Babyface O'reilly
Coach
- Messages
- 12,414
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.
Last edited: