Did the AFL have a long term plan, when they flicked the Lions and Swans from Melbourne?
No.That was brought about by necessity.Move or die.Simple.
Umm, yeah actually they did...
The VFL has had a handful of expansion plans since the 70's that planned out the future growth of the sport going into the future, effectively with the intent to create the AFL. Moving clubs out of Melbourne and/or replacing them with "interstate" clubs has been part of those plans since the beginning as well.
And number of near death experiences the Swans had in the early years, had the AFL wondering was it worth the effort.Then then got kissed on the a*se by SL war.
The Swans growth was steadily trending up since well before SL, and their real growth spurt didn't come until well after SL was done and dusted either. They really exploded in the mid 00s when (surprise, surprise) they became consistently successful on the field and won a "flag", and since that time they haven't had a significant period where they haven't been successful on the pitch (cause the AFL won't let them fail after what happened with the Lions after their successful period ended), for all we know they could be headed headlong towards a fall from grace similar to that the Lions suffered if they suddenly drop from a consistent top 8/4 side to cellar dwellers.
So yeah with or without SL the Swans were growing and were going to grow as big as they have.
And look at how much they have spent/wasted on the Lions and Suns even the Gnats.
You have to invest in things so they grow, expecting instant success is an absolutley ridiculous standard.
And in the case of Brisbane I'd be extremely surprised if their presence in the competition hasn't resulted in a net profit over their existence, without a club in Brisbane the AFL's TV deals are significantly smaller that's for sure.
As long as the NRL expands,without the need to waste money, they don't have in bucketloads. Go ahead.
If we applied the same standard of "waste" to clubs from Sydney three quarters wouldn't exist anymore, yours in particular would've carked it multiple times over.
So yeah enough with your entitled double standards...
Having only $45m in the Bank this year is hardly having a motza to expand,the AFL gobbled that up and more in expansion in 1 year.Would the AFL have expanded to GWS ,if they had such a "small" amount in the bank? I doubt it.
I forget the exact numbers and can't be bothered redoing the math, but if the NRL gets roughly the same amount that the AFL got for an extra game (which isn't an unreasonable assumption) then expansion pays for it's self and more (i.e. even if the NRL is investing 15 million each a year in the new clubs they'd still make a profit from expansion...), cause operating an NRL club doesn't cost half as much as operating an AFL club...
Seeing the Tv companies pay a huge % of the code's revenue, one would be an idiot to ignore
@ their ability to pay a big increase.
b) Whether expansion would bring in the money we all think they would,taht doesn't mean so if ad revenue drops..
c) the Tv companies are already being impacted by live streams.
d) Foxtel is not growing the subscription pie,it's in fact stagnating.
This is such a one dimensional view of the situation that it hurts my brain!
Yeah TV and pay TV is getting murdered by the internet and streaming, thanks for the news flash, but those facts don't mean that streaming services won't want sports products that attract millions of viewers to their service in the future.
Netflix, Amazon, Disney, etc, have money as well, and if any of them want to launch a sports streaming service into Australia (which is inevitable) then having the NRL (or AFL for that matter) on their service would be a huge plus, kind of like how having RL on his subscription service was such a big deal to Murdoch when he was launching it in Australia that he basically started the SL war over it...
Oh but we have this plan, and we're going ahead with it now
We don't have a plan, that's what people a complaining about...
,even though we have little in the bank
We've got more then enough in the bank, stop trying to compare the NRL to AFL in this regard.
The AFL had to manufacture their new clubs, the NRL has people lining up to pay them to join their comp, massive difference.
grassroots still needs large amounts
Grassroots being underfunded has nothing to do with expansion... Maybe if we didn't make RL in this country so massively top heavy and didn't give the top 0.001% of players and clubs way more then their fair share of revenue then we'd have enough to go around...
we have no idea and neither do the TV companies of revenue and the impact of expansion
BS, just complete and utter BS. A quick look through the history books of what the effects of expansion were after prior attempts in any number of codes under similar circumstances is all that would need to be done to rectify that.
nor the effect new stadiums and club infrastructure on Sydney crowds and membership yet.
f**k Sydney!
Expansion into new markets isn't about Sydney and crowds in Sydney!
You don't see me saying 'but what about Canberra' when expansion gets brought up.
It says an order of magnitude more about those clubs and the state of the Sydney market then it says about expansion or the expansion clubs if expansion is that much of a threat to them.
Let's just flick two Sydney teams now, that'll be a smooth operation.
Who's saying that? Apart from some bloke in Queensland looking to get a headline who is even seriously suggesting that?
It's not even on the agenda, stop being hyperbolic and frankly ridiculous.
It's easy for us to say an extra game will bring in X extra revenue now, appears for the Tv stations if Beattie is right, that's still an unanswered question.Ok that's if they have in fact asked it.That's a question that can only really be near 100% closer to the mark on TV negotiation time.
There NRL goes in then with, we offer an 18 team competition ,with a Perth and Brisbane/Adelaide city involved.9 games, over time zones etc, and go from there.
Yeah lets let a couple of TV companies dictate what is best for the NRL, they don't have a massive conflict of interest or anything, it's not like they'll put their profit margin ahead of the NRL's or the sports growth, or that it's not in their interest to keep the growth of the sport down so that the TV rights don't blow out to much over the next contract, not to mention the fact that they are a dying medium, that's a f**king sterling idea...
Do you work for News or one of the broadcasters or something. Jesus H Christ.
We certainly know the TV companies dictated to the NRL when Smith,went rogue.Promising the AFL extra promo being done now in the Nthn States and extra loot in their TV contract.
Smith had Fox by the balls, he'd completely f**ked their negotiating position, they'd either had to have capitulated to everything he demanded or he would have taken the rest of the games to another FTA broadcaster where admittedly he probably wouldn't have got as much cash, but the value to the growth of the sport and the good will to the fans would have been huge, either way he won, it's just too bad that the people in power at the ARLC were scared by uncle Rupert into capitulating and getting rid of Smith.
If the Tv companies dictate that (on the proviso we get 18 teams, and the monetary increase), then we have to accept they get some scheduling control,which IMO with an extra game won't be as bad as currently sits.
I will add this ,the latest 2018 Tv ratings shows the NRL is above the AFL's ,if that continues then the NRL can do some heavy dollar screwing with the TV hobnobs.
And I repeat having CBS behind ch10 ,may well assist in creating competitive tension at negotiation time.
Are you schizophrenic?
One minute you're talking about effectively allowing broadcasting companies to control the future growth of the game, the next you are talking about screwing them for cash...