roopy said:
That is a pretty fair description of the comp as it stands, although you fail to mention the amazing rate of growth over the last few years (my estimate is the comp is growing about 20% a year).
20% growth isn't that 'amazing' when you're talking an extra 20 guys in a country of 200 million. Good, consistent - but I wouldn't get too excited about that.
roopy' said:
The thing is, we are not talking about the present comp turning pro, but a whole new comp being well funded and begining from scratch.
Fair enough then - I'd heard people talking up the concept of the AmNRL in its current form turning pro - which was mostly what I was suggesting may be a little unrealistic.
[quote="roopy]
This sounds incredible to us, but things like this happen in America. The soccer comp that ran in the 70's and included a team called the NY Cosmos started from nothing and employed all the worlds top soccer players for a few years, than just folded. The XFL did likewise. A sport called Arena football started up a pro league last year that is bigger and richer than our NRL, and they did it all from scratch.
The reason they are able to spend this kind of money is because of the huge potential audiences. The Fox satelite network in the US is a tiny player in the pay TV market, but they reach more households than exist in Australia all by themselves.
I don't know what the American guys are up to at the moment, but I know the market in America is bigger than anything we could dream of and we only need to tap a tiny percentage of it to be successful as a sport.[/quote]
Very valid points, and it is true that you can be a tiny niche market in the US and still be bigger than anything in Oz. Two or three things to mention though.
1. The players would have to come from overseas. You could maybe find a few gridiron/US union players and train them up, but on the whole, you'd have to import an entire league's worth of players (very expensive and quite difficult on paper as well with US law).
2. Who's going to fund something that doesn't have a ready made audience? Fox Sport and ESPN have a million and one niche market sports already going pro (ten pin bowling for christ sake...) with ready-made TV audiences. THere isn't much room for something which you'd be building an audience for from scratch.
3. Yeah, the soccer idea kind of worked (though even the MLS isn't doing the best financially these days, despite being the bigget participation sport in the USA) - but again, everyone in the USA knows soccer and it's a migrant nation... Even if your apple-pie white bread yankee doesn't like soccer, the big chunk of the population from elsewhere does.
4. XFL. Huge amount of money was flushed down the toilet by Vince McMahon on this, basically trying to do the same thing - set up a new spectator sport from scratch.
5. Pro rugby union in the USA will happen very soon (there are plans similar to the idea recently floated for Oz). Must be noticed however, that this may not be a bad thing... Union popularity will probably benefit league as well.
That all said - it could work, BUT maybe not right now. Give it four or five years and we'll see.