 years. And an average of 60% capacity is nothing to write home about given that they are the only teams in their cities.
If the NFL had the same population to team ratio as the NRL, there would be 203 NFL teams. The issue is that the NRL, the AFL and SANZAAR seem to think that Australia has 60+ million people.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams
The AFL is obviously the benchmark in attendance numbers in Australian football codes. And, yes, given the inclusion of a stadium holding 100,000, 64% capacity is pretty darned good. 45 home and away matches were played at the G this year with an average attendance approaching 54,000 and some of the teams playing there couldn’t draw a raffle. Perth (47,000 average attendance = 78% average capacity), Adelaide (42,000 = 78% full on average) and Sydney (34,000 = 74% full on average).
Probably most disturbing is that the average attendance at Docklands was a bit under 29,000 out of a possible 53.400 (54% capacity) and the Gabba which only attracted an average of 17,400 out of a possible 42,000 (41% capacity).
Probably the main issue is with the NRL and Super Rugby where they can’t even get to a half full at most grounds, even during finals.
Why Australia's sporting competitions need fewer teams