Karma bites Nine and Fix big time

[Babyface O'reilly]

Membership will always be a problem for league. The problem doesn't lie with advertising or price points, it's biggest problem is that it looks too good on TV. The game adapts well to TV in comparison to sports like AFL and soccer that you miss alot of the action off the ball with a tv broadcast, the inverse can be said about league in that you can miss alot of the little nuances in a game when actually viewing it from the crowd.

It's a hard sell to most casual fans to get a membership when more often than not they'll find themselves looking at the big screen during a game. I think it's a bit optimistic to assume we'll even come close to the membership numbers of the AFL for that very reason, but it's also ridiculous that we're earning less in TV rights for that very reason.

Now this normally wouldn't be a problem in a country where the population could support that mindset. But assuming we have 5 games in Sydney per week and an average ground capacity of around 30,000-40,000 when you factor in ANZ and the SFS you come up with a figure of around 150,000-200,000 vacant seats per weekend, considering Sydney has a greater metro population of only 4 million, you're expecting 1 in 20 people to attend to fill those seats. When many see the game as more watchable on TV, its a very hard sell, especially when you consider, probably not even half of that population actually watches league.

Great post
As an aside, a little comment I'd like to make is that I don't get how so many people think that AFL is great live. Like most people my age (40's) I grew up watching the VFL match on the day on Saturdays. Because the camera was always trained on the ball it looked really fast but when I got to go to a live match in Melbourne, I couldn't believe how slow the game looked away from the ball. Because the ground is so big - I guess, the players having almost nothing to do but scratch themselves until the ball comes their way again. A bit of niggle here an there but it resembles the out field at the cricket.

 

[Dr.J]

David Gallop has said that with the next tv deal (2013), the aim will be for a fixed schedule.

Gallop signed off on the last TV deal and never asked for a fixed schedule. The only way he will do it is if enough fans complain. It is ridiculous that the NRL is the only major football competition in the world with a floating schedule, but then we are the only one owned by a media company. Almost as ridiculous as Timmah saying that the AFL don't have a fixed schedule because they have decided that round 22 will be flexible...

Which brings up another very important point: the AFL are doing this because the finals are flexible and they don't want to disadvantage any teams in the finals with a Sunday evening game in the last home & away round. Last round aside, with a fixed schedule you can fairly set the draw up so that teams share around the number of short breaks (Monday-Saturday or Sunday-Friday) or even better still not have them at all. Teams playing off a short break in the NRL win WAY LESS than 50% of games and it is an outright stitch up to have a team playing off a 6 or 7 day break against a team on a four day break. The AFL generally don't let teams play with a 4 day break because they do the fixtures in advance. Because the TV stations do the NRL fixtures drip by drip they can get away with making certain teams have to regularly do Monday-Saturday turnarounds when teams like the Broncos get locked in every Friday night and get a full week to prepare for each game. Granted there are other unfair aspects about the fixtures but it is totally unnecessary to have certain teams with a nice spaced out set of games and others having alternating long and short weeks.

Still as much as the TV stations give me the sh-ts over this issue, it was great that Channel 9 missed Tiger's opening round 66 today at Kingston Heath. Sorry that the people running the golf tournament couldn't give you more notice about the exact timing of his tee off until the last minute. I hope that those fans who book a weekend in Canberra to watch their team when the airfares are cheap remember how much Tiger's 66 bent Channel 9 over when the TV stations bend them over by scheduling a Monday night game and stop them from watching the game they tried to travel to.