grayham said:
roopy said:
TV viewing figures are only really good for one thing - convincing sponsers to support a code.
If I were an NRL exec trying to convince a sponser to throw dollars the way of the NRL over AFL I would point out that you also get a million Kiwis and a fair few viewers in the UK for your bucks.
There is no doubt NRL has sold itself to TV, and become a TV sport. What other sport in the world allows its top level comp slip below 10,000 crowds regularly.
But just like TV programs, when a sport is only there for the use of TV, it will eventually run its course like Gilligans Island or Lost in Space, and be first shifted of to pay TV, then gone altogether.
If thats what you want, then thats what you'll get.
Rugby League is a TV sport - I agree - but it has been a TV sport all my life so far, and shows no sign of becoming less popular.
Because I live in Newcastle where we didn't have a team till 1988 I never actually went to a top grade match till I was 30 years old - yet I was still a league fanatic even then.
A sport designed for TV primarily is not only possible, but is totally desirable. Soccer makes billions of dollars a year as a sport, and the percentage of that money that comes from gate receipts is so tiny they hardly count it. Marketing people in soccer refer to crowds as 'colour', meaning they are only there to make the TV spectacle look better. Most English soccer matches try to break even with the cost/ticket price ratio of putting on a game.
AFL isn't good on TV and is stuck in a tiny geographical area because of that. I think their administration is doing a fantastic job in making the very best strides they can to expand the game, but they are trying to push sh*t uphill with a stick IMO.
League has huge free to air TV audiences and huge pay TV audiences as well, and it has more and more people watching all the time. Over the past five years or so, since the end of Super League, the number of TV views of NRL games has more than doubled if you take the expansion of pay TV and the growth of ratings on free to air into account. With the game now on pay Tv in NZ, USA and UK as well, the audience just continues to grow.
I saw a statistic the other day that said the Manchester United soccer club has more fans worldwide than the sports of Union, League and AFL put together - and you can bet that only about 1% of those fans will have been to Manchesters home ground for a game.
Big gates will get a sport to a certain level in today's world, but only TV will make it into a 'big' sport on the world stage.
When I look at the place that AFL is right now and conpare it with where League is, I would much rather be riding the TV bandwagon with League than trying to think of a way of making billions out of the Melbourne grannies who take their knitting to watch the footy.
