Football codes do battle for fan base
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 07/10/2009
Reporter: Greg Hoy
KERRY OBRIEN, PRESENTER: Reports that former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard has been approached to head a revamped national rugby league competition is the latest skirmish in the off-field tussle between the nation's four major football codes vying for the hearts, minds and wallets of Australian sports fans.
While the AFL, rugby league and rugby union premierships have been decided, soccer's final showdown is yet to come.
But who's winning the biggest premiership of them all, the strategic and business competition amongst the codes themselves.
Business editor Greg Hoy reports.
GREG HOY, BUSINSS EDITOR: Four little balls, one big competition. Well beyond the tribal passions, triumphant teams hoisting trophies aloft at season's end lies the bigger business and marketing battle for bums on seats. The bottom line, if you like, of football's future in Australia.
MATT FINNIS, AFL PLAYERS ASSN: Australia will be amongst the most competitive environments for professional football and sport in the world.
BRENDAN SCHWAB, PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLERS ASSN: The competition for the fan and the competition for the elite player.
GREG HOY: Each code contends of course that it's the greatest.
MATT FINNIS: I've been brought up on AFL football. I guess the game has just really thrived on a real tribal following.
TONY DEMPSEY, RUGBY UNION PLAYERS ASSN: I think rugby is truly international with 116 countries that play the game. With that comes a certain culture, a certain ethos about the game.
BRENDAN SCHWAB: The great advantage that football has is that it's obviously the world game. It's a game which also appeals greatly to families, particularly young children.
DAVID GARNSEY, RUGBY LEAGUE PLAYERS ASSN: Rugby league always has that gladiatorial aspect to it. It's a very brutal game put in bald terms.
It's often one man often, one out against another man running at each other at enormous speeds and with enormous impact. And it's that sort of toughness which has always appealed to crowds and certainly appealed to me.
ROBERT MACDONALD, SPORTS LAW, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: If you're looking at annual revenue, the AFL is earning something like $300 million a year, that's the central body itself.
Rugby league, it's difficult to find that information unless you dig around in annual reports. And it's sort of hidden because of the relationship with News Limited, I believe.
The Australian Rugby Union is less than $100 million a year. And Football Federation Australia is also less than $100 million a year.
GREG HOY: Ahead on points, according to Sweeney Sports research, 50 per cent of Australians are interested in Australian Rules. But the home grown game enjoys by far the highest attendance by devoted fans.
ROBERT MACDONALD: Australian football is the financially strongest by a long shot. There's over six, sometimes seven million people a year go to the Australian Football League.
That's over twice the number of people that attend the National Rugby League competition and four or five times more than would attend, say, the super rugby competition or the A-League soccer.
GREG HOY: Its broadcast rights are worth $780 million over five years. The AFL is now asking $1 billion for its next multimedia rights deal in 2012 and remains the darling of advertisers.
HAROLD MITCHELL, MEDIA STRATEGIST: Advertisers, Greg, are only interested in audience. And so whoever gets the biggest audience over a long period of time that suits an advertiser is the most important one of all. The clear winner in Australia over the whole of the year is the AFL.
GREG HOY: Next on the inter-code premiership ladder: rugby league. Sustaining the interest of 36 per cent of Australians, the NRL is half-owned, managed and heavily promoted by News Limited.
The $600 million broadcast deal expires in 2012, and the code wants more.
DAVID GARNSEY: Rugby league is an extraordinarily popular television spectacle. I think we've just seen some figures where 60 of the 100 most-watched subscription television programs are rugby league games.
GREG HOY: Further down the ladder, rugby union, recovering from financial difficulties in recent years, though according to Sweeney Sports, 32 per cent of Australians remain interested.
Its Tri Nations Super 14 competition may soon expand into Melbourne, with hope of a major increase in the US $323 million broadcast rights, which expire in two years.
HAROLD MITCHELL: Rugby Union has got a way to go but it is incredibly important at the very big events. So every time we see the Bledisloe Cup it goes through roof.
GREG HOY: Then comes soccer, the sleeping giant with the highest participation rate of the codes. The soaring popularity of the Socceroos, though its financial strength is inhibited by a seven-year broadcasting deal yielding just $120 million with five years to run.
HAROLD MITCHELL: It hasn't allowed them to be out on free-to-air. Free-to-air makes a very big difference because it gets the big, big audiences and that's what builds it over time.
GREG HOY: There are, however, unknowns that might help level the playing field and change the rankings. The first is a current review of the Government's anti-siphoning legislation, dictating what must be shown on free-to-air TV.
Secondly, each of the codes faces its own daunting challenges. Even the AFL.
MATT FINNIS: Sydney is still a big nut to crack for AFL and certainly for the eastern seaboard up into Queensland as well.
GREG HOY: But rugby league has its own challenges. The poaching of its stars by wealthier codes. Advertisers meantime have concerns about persistent scandals involving prominent players.
HAROLD MITCHELL: This is a very careful views audience these days. And they don't like the thought of yahoos in any of the sports.
GREG HOY: While league players themselves want to a change of management, given that News Limited is part owner manager of the League, and part owner of Foxtel, one of the main bidders for broadcasting right.
DAVID GARNSEY: There's certainly been a call for an independent commission much like the AFL's model, you might think, to be set up, removed from any self-interest which might otherwise hinder the game.
People in positions of power are reluctant to give those positions up.
GREG HOY: Rugby union, meanwhile, understands it must lift its game in order to survive or prosper.
TONY DEMPSEY: I don't disagree that rugby has hit a flat spot. We are at a crossroad; we are at a little bit of a tipping point.
And we need to address several fundamental things and if we can address those and they are - some free-to-air coverage for super rugby, some changes in the laws to make the game more enjoyable for spectators and to give more meaning to the test match schedule.
If those three things can be achieved I think rugby's positioning itself to grow.
GREG HOY: While many see soccer's ascension as inevitable at the expense of other codes, soccer must compete with its own European competitions to win supporters for A-League clubs.
BRENDAN SCHWAB: Our objective is to make football number one or number two in every market, with a genuine national footprint.
GREG HOY: The increasingly national competition is set to intensify, forcing all codes to stay on the ball.
MATT FINNIS: The worst thing we could do is assume that AFL will hold the position at the top of the heap. I think we need to work hard, then I believe the AFL is well placed to cement its position as the number one sport in the country.
