The Western Sydney Giants (yes the new AFL team in western Sydney will be known as the giants) will be a colossal failure for the AFL. And perhaps the Gold Coast Suns will be too.
A failure because of two reasons:
1) They are putting teams into an already saturated market. This is NOT good business sense. Never has been. Never will be. And that ties to the second point.
2) They are putting teams into areas that are NOT crying out for teams. And one could say western Sydney does not want an AFL team at all. The AFL could throw sh*t loads of money into western Sydney, but throwing money into these two new franchises has already not worked and in many ways backfired horribly. The buying of cutie and Folau have turned potential fans against these two teams already.
I believe the AFL expansion will hurt them quite a bit (probably not to the extent super league did to rugby league) but quite a bit.
I also believe the AFL has reached virtual saturation in Australia (the only place it is hasn't expanded that it could is Tasmania)... and once the Suns and Giants come into the league it will become over-saturated. Accordingly thus the growth of the game has hit a peak.
Meanwhile, the NRL is NO WHERE near saturation. We have many areas crying out for teams. The NRL will grow immeasurably the next 10-20 years (if managed right and the Independent commission gives me hope )
Within 10 years I expect the NRL will become the media darlings the AFL are now.
I agree, I really can't see these two new AFL teams succeeding. BUT, the delusion and the arrogance of the AFL about these new teams, especially western Sydney, amazes me and it is obvious they are going to throw a bucketload of money in these areas to try to make it work.
Living amongst the Victorians I see the manipulation of the media every day, and the Vic's lap it up. They love showing their outrage at the antics of the NRL players while laughingly dismiss anything their AFL hero's get up to, which is mostly a helluva lot worse than anything the RL boys do.
I see the arrogance of the AFL every day in their own contrived little world, where they ensure all teams take turns winning the comp of the "best game on the planet".
Everyday I see deluded Vics who can't understand why other countries, hell, why even other states don't play their dopey game. Now we have the deluded AFL looking to takeover the country, obviously just before they takeover the world, by expanding into RL areas. I believe these teams will fail, and I hope they do, but I know how important these areas are in their future plans and they have a big bucketload of money and a contrived competition to help them succeed.
I find it as frustrating as hell, and can't believe the NRL won't return fire and start promoting itself as the greatest game of them all. Maybe they will when this IC gets up and running, I can only hope.
