I think you find that the A-League are in the summer to co-inside with the European season so that we do not get affected by the world cups, Euros etc, which would really take the attention away from the A-League. I for one would love to see the A-League season to run from Oct to May.

The only code battle in Sydney’s West that we need to worry about is our own.

The Birchgrove Oval affair was certainly a colourful affair.

Deception is in the eye of the beholder:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/07/25/glenn-burge-trumps-tom-harley-in-sydney-soccer-stoush/

Of course they are, afterall, it makes so much sense to be aligned with Europe when the major leagues in our region (and in our confederation), are not.

Why are those numbers a concern?

Two new sides have come into the competition, both from non-heartland areas, both were always going to average sub 20k crowds, they were going to bring down average attendances, that was always well understood and accepted.

In the meantime, aggregate TV ratings went up from 113 million in 2011 to 123 million in 2012 (NRL at 113 million and A-League at 9 million).

The AFL is not like the old NSL living year to year on a hope and a prayer - it's planning extends decades out, decades.

When it finally takes full ownership of Etihad Stadium in 2025 (or earlier), a billion dollar asset, a license to print money, it will be the culmination of decades of planning.

Most of our top players arein Europe and the major tournaments are organsied around that. As the supporter of a provincial little game that considers Geelong a distant and exotic land nobody expects you to understand.

Parramatta Eels' crowds are woeful, and I expect the Wanderers to follow suit wants the novelty wears off and they start losing more games in time.

What does it matter what the reasons are? The fact is it’s played in summer so the point stands, the major competitor is cricket.

The Eels had a shocking season. so i'm sure that had an impact on crowd figures..

GWS were shocking too, though it was expected. It also didn't help that in their inaugural year the club in the east of the city won its first premiership since 2005.

Football runs at completely different time of year. I guarantee most people (myself included) follow ALF/NRL in winter and then football and cricket in summer...

There is no battle..

...don't look now....

and expect gws to be shit for at least the next 5 years if its still even based in western sydney by then

Wilkshire, Schwarzer, Federici, Jones, Holman, Sarota, Oar, Zullo, Davidson, Williams, Jedinak, Kruse etc. The list goes on.How many of your beloved VFL players plyt their trade in Europe? LOL

No-one cares about AFL in Western Sydney.

Take out the free memberships and free tickets, and their average crowds would be in the hundreds.

GWS will be a money sink that will not pay dividend and the AFL will end up pulling the plug in 5-10 years when they realise this. No matter how much you try to brand a pile of garbage, some people really just aren't interested.

Wow, all regulars too - I'm sure there are no present day socceroos earning their living in Asia, no siree.

About 190 Australians play soccer overseas professionally - most are on the breadline.

Another 190 play professionally in Australia - most of them are on the breadline as well.

The AFL offers 800+ professional football contracts, and an average salary of $300k+ per annum - it's not too bad.

What's your source on the average AFL wage? And how does the median AFL wage compare?

Do you have any facts or are you just trolling as you go along? :lol:

Whatever happens, absolutely guarantee it will not be this.

If for no other reason than it will require the AFL hierarchy to state (at least indirectly) that they were wrong.

They can and will sustain losses in western Sydney forever. As long as there’s population there, they’ll hold onto it in the hope of capturing them.

And just to show how fair minded I am, I decided to look at the make-up of our last WCQ, against Iraq, on October 16 last year. This list includes the starting XI and anyone else who was subbed on.

Schwarzer - Fulham
Neill - Al Wasl (Middle East)
Cahill - New York Red Bulls (MSL)
Wilkshire - Dynamo Moscow
Kruse - Dusseldorf
Holman - Aston Villa
Jedinak - Cyrstal Palace (Championship)
Valeri - Sassuolo (Serie B)
McKay - Busan (Sth Korea)
Brosque - Al Ain (Middle East)
Thomson - Victory (A-League)
Spiranovic - Al Arabi (Middle East)
Oar - Utrecht
Holland - Austria Wien

So of 14 players, five can be categorised as playing in a top 10 European league, while five are playing in leagues associated with the AFC.

