Look I don`t know what`s going on with this bloke from Budget Direct and the board who`ve obviously signed off on this campaign but deliberately antagonising a huge chunk of the sports following public strikes me as odd. Sure we love it, but it`s odd.
Now maybe he just really believes what he`s saying, but to come out and publicly put down a rival code and openly mock them with the singlet thing is really out there for a big company.
And as far as the national exposure thing, like it or not the fumbles do have the jump on us with that one presently.
Anyway I love it and people like him saying these things publicly, whether strictly true or not, can become self-fulfilling prophecies and start to get accepted as fact and that certainly works for us.
His comments are to a marketing industry magazine. 99.9999% of the public will never become aware of it. Those that do are in marketing, or are chronically online AFL or NRL fans. There's been no public backlash so far and there won't be.
In 2002 I would have agreed with you that AFL had the biggest national exposure. But not in 2025. Look at his assertions:
We know that the NRL is really moving through the ranks to be the number one sport. -- true, it now is, as reflected in the NRL's TV ratings.
When you add in WA, it will obviously start to progress into clear number one -- true, the gap will widen as NRL gets greater exposure to 3 million extra people. What the Bears will do will be similar to the Storm, as he portends (see further below).
It’s the demographic of people who are turning up to the games, it’s really become a family sport. -- true, but also hidden in that demographic comment is that it is a multicultural sport which better reflects the multicultural identity of Australia. It also skews towards a younger audience than AFL or Union.
It also generates one of the only growing audiences in Australia, and it actually does that still on free to air and on SVOD and BVOD. -- true, audiences are fractured now so to be posted record attendance and ratings is a testament to growing brand confidence
[AFL] a sport that is extraordinarily long to watch and it does have a very, very, very significant lean towards just one state. And we really wanted a nationwide strategy. -- all true, it's getting harder for broadcasters to get youth demos to tune in for 3hr+ events. Look at the current Ashes sessions. 16-39s are about 16-18% of the total audience. The NRL GF which was essentially a 3hr+ event managed to get around 25% of its total. The average AFL viewer is older, whiter and more likely Victorian, than the average NRL viewer.
Every single person in Victoria supports the Storm, and everybody in Victoria supports one of 12 different teams [in the AFL]. That would be an incredibly inefficient way to address a whole state. You’ll notice that for two of our teams, there’s only one team in the state, which means that you get the whole state behind it. -- you could argue whether every Victorian supports the Storm but in terms of bandwagoners it's effectively true and this is why I hope the NRL doesn't put another team in Melbourne any time soon. The Storm are the one team that everyone in the city and state can back. They are Victoria's team. It will eventually position the Storm to become bigger than any individual AFL club. 20-30 years from now on it is possible that the Storm will be bigger than the Broncos. That's what the Budget Direct guy is hoping to get in on the ground floor of.