No-one can sustain losing massive amounts of money forever, not even the AFL.

It will hurt them badly over time and they will come to a realisation once the experiment fails.

Edited by Axelv: 9/1/2013 02:58:07 PM

I sort of agree, except it's really not a case of capturing anything.

The Swans are successful by any measure, but their success does not mean anything has been captured.

GWS will exist for as long as it adds value to the concept of a national league via TV rights and sponsorship (both of which are extremely healthy and are very likely to remain healthy for a good while yet).

The Suns and Giants will have the lowest AFL attendances, perhaps forever - but someone has to have the lowest attendances.

One further point of clarification. When the AFL says it is budgeting to fund the Giants and Suns at the cost of $100 million for the next 10 years - that's all it is, a budget.

It might cost more - but it might cost less, for example, in the Suns first full season in the AFL, it actually turned a modest profit - so that represents one small chunk of that budgeted $100 million that did not need to be spent.

74% of the 684 AFL players earned less than $300k in 2011. The median is just over $200k. Just under 30% of players were in the $100-$200k range and just under 25% were in the $200-$300k range.

Yeah fair points.

It is interesting to note that the Swans still don’t make money when you strip out AFL handouts, after 30 years.

Neither did GCS in their first season in which they received special assistance from the AFL of $18.6m.

The AFL did not expand in NSW and Qld to increase attendances but to get double the number of games played in those two markets which between them account for 53% of the advertising spend in Australia.

Edited by gyfox: 9/1/2013 03:12:33 PM

It’s not massive amounts of money (relatively), but it probably will be forever – as far as can be seen anyway. But there’s also the indirect benefits through sponsorships and TV rights that having a presence in an area as populous as western Sydney provides.

A lot of the marketing has been aimed at 8 to 12 year olds – by any measure it’s a 20 year project minimum before they might see any real benefits. The club GWS is actually only a part of it.

Very different project to WSW who already have an established adult base with a passion for the game.

Whatever happens, “they’ll end up pulling the plug in 5 to 10 years” is a ridiculous statement without basis. They’ve never done this with expansion clubs and they won’t start now just because one is making a loss. A third of the AFL clubs already lose money anyway once you take out the equalisation funds.


Edited by orexxis: 9/1/2013 03:13:43 PM

Sydney made a modest profit of $207,000 last year. Now on one hand, you expect the premier to do well financially, although on the flip side, the Swans were hampered by the major renovation to the SCG which saw one third of the ground closed for the whole of the footy season. Thousands of members chose not to renew rather than receive re-allocated seating. I'm not sure when the renovation will be completed.

As for handouts, I'm not sure how correct that is.

All clubs receive annual dividends from the AFL, their share of the consoldiated revenue, earned form TV rights and league-wide sponsorship. All the football leagues in Australia do something similar.

Do the Swans receive higher than average dividends from the AFL? I'm not sure about that. I know the smaller Melbourne clubs do.

AFL clubs now need to earn $30+ million per annum just to stay afloat, the bigger clubs are earning much, much more - it's definitely an issue that will not go away in a hurry.

Sydney got an additional payment of $0.8m in 2011 which is about half what some of the Melbourne clubs got but twice what Richmond got.

Yes, exactly this.

There is no code war. The moniker " WAR " is glibly used by the media mostly incorrectly ( e.g. graffiti war )
I'm sure the administrators of RU, NRL, AFL and cricket are concerned enough. They keep on producing spin ( usually how international the code is ) to lure their most valuable asset ( TV viewers and to a lesser extent bums on seats )to side with them.
World football administrators are probably busy trying to capture a larger slice of the viewing cake in Australia, because they know globally none of the parochial sports can compete.

We, on these forums happily stab away on keyboards to make us get some of that fame that Andy Warhol talked of in 70's New York and to satisfy our own ego's, which is why these internet forums are so very important.

So they made a loss of $0.6m.

Healthy.

i am not going to comment on GWS but i think the wanderers have done an amazing job so far hard to tell what it will be like if we were losing every match but so far we are going well